“That’s the worst of circumstantial evidence. The prosecuting attorney has at his command all the facilities of organized investigation. He uncovers facts. He selects only those which, in his opinion, are significant. Once he’s come to the conclusion the defendant is guilty, the only facts he considers significant are those which point to the guilt of the defendant. That’s why circumstantial evidence is such a liar. Facts themselves are meaningless. It’s only the interpretation we give those facts which counts.”

  “We’ve had some significant facts develop out at the house,” Waid said, glancing across at Charles Sabin. “Did you intend to tell Mr. Mason about Mrs. Sabin and Steve?”

  Sabin said, “Thank you, Richard, for calling it to my attention. After you left last night, Mr. Mason, Steve Watkins and his mother were in the mother’s room in deep consultation. They left the house about midnight and haven’t returned since. They didn’t leave any word where they were going, and we haven’t been able to locate them. The coroner at San Molinas had called an inquest for eight o’clock this evening, and the funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at two o’clock. Having Mrs. Sabin missing is, of course, embarrassing to the family. I consider her departure evidence of shocking bad taste.”

  Mason looked across at Waid. “Did you tell Sheriff Barnes and Sergeant Holcomb anything about this business you were transacting for Mr. Sabin in New York?”

  “No, I only told them what I considered entered into the case. On this other matter, I didn’t tell a soul until last night. Mrs. Sabin had browbeaten me into silence.”

  “You told the sheriff about receiving a telephone call from Mr. Sabin at ten o’clock at night?”

  “Yes, of course. I felt that entered into the case and wasn’t betraying any confidence.”

  “Did Mr. Sabin seem in good spirits when you talked with him?”

  “In excellent spirits. I don’t think I’ve ever heard his voice sound happier. Looking back on it now, of course, I can understand. He’d just received word that Mrs. Sabin was going to get the divorce decree the next day, and that gave him the chance to remarry Miss Monteith. Mrs. Sabin had evidently telephoned him and told him that the divorce was going through.”

  “Did you know that he was spending some time in San Molinas?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, I did,” Waid admitted. “I knew he was there quite a bit of the time. He telephoned to me several times from San Molinas.”

  “I knew that also,” Charles Sabin interposed. “I didn’t know what he was doing there, but Dad was peculiar that way. You know, he’d go into a community, completely lose his identity, take an assumed name, and just mingle with people.”

  “Have you any idea why he did it?” Mason asked. “That is, was he after anything in particular?”

  “As to that, I couldn’t say,” Charles Sabin said. “Of course, in considering father’s character, you must take into consideration certain things. He’d been a highly successful business man, as we judge standards of success; that is, he had amassed a comfortable fortune. He had nothing to gain by adding to his material wealth. I think he was, therefore, thoroughly ripe for some new suggestion. It happened to come through Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur lived somewhere in Kansas—at least he did two or three years ago, when father visited him; and I know that his philosophies made a profound impression on Dad. After Dad returned, he said that we were all too greedy; that we worshiped the dollar as the goal of our success; that it was a false goal; that man should concentrate more on trying to develop his character.

  “You might be interested in his economic philosophy, Mr. Mason. He believed men attached too much importance to money as such. He believed a dollar represented a token of work performed, that men were given these tokens to hold until they needed the product of work performed by some other man, that anyone who tried to get a token without giving his best work in return was an economic counterfeiter. He felt that most of our depression troubles had been caused by a universal desire to get as many tokens as possible in return for as little work as possible—that too many men were trying to get lots of tokens without doing any work. He said men should cease to think in terms of tokens and think, instead, only in terms of work performed as conscientiously as possible.”

  “Just how did he figure the depression was caused, in terms of tokens?” Mason asked, interested.

  “By greed,” Sabin said. “Everyone was gambling, trying to get tokens without work. Then afterward, when tokens ceased to represent honest work, men hated to part with them. A man who had performed slipshod work in return for a token hated to part with that token in exchange for the products of slipshod labor on the part of another laborer. In other words, the token itself came to mean more than what it could be exchanged for—or people thought it did, because too many people had become economic counterfeiters.”

  “That’s interesting,” Mason said. “By the way, how many people lived in the house?”

  “Only two of us, Mr. Waid and I.”

  “Servants?”

  “One housekeeper is all. After Mrs. Sabin left for her world tour, we closed up virtually all the house, and let the servants go. I didn’t realize why that was done at the time, but, of course, I understand now that Dad knew Helen Watkins Sabin wouldn’t return, and was intending to close up the house.”

  “And the parrot?” Mason asked. “Did your father take the parrot with him on his trips?”

  “Most of the time the parrot was with Dad. There were times when he left it home—with Mrs. Sabin, mostly. Incidentally, Mrs. Sabin was very much attached to the parrot.”

  Mason turned to Waid. “Did Steve have any motive for murder, any hatred of Mr. Sabin?”

  “Steve himself couldn’t have murdered Mr. Sabin,” Waid said positively. “I know that Mr. Sabin was alive at ten o’clock Monday night, the fifth of September. Steve and I left for New York right after I’d received that telephone call. We didn’t arrive in New York until late Tuesday afternoon. You see, there’s a four-hour time difference, what with the difference in sun time and the additional hour of daylight saving time.”

  Mason said, “The certified decree of divorce, which Mrs. Sabin handed you in New York, was a forgery.”

  “Was what?” Waid exclaimed, startled.

  “A forgery,” Mason repeated.

  “Look here, Mr. Mason, that decree was passed on by Mr. Sabin’s New York attorneys.”

  “It was perfectly legal in form,” Mason admitted. “In fact, it was all worked out to the last detail, even the name of the clerk and the deputy. A very clever forgery—but nevertheless the document was forged.”

  “How did you find that out?” Sabin asked, highly excited.

  Mason said, “I made it my business to investigate the court records. I gave a photostatic copy of the decree to a detective who flew to Reno. The case was purportedly a default matter, and handled in a routine manner. Much to my surprise, when I investigated, I found that there were no court records of any divorce.”

  “Good heavens,” Charles Sabin said, “what did she expect to gain by that? She must have known she’d be discovered.”

  “On the other hand,” Mason said, “under ordinary circumstances, no one would ever look back at a certified copy of a divorce decree. It would have been rather a safe forgery.”

  “But why did she want to rely on a forged document?” Sabin asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mason told him. “There are several guesses. One of them is that there’s some question as to the validity of her marriage to your father.”

  “But why should that have kept her from filing suit for divorce?” Waid asked.

  “Because,” Mason said, “regardless of the optimistic ideas of Fremont C. Sabin, there was bound to have been publicity. Newspapers keep highly trained investigators stationed at Reno for the purpose of scrutinizing divorce actions. They’re particularly anxious to find out if any of the movie celebrities slip over to Reno for the purpose of getting a divorce under their true names, and without disclosing their Hollywood identities. Now if, perhaps, Helen Watkins Sabin had another husband living, from whom she’d never been divorced … well, she wouldn’t have dared to risk the publicity. There was a hundred thousand dollars at stake—and that’s a considerable stake.”

  Sabin said, “If there’s anything illegal about that first marriage, then how about the marriage ceremony my father went through with Helen Monteith in Mexico?”

  “Now,” Mason said, with a grin, “you’re getting into the real legal problem.”

  “What’s the answer?” Sabin asked.

  “That,” Mason told him, “depends very much on what we can find out by examining Helen Watkins Sabin on the witness stand. Suppose, Mr. Sabin, you attend the inquest at San Molinas tonight. I think the sheriff will be broadminded enough to see that a complete investigation is made. Some interesting facts should be uncovered.”

  The telephone on Mason’s unlisted private wire buzzed sharply. Mason picked up the receiver to hear Paul Drake’s voice saying, “Are you busy right now, Perry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone there in connection with this case?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think,” Drake said, “you’d better arrange to meet me outside the office.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mason said. “The clients who are in the office are just finishing up their business. I’ll see you in just a moment or two.”

  He hung up the telephone and extended his hand to Sabin. “I’m glad to learn about that will,” he said.

  “And you’ll let us know if anything new … well, if you … I mean if you hear anything about Helen Watkins Sabin, let me know what she’s doing, will you?”

  “She’s probably keeping under cover,” Mason told him, “until she can find out what’s going to be done about that forged decree of divorce.”

  “Not that woman,” Charles Sabin said. “You’ll never get her on the defensive. She’s busy somewhere right now, stirring up a whole mess of trouble for us.”

  Mason ushered them out through the exit door. “Well,” he said, with a smile, “at least she’s energetic.”

  As his visitors turned the corner in the corridor, Mason stood in the door, waiting for Drake. The detective appeared within a matter of seconds. “Coast clear?” he asked.

  “The coast is clear,” Mason told him, ushering him into the room. “I’ve just had a session with Charles Sabin and Richard Waid, the secretary. What do you know, Paul?”

  “You wanted the long distance telephone calls which had been put in from the cabin,” Drake said. “Well, I’ve had men breaking down numbers into names. Here’s what we find. The last call of which there’s any record came through on the afternoon of Monday the fifth at about four o’clock. Now as I understand it, the secretary says that when Sabin called him at ten o’clock, he reported the telephone at the cabin was out of order. Is that right?”

  Mason nodded.

  “Well,” Drake said, “if the telephone was out of order, Sabin couldn’t put in any calls and couldn’t send out any calls. Do you get what I mean?”

  “No, I don’t,” Mason told him. “Go on and spill it.”

  “Well,” Drake said. “Something happened to cause Sabin to send Waid to New York. We don’t know what that something was. We don’t know where the pay station was that Sabin telephoned from, but in all probability it was the nearest one to the cabin. We can tell more when we check up on calls; but suppose that it was twenty minutes or half an hour away from the cabin.”

  “What are you getting at?” Mason asked.

  “Simply this,” Drake said. “If the telephone was out of order from four o’clock on, and Sabin telephoned Waid to go to New York, Sabin must have received some information between the hours of four o’clock in the afternoon and probably nine-thirty at night which convinced him that Mrs. Sabin would be in New York on the evening of Wednesday the seventh to surrender a certified copy of the divorce decree and pick up the money.

  “Now then how did he get that information? If the telephone was out of order, he couldn’t have received it over the telephone. He evidently didn’t have it at four o’clock. In other words, Perry, that information must have been obtained from someone who came to the cabin.”

  “Or sent Sabin a message,” Mason said. “That’s a good point, Paul. Of course, we don’t know that the telephone went out of commission immediately after four o’clock.”

  “No,” Drake said. “We don’t, but on the other hand it’s hardly probable that the telephone would have been in commission when Sabin received word that the divorce was going through all right and then gone out of commission as soon as he tried to telephone the news to Waid—which would have been immediately afterwards.”

  “You forget,” Mason pointed out, his eyes narrowing into thoughtful slits, “that the telephone line was tapped.”

  “By George, I do at that!” Drake exclaimed.

  “Anything may happen on a tapped line,” Mason said. “The wire-tappers could have thrown the telephone out of commission at a moment’s notice, and may have done so.”

  “What would have been their object?” Drake asked.

  “That,” Mason said, “remains to be discovered.”

  “Well,” Drake told him, “I thought you might be particularly interested in that four o’clock call because of what had happened.”

  “I am,” Mason said. “Whom was it to?”

  “To Randolph Bolding, the examiner of questioned documents.”

  Mason frowned. “Why the devil did Sabin want to ring up a handwriting expert?” he asked.

  “You don’t suppose he’d had a look at that certified decree of divorce and figured it was a forgery?” Drake asked.

  “No,” Mason said. “The decree wasn’t dated until the sixth. If he’d seen it on the fifth, he’d have known it was a forgery.”

  “That’s right,” Drake admitted.

  “Have you talked with Bolding?” Mason asked.

  “One of my operatives did,” Drake said, grinning, “and Bolding threw him out on his ear. Said that anything which had transpired between him and Sabin was a professional confidence. So I thought perhaps you’d better go down there, Perry, and talk him into being a good dog.”

  Mason reached for his hat. “On my way,” he said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  RANDOLPH BOLDING had carefully cultivated an expression of what Mason had once described to a jury as “synthetic, professional gravity.” His every move was calculated to impress any audience he might have with the fact that he was one of the leading exponents of an exact science.

  He bowed from the hips. “How do you do, Mr. Mason,” he said.

  Mason walked on into the private office and sat down. Bolding carefully closed the door, seated himself behind the huge desk, smoothed down his vest, mechanically adjusted papers on the blotter, giving his visitor an opportunity to look at the enlarged photomicros of questioned signatures which adorned the walls.

  Mason said abruptly, “You were doing some work for Fremont C. Sabin, Bolding?”

  Bolding raised his eyes. They were bulging, moist eyes which held no expression. “I prefer not to answer that question.”

  “Why?”

  “My relations with my clients are professional secrets—just as yours are.”

  Mason said, “I’m representing Charles Sabin.”

  “That means nothing to me,” Bolding said.

  “As Fremont C. Sabin’s heir, Charles Sabin is entitled to any information you have.”

  “I think not.”

  “To whom will you communicate this information?”

  “To no one.”

  Mason crossed his long legs and settled back in the chair. “Charles Sabin,” he said, “wanted me to tell you that he thought your bill was too high.”

  The handwriting expert blinked his moist eyes several times in rapid succession. “But I haven’t submitted one yet,” he said.

  “I know; but Sabin thinks it’s too high.”

  “Well, what’s that got to do with it?”

  “Sabin,” Mason said, “will probably be the executor of the estate.”

  “But how can he say my bill is too high when he doesn’t know how much it is?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders. “That,” he said, “is something you’ll have to take up with Sabin. Of course, you know how it is, Bolding. If an executor approves the charge against the estate, it goes right through. If he doesn’t approve it, then you have to bring suit to establish your claim. In case you don’t know it, it’s a long way to Tipperary.”

  Bolding gazed down at the blotter on his desk for several thoughtful seconds.

  Mason stretched, yawned prodigiously, and said, “Well, I guess I’ll be going. I’ve got lots of work to do.”

  “Wait a minute,” Bolding said, as Mason rose to start toward the door. “That attitude isn’t fair.”

  “Probably not,” Mason agreed carelessly. “However, Sabin is my client and that’s what he says. You understand how it is dealing with clients, Bolding. We have to follow our client’s wishes and instructions.”

  “But it’s so manifestly unfair,” Bolding protested.

  “I don’t think it is,” Mason said.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Mason told him, “you aren’t submitting a bill to Fremont C. Sabin for anything you did for him personally, you’re submitting a bill to the estate for things which were done to conserve the property during Sabin’s lifetime … at least, I suppose that’s the theory of it.”

  “That’s the theory of it,” Bolding agreed.

  “Well,” Mason said, “you haven’t conserved anything.”

  Bolding flushed. “I can’t help it if a man dies before he carries out his plans.”

  “No,” Mason observed, “I daresay you can’t. However, that would seem to be your loss, not ours. You’ve lost a client.”

  “But under the law, I’m entitled to recover compensation for my services. A thousand dollars is a most reasonable charge.”