“Did you know him?” Mason asked.

  “No,” the banker said. “I don’t remember ever having seen him.”

  Mason said, “Think back, Mr. Marquad. I think you saw him last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “My records,” Mason said, “show that Mr. Cullens went to The Golden Platter shortly before he was murdered.”

  The banker stiffened and said, “The Golden Platter? To what do you refer, Mr. Mason?”

  Mason said, “A restaurant and gambling joint on East Third Street.”

  “I don’t think we carry their account,” Marquad observed haughtily.

  Mason slightly squared his shoulders, pushed forward his jaw and said, “I’m not asking you about an account. I’m asking you if you weren’t at The Golden Platter last night.”

  “Me?” the banker said, in indignant surprise. “At a resort of that nature? Surely, Mr. Mason …”

  Mason glanced a sidelong interrogation at Paul Drake. The detective nodded. Mason said, “All right, Mr. Marquad, if you want it straight from the shoulder, I’ll dish it out. You were there with a cute little blonde trick.”

  Marquad said with dignity, “Mr. Mason, I’m going to ask you to excuse me. This is indeed most insulting. There’s an officer on duty over there.”

  Drake took a notebook from his pocket and said, “You left at eleven forty-five, Mr. Marquad. You drove the jane to her apartment at ninety-three sixty-two Phyllis Avenue. You parked the car and went up with her. She has apartment number nine hundred six under the name of Ruby Benjamin. You turned the lights on and pulled the shades down. At two forty-five A.M. you came out and …”

  The banker looked around him in alarm, lowered his voice and said, “Hush! Please, gentlemen, hush!”

  “All right,” Mason said, “what’s the answer?”

  The banker moistened his lips with the tip of a nervous tongue. “What is this,” he asked, “blackmail?”

  “No,” Mason said, “this isn’t blackmail. I’m trying to find out whether this man was at The Golden Platter some time around seven or eight o’lock in the evening. I think you would have seen him there. Now, think back and see what you can remember.”

  “Do you mean to say that you want to call me as a witness to what occurred in that place?” Marquad asked.

  Mason said, “If you give me the information I want, that’ll probably be all that’s necessary. If you don’t give me the information I want, I’m going to subpoena you, put you on the witness stand, prove that you were there, and ask you what you saw.”

  “You can’t do that,” Marquad said.

  Mason pulled a folded paper from his pocket and said, “The hell I can’t. I’ll subpoena you right now.”

  Marquad made as though to push the paper back. “No, no, Mr. Mason,” he said. “Please, please. Can’t you understand? This place is open to the public.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “did you see him there?”

  Marquad shifted his eyes and said, “There was a little commotion at the club. I don’t remember exactly what time it was. I was having a mild stimulant at the bar. A gentleman who answers this description had been in the inner office. There was the sound of rather loud conversation. After a moment, the bartender picked up something from behind the bar and stepped through the door into the office, but there was no trouble when the gentleman came out.”

  “Could you hear what was said?”

  “No. I could hear the tone in the voices, however.”

  “Was the meeting friendly or hostile?”

  “Decidedly hostile.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Were you there when we came in?” Mason asked. Marquad nodded. “How long were you there after that?”

  “Nearly an hour, I guess. My—er—the young woman who was with me, was alternating between the bar and the gambling table…. Now, gentlemen, I certainly trust there won’t be any publicity about this.”

  “Were you drinking?” Mason asked.

  “Very sparingly. The bartender can vouch for that, Mr. Mason. I don’t think I had over three drinks during the entire evening.”

  “All right,” Mason said. “What’s your contact with the place? How did you get in there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t ordinarily go around to gambling joints, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Were you paying cash for your drinks?”

  “Well—er—I—er, that is, I was, in a sense, the guest of the management. They’d asked me to drop in several times.”

  “Bill Golding?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He banks here?”

  “Yes, I …”

  “How well do you know him?” Mason interrupted.

  “I have talked with him frequently.”

  “You know the woman who lives with him?”

  “You mean his wife?”

  “We’ll let it go at that,” Mason said.

  “I’ve met her, yes.”

  “Now, then, did you have any talk with either of them after Cullens left?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “Only when they went out.”

  Mason’s eyes narrowed slightly. “When did they go out?” he asked.

  “I don’t know just when it was, some time after Cullens left, and before you came in.”

  “Did you see them come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long would you say they were gone?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Mason, I’m sure.”

  “Could it have been as much as half an hour?”

  “It could have been, yes. I didn’t pay very much attention…. I … well, I was just as glad they didn’t come over and speak to me. That is, the young lady who was with me …”

  “I understand,” Mason said. “Now, you noticed Mr. Drake and me when we came in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bill Golding and his wife had returned prior to that time. Do you know how long before?”

  “It was some little time,” Marquad said, “but I can’t tell you how long.”

  “And how long was it after Cullens went out that Golding went out?”

  “Well … Oh, say from fifteen minutes to half an hour. We were at the bar when Cullens came in, and we were eating dinner when Golding and his wife went out. As I remember it, we had finished dinner when they returned.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “that’s all. I just wanted to check up.”

  “You won’t make my statement public in any way, Mr. Mason?”

  “Not unless I have to,” Mason told him, “and I don’t think I’ll have to. I’m just checking up, that’s all. Come on, Paul.”

  They walked out of the bank, leaving Marquad standing at the counter, his eyes watching them with ill-concealed anxiety. Mason turned to Drake and said, “Check up on Bill Golding’s car, Paul. There was a blue sedan parked at the curb just before Mrs. Breel stepped out into the street. You know, there’s just a chance Bill Golding might be driving a blue sedan. I believe Diggers said the left rear fender was damaged.”

  Drake said, “That should be easy, Perry. I’ll get at it right away. Want me to telephone the office?”

  “Not now,” Mason said. “It’ll keep until you get back.”

  “What’s next on the program?”

  “Ione Bedford,” Mason said.

  “You don’t want to wait until Pete Chennery shows up?”

  “No,” Mason said, “we haven’t time to wait for anything. I want to get to her before the police do.”

  “Hold everything,” Drake said. “Here we go.”

  It was Drake’s theory that a detective car should be so completely average in appearance that an observer would find nothing sufficiently distinctive about it to attract attention on the one hand, or encourage memory on the other. Mason, sitting back against the cushions of the medium-priced, lightweight car two years old, watched Paul Drake cut through traffic and cheerfully take chances with fenders which had nothing to lose by an occasional lapse of judgment on the part of the driver.

  “If,” Mason said musingly, “Austin Cullens got the diamonds from Bill Golding, why didn’t he notify Ione Bedford? If those were the Bedford diamonds, why did Mrs. Bedford deny they were hers? If they weren’t the Bedford diamonds, where did they come from? If Bill Golding had the stones in the first place, why did he deny having them when we talked with him?

  “If, on the other hand, Cullens got the stones from some other source and not from The Golden Platter, how did he discover that other source. Approximately two hours before his death, he was evidently firmly imbued with the idea that Bill Golding had the stones, was holding them for six thousand, but could be forced to part with them on the payment of three thousand.”

  “In other words,” Drake said, “it’s like making out an income tax statement. Every time you add up the figures, you get the wrong answer.”

  “I didn’t know the income tax department bothered with detective agencies,” Mason said, grinning.

  “They don’t. Detective agencies bother with the income tax department.”

  Mason lapsed once more into thoughtful silence. Drake swung his car into a parking place at the curb and said, “Well, Perry, get your ambush planted, because we’re here.”

  Mason said, “I’m not going to plant any ambush. I’m going to play it straight from the shoulder.”

  “Do you think that will get you anywhere?” Drake asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mason told him, “but somehow I figure her as a pretty straight-from-the-shoulder young woman.”

  “Remember,” Drake warned, “that no matter what good points she may have, she’s definitely living a double life.”

  “I know,” Mason told him, and slid out from the seat, to stand on the sidewalk. “Is that your man in the roadster across the street, Paul?”

  Drake nodded. The man in the roadster touched the brim of his hat, lit a cigarette, shook out the match and settled back in the seat as though waiting for someone to join him. Drake interpreted the signals to Perry Mason. “The girl’s in there. The man hasn’t showed up yet.”

  Mason said, “All right, let’s go,” and led the way into the foyer of the apartment house. They took the elevator to the third floor. Mason tapped on the apartment door and said in a low voice to Paul Drake, “She doesn’t know your voice. If she opens the door, we walk in. If she asks questions, tell her you have a package and a telegram.”

  Drake nodded. Ione Bedford’s voice from behind the door called out, “Who is it, please?”

  “Telegram and a package for Mrs. Chennery,” Drake said.

  She opened the door at once. Mason, stepping slightly to one side, placed the palm of his hand between Drake’s shoulder blades and pushed him forward, so that her eyes focused on Drake first. “Well,” she said impatiently, “where’s the telegram and package? You can’t come in …”

  Mason pushed Drake slightly to the left while he moved to the right, pushing the door farther open. She swung to face the detective, apparently oblivious of the fact that another man was with him, until Mason had pushed the door completely open and was circling past her left arm. She turned to face him then, with an expression of annoyance, and her face froze into a mask of consternation. Mason, moving back, retrieved the edge of the door and swung it shut, calmly walked over to a chair and seated himself.

  “What is this?” Ione Bedford demanded.

  Mason said, “Drake’s a detective, Mrs. Bedford.”

  “Chennery,” she corrected.

  “All right,” he said, grinning, “he’s still a detective, Mrs. Chennery.”

  Drake, watching Perry Mason for a signal, moved cautiously over to the arm of a davenport and sat down, taking care to keep himself between Mrs. Bedford and the door. She stood for a moment, nonplused, then abruptly laughed and said, “You’re bluffing. He isn’t a detective.”

  “What makes you think he isn’t?” Mason asked, selecting a cigarette from his case.

  “He’s taken off his hat,” she said. “Detectives don’t take off their hats.”

  Mason grinned, and offered her a cigarette. She took it, and leaned forward for Mason’s match. Her trembling manifested itself through the tips of her fingers as they guided the lawyer’s hand against the match. “You,” Mason charged, “have been to too many picture shows.”

  “No,” she said, “I’ve seen too many detectives.”

  “Criminal record?” Mason asked.

  “No,” she said shortly.

  “Sit down,” Mason told her, “and tell me about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I think there is.”

  “Tell you about what?” she asked defiantly. “If you want to know, I’m really and truly Pete Chennery’s wife. We’re legally married.”

  “That,” Mason said, “makes it more conventional, even if less romantic.”

  “Are you,” she asked, “going to keep on with that casual wisecracking until you’ve drawn me out?”

  “I think so,” Mason said. “I don’t know of any better way, do you?”

  She settled back in a chair, crossed her knees, and said, “Where do you want me to begin?”

  “At the beginning.”

  “Pete and I,” she said, “had a fight.”

  “Much of a fight?” Mason asked.

  “Quite a little squabble,” she admitted.

  “Over what?”

  “Two blondes and a red-head.”

  “That,” Mason told her, “should be grounds for a pretty good-sized battle.”

  “It was.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I left him.”

  “And then?”

  “Met Aussie,” she said.

  “With ideas in your head that you’d like to make your husband realize cheating was a game two could play at?”

  She shook her head, started to say something, then caught herself, and was silent. “Don’t kid me,” Mason told her, “because you don’t need to.”

  “How about your friend?” she asked, with a jerk of her head toward Drake.

  “Like a dime bank,” Mason told her. “Things go in easy, but you have to break him to get them out.”

  She studied the tips of her fingernails for a moment, then said, “All right, you win.”

  “What,” Mason asked, after a moment, “have I won?”

  She said, “Aussie was on a boat I took. I fell for him.”

  “Hard?” Mason asked.

  “So-so,” she admitted.

  “And then what?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Everything.”

  “Well,” she said after a moment, “Aussie had a way about him. He’d been places and done things. He had a genial way of taking life as a big adventure. It was all a game to him. I’d taken the cruise with a feeling of tragic frustration in my heart, a sense of tension, a feeling that I’d been wronged, that love was a mess, and marriage a mockery. I …”

  “I don’t want all that,” Mason told her. “I’ve seen you and I’ve seen Cullens. I’ve seen the bitter side of married life as a lawyer sees it. You don’t need to give me all that.”

  “What do I need to give you?”

  “The gems.”

  “Oh, those,” she said.

  Mason smoked in silence. Then, after a moment, as she continued to study the tinted tips of her fingers with downcast eyes, Mason said, again, “Those.”

  She raised her eyes to his. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know much about those myself.”

  “Just what?” Mason asked.

  “Of course,” she said, by way of explanation, “I wasn’t overly burdened with money. I had a little savings account. I ripped it wide open when I left Pete, to go out in the world and seek my fortune. I could have gone out and tried to get a job. Pete would have followed me then and begged me to forgive him. In the end, I’d have either had to give up my job and go back, in which event he’d have been the winner, or I’d have had to stay with the job and give up Pete, in which event I’d have been the loser.”

  “You didn’t really intend to give him up, then?” Mason asked.

  She said scornfully, “I thought you knew all about domestic tiffs.”

  Mason grinned and said, “Go ahead.”

  “So,” she said, “I decided to buy myself some sport clothes, take along my best formals and cocktail gowns, go on a cruise, and leave Pete to do the guessing.”

  “And, of course,” Mason said, “you wanted him to know that you were enjoying yourself on the cruise.”

  She smiled and said, “I sent him a picture postcard from Cartagena.”

  “Anything else?” Mason asked.

  “The steamship company,” she said, “put out a folder dealing with the romantic possibilities of the cruise—moonlight on the placid waters of the Caribbean, gay bathing parties under the slanting cocoanut palms, pleasant evenings, beginning with dances in the dance pavillion, and winding up as couples sauntered out into the moonlight to look at the churned wake of the boat, while tropical breezes bathed them in a gentle caress. I simply gave my husband’s name as a possible customer, and suggested that they mail him folders.

  “So, after having the folders on the one hand, and your postal on the other, he could draw his own conclusions, is that right?” Mason asked.

  She nodded. “Go ahead,” Mason said.

  “Well, naturally, I thought he’d be waiting at the gangplank when I returned. But, a day or two out of port, I realized that I’d been foolish. Pete would never do anything like that. He’s proud and haughty, and Southern.”

  “With quite a temper?” Mason asked.

  “Lots of it.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what?” Mason inquired.

  “Well,” she said, “I’d gone so far I couldn’t surrender. I was going to be pretty short of cash when I landed. Having started out to play the game the way I did, I couldn’t possibly go to work, even if I could get a job. That would be a terrific come-down.”

  “So what did you do?” Mason asked.

  “I think Aussie sized up the situation pretty well,” she said. “Aussie was a shrewd judge of character. He’d done quite a bit of traveling and … well, he knew women.”