“Well, I had this friend on the police force and I asked him how a man would go about locating a young woman under those circumstances and he said he’d run down a couple of leads.

  “Well, of course, he used common sense, something which I could have done if I’d only thought of it. He knew that Diana was concerned about her brother, so he went to the hospital, interrogated the telephone operator, and found that calls had been coming in regularly from Los Angeles to find out about Edgar Douglas’ condition. A number had been left to be notified if there was any change. The officer found that number was the number of the Willatson Hotel in Los Angeles and that a Diana Deering had put in the calls. By checking her description he soon had it pretty well established that Diana Deering was Diana Douglas, so then he suggested that it would be a good plan to question her because—well, you can see the position I was in.”

  “I’m not going to make any comment at this time,” Franklin Gage said, “but Diana Douglas has been a very loyal employee and I have the utmost confidence in her integrity. I’m sorry that Mr. Mason has adopted the attitude there has been any defamation of character. I also feel that we had better check up rather carefully on that cash situation before we talk about any shortage. … You will understand, Mr. Mason, that at times there is as much as a hundred thousand dollars in our cash safe.”

  Mason raised his eyebrows.

  “I know that seems large to you,” Franklin Gage went on, “but it seems small to us because this is a very unusual type of business.

  “This isn’t like dealing in automobiles where there is a registration number and a pink slip. In this business the person who has possession of the articles is to all intents and purposes the owner—unless, of course, he has stolen the articles—and that is a chance we have to take.

  “However, we have a regular clientele with whom we do business, and we have been very fortunate in dealing in property which was not stolen.”

  “But smuggled?” Mason asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Franklin Gage said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to know. And, of course, smuggling is only a minor crime. There are embargoes against exportation. If a shrewd operator ships a dozen figurines out of Mexico without alarming the Mexican authorities, and then presents them at the United States border as copies which he has picked up for a nominal consideration in a Tijuana curio store, nobody is going to bother about it because there are curio stores selling copies of ancient figurines.

  “Then when they get to this country, if it should turn out that the figurines are actually genuine, ancient figurines, we certainly aren’t going to ask how it happened that they were released from the embargo in Mexico. We simply say, ‘How much?’ And if the price is right and if we are satisfied as to the quality of the merchandise, we close the transaction.”

  “Then these ancient figurines in your display windows are copies?” Mason asked.

  Franklin Gage shook his head. “We don’t deal in copies, Mr. Mason. We deal in genuine, authentic articles.”

  “But they come across the border as copies?” Mason asked.

  “We have no idea how they come across the border, Mr. Mason….

  “Now, may I say that we are genuinely concerned about Diana’s misfortune, the loss of her brother. I know that they were very close. I take it that this is a poor time to communicate with her, but, after the funeral, Mr. Mason … I think you will agree with us that this whole discussion should be postponed until after the funeral?

  “Personally, I don’t see how any good can come of trying to intensify the feeling of grief, on the one hand, or of injured feelings on the other. Mr. Mason, I ask you please, as a favor to the company, as a personal favor, to hold this matter in abeyance for a few days. This is the end of the week and, as you say, Diana’s brother has passed away. That will mean funeral arrangements, and the poor girl has—Homer, see if you can get her on the phone and ask her if she wants any money. Ask her if she needs an advance.”

  “Don’t try it today,” Mason said. “I have advised her to take sedation and shut off the telephone.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I see,” Franklin Gage said, “and, of course, tomorrow is Saturday but— I think it might be a little better, Homer, if you had one of the other girls in the office—surely someone must know her intimately and have a friendship with her, someone who could ring up in a few hours and express our sympathy in a perfectly natural way.”

  Homer Gage shook his head. “Not Diana. She’s something of a loner as far as the others are concerned, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  Franklin Gage arose and again held out his flesh-cushioned hand to the lawyer. “So nice to have met you, Mr. Mason, and thank you so much for dropping in to tell us what you had in mind. I am quite certain that it won’t be necessary for us to adopt any adversary position—not that I agree with you in any way, but—well, we’ll work out something somewhere along the line.

  “And please don’t get the idea that we are engaged in an unusual type of business. I can assure you that every importing and exporting business these days has problems, Mr. Mason, and I think everyone has contacts.”

  “What do you mean, contacts?” Mason asked.

  “Well, brokers,” Franklin Gage said with a wave of his hand. “You know, Mr. Mason, we don’t give money to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who shows up with a load of curios. But we have certain people with whom we deal, and those people, in turn, deal with other people and … well, it’s not at all unusual for me to walk out of here, picking up five, ten, or perhaps fifteen thousand dollars in cash and contacting one of our brokers who will have a shipment of curios that we feel we can dispose of at a profit—Mexican figurines, carved ivories, or good jade.

  “We know that the broker is only a middleman, and, of course, he is making a profit on the deal. We try to see that his profit is not exorbitant, but, on the other hand, we want him to make a fair profit because in this business everyone has to make a fair profit. … Well, you can understand how it is.”

  “I see,” Mason said.

  Homer Gage did not offer to shake hands. He stood somewhat aloof and dignified.

  Franklin Gage held the door open for Mason. “Thank you again for coming in, Mr. Mason. It’s nice that you felt free to come and explain the situation to us. I feel that it can be worked out. Good day, Mr. Mason.”

  “Good day,” Mason said.

  The lawyer walked across the office and, on his way out, paused momentarily at the counter to look at a piece of the carved ivory which claimed his attention. A small slip of folded paper had been placed by the carved ivory figure. The slip of paper had Mason’s name typed on it.

  Mason leaned forward to study the figure more closely. As he did so his right hand unostentatiously closed over the paper. When he straightened he placed the folded paper in the right-hand side pocket of his coat.

  Mason went through the gate to the outer display room and paused again to look at some of the figurines in the outer cases.

  “They’re really very beautiful,” the girl at the switchboard said, smiling at him.

  “Indeed they are,” Mason said. “They grow on you.”

  The lawyer left the office, walked out to the corridor, and halfway to the elevator removed the small piece of paper from his pocket. A typewritten message was in his hand when he unfolded the paper.

  The message read:

  Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes. Diana is on the level and tops. There are things going on here that they don’t want you to know about. Be sure to protect Diana.

  The message was unsigned.

  Mason folded the typewritten slip of paper, put it back into his pocket, went to his hotel, and checked out.

  11

  ON MONDAY morning Mason fitted a key in the lock of his private office and swung back the door.

  “Well, hello, stranger!” Della Street said.

  Mason smiled. “It isn’t that bad!”

  “Pretty close to it, what with running up and down to San Francisco and working with detectives. What do you know?”

  “Not a darn thing,” Mason said, “except that this Diana Douglas is a problem. I feel like throwing her out.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Well,” Mason said, “I have a professional obligation.”

  “She’s lied to you all the way along the line,” Della Street said. “And when she hasn’t been lying, she’s tried to conceal things.”

  “I know,” Mason said, “but the poor kid certainly was all wrapped up in her brother.”

  “The one that had the automobile accident?”

  “He died early Friday morning,” Mason said. “I guess the funeral is this morning. I told Diana to take some sleeping pills Friday; to go to sleep and forget the whole mess.”

  “And you went to see the Escobar Import and Export Company?”

  “I met a couple of very interesting men,” Mason said. “I’d like to know something about the inside operation of that company. I met Homer Gage and Franklin Gage and there you have a couple of real characters.”

  “Smooth?”

  “Puzzling. … Homer Gage has to control himself with an effort every once in a while. Franklin Gage is synthetically suave. He gives you the impression of having tried all of his life to keep from showing his real feelings. When he shakes hands with you you feel there’s a cushion of flesh on his hand, a sort of sponge-rubber insulation that he uses to keep any magnetic current from penetrating.”

  “From him to you?” Della asked.

  Mason thought for a moment, then smiled and said, “Both ways. … We’re getting into a deep subject, Della, but somehow when you shake hands with a man you can tell a lot about him from his grip. There’s a certain magnetic something you can feel.”

  “I know,” she said. “Some hands are firm and sincere and others are—well, sort of evasive; it’s hard to describe.”

  Mason was thoughtful. “Shaking hands is a peculiar custom. It consists in clasping a part of two bodies together so that a vibration or magnetism or whatever you want to call it is exchanged from one to the other. … Well, we’d better go to work.”

  Della Street shook her head. “You had two appointments for this morning, and when I didn’t hear from you Friday afternoon I canceled them.”

  “I should have let you know,” Mason said, “but I got up there and had this session with the Escobar Import and Export Company and I had a peculiar experience.”

  “What?”

  “One of the stenographers left this note with my name on it beside a piece of carved ivory I had been looking at.”

  “Oh, oh,” Della Street said. “So that’s why you stayed over in San Francisco Friday night!”

  Mason grinned. “It wasn’t that kind of a note. Take a look.”

  The lawyer took the note from his notebook. Della Street looked at it, said, “I think it was done on an electric typewriter. Did you notice which of the secretaries had electric typewriters?”

  “I didn’t,” Mason said. “I was noticing the decorations in the office—figurines, carved ivories, jade. They must have had half a million dollars’ worth of stuff on display.”

  “Did they offer you anything at a discount?”

  “Wholesale only,” Mason said thoughtfully. “I’d like to know something about who their customers are and I’d like to know a lot more about where they get their stuff. … You say you canceled all my appointments for this morning?”

  “That’s right. They weren’t important, and I rang up Friday afternoon and canceled.”

  Mason said, “After I got out of the Import and Export Company I went out to Fisherman’s Wharf and had a good crab lunch—or I guess you’d call it dinner—and then went down to the airport. … Friday afternoon at a San Francisco airport. I was lucky to get home at all. I didn’t get in until five-fifteen and then I didn’t want to bother you. … I’m going down to Paul Drake’s office and see if our stakeout has heard anything.”

  “Our stakeout?”

  “Stella Grimes,” Mason said, “the operative who’s registered under the name of Diana Deering at the Willatson Hotel. Somehow I have an idea we may be a bit behind on developments.

  “For your information Franklin Gage seemed to adopt a rather casual attitude toward a shortage of twenty thousand dollars. Actually it was only ten thousand, because Franklin had taken out ten thousand to use in a business deal that he hadn’t consummated, and he had put the money back when he came in the office Friday morning.”

  “But he reported what he had done?”

  “Yes, as soon as his nephew told him there was a shortage.”

  “Well, that was opportune,” Della Street said.

  Mason nodded. “The way they keep their cash is certainly cool and casual. I have an idea that Franklin Gage would a lot rather absorb a reasonable loss than have the matter come into court where he would be cross-examined about the reason they keep such a large amount of cash on hand and what they do with it. … There could be an income-tax angle there, too … and I’m willing to bet there’s a lot of customs regulations that are being by-passed.”

  “You think they’re smuggling?”

  “I think people with whom they deal are smuggling, and there’s an atmosphere of complete irregularity about the whole thing. … Some of those art objects they have on display are really beautiful. … I’m going down and have a chat with Paul Drake for a minute, Della. I think he’s in this morning. Then I’ll come back and get my nose ready for the grindstone.”

  “You have three rather important appointments this afternoon,” she reminded him.

  “Okay,” Mason said, “I’ll take a quick look; then back to the salt mines. … I guess Edgar Douglas’ funeral is this morning. After that we may hear from Diana. And then again we may never hear from her again. I have an idea our Franklin Gage will be at the funeral, and he may tell Diana the whole embezzlement idea was a false alarm.

  “Diana certainly looked a wreck. She had taken a plane up from Los Angeles, gone to the hospital, was with her brother when he died about three o’clock in the morning; then had to make funeral arrangements and meet me at the Escobar Import and Export Company at ten-thirty and—say, wait a minute, I told her to get a cashier’s check. She had it for me.”

  Mason took the leather wallet from his inside coat pocket, pulled out several papers, and said, “Well, here it is. A cashier’s check made by the Farmers’ Financial Bank of San Francisco to Diana Douglas as trustee in an amount of five thousand dollars. She may have cut corners with us, Della, but she followed instructions on that check at a time when her heart must have been torn to ribbons. She was really fond of that brother of hers. I guess she’s sort of been a mother to him as well as a sister. … If anything turns up in the next ten minutes, I’ll be down at Paul Drake’s office.”

  “No hurry,” Della Street said. “I’ll call if there’s anything important.”

  Mason walked down the corridor to the offices of the Drake Detective Agency, said hello to the girl at the switchboard, and jerked his thumb in the direction of Paul Drake’s office.

  She smiled in recognition, nodded, and said, “He’s in. He’s on the phone at the moment. Go on down.”

  Mason opened the spring-locked gate in the partition which divided the waiting room from the offices and walked down the long corridor, flagged by little offices in which Drake’s operatives made out their reports, until he came to Drake’s office.

  Paul Drake was sitting in his little cubbyhole behind a desk on which were several telephones. He was just completing a telephone conversation when Mason opened the door.

  The detective indicated a chair and said, “Hi, Perry. This is intended as a place of command from which to direct multitudinous activities, not as a place of consultation.”

  Mason settled himself in the chair. “What have you got on those phones—a hot line to police headquarters?”

  “Darned near,” Drake said. “We handle a lot of the stuff at the switchboard, but on delicate assignments when we have cars cruising with telephones in them, there are lots of times when there just isn’t time to go through a switchboard. I give the operatives an unlisted number. They can call me direct and be absolutely certain that they’re going to get me here.”

  “But suppose you’re not here?” Mason asked.

  “Then there’s a signal on the switchboard and the switchboard can pick it up, but I’m usually here. When you run a job like this you have to sit on top of it, and that’s particularly true with men who are cruising with cars that have telephones. … What’s on your mind, Perry?”

  “This thirty-six-twenty-four-thirty-six case,” Mason said. “Diana Douglas is the sort of girl who will go to a doctor to get medicine for the flu; then go home, take the advice of the janitor, take two aspirins with a hot lemonade, and throw out the doctor’s medicine. Then a friend will drop in who’ll tell her that what she needs is a lot of vitamin C and whiskey; so she’ll take five hundred units of vitamin C and a hot toddy. Then somebody will tell her she needs hot tea and quinine and she’ll take that. Then when the doctor comes to see how she’s getting along she’ll push the whiskey bottle and the teapot under the bed so he won’t know she’s taken anything on her own and say, ‘Doctor, I feel terrible!’ ”

  Drake grinned. “You’re just describing human nature, Perry. What’s she done now?”

  “Nothing,” Mason said. “She was very, very much attached to her brother who was in that automobile accident. He passed away early Friday morning. But up to that point our little Miss Douglas did all kinds of things, or rather didn’t do all kinds of things. She was supposed to go up to San Francisco with me on the plane, but she didn’t make it. She said she had a feeling that someone was following her.

  “Ordinarily I’d have accepted that as the gospel truth, but in view of her record I’m inclined to doubt it. Anyway, Paul, we’d better get our double out of the Willatson Hotel, and then we’ll sit tight on the case for a while.”