“Lead the way,” Tragg said.

  Mason punched the button.

  The electric buzzer released the catch on the door. Mason pushed it open, held it open for Lieutenant Tragg and Drake.

  “What’s the floor?” Tragg asked.

  “The second,” Drake said.

  “You’ve been up here before?”

  “No, I’ve had men on the job spotting the apartment.”

  “Shelby sweet on her?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How did he get here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. My hunch is he swam downstream, she picked him up in a rowboat, put him in her car and brought him here.”

  “Then there should be some evidence in the car. Wet clothes or something.”

  “Could be,” Mason said noncommittally. “Takes a police officer to get all the angles on a deal like this, Paul.”

  “We should make certain no one tampers with her car,” Tragg said.

  “My men are on the job all over the place,” Drake assured him.

  “Okay. You do the talking, Perry.”

  They left the elevator. Mason found the apartment and jabbed the button. The door was almost instantly opened by Ellen Cushing. She looked fresh and fit, ready for the street.

  “Oh, good morning, Mr. Mason,” she said. “You’re just the man I wanted to see.”

  “And I wanted to see you. This is Mr. Tragg and Mr. Drake. They’re associated with me in a matter on which I’m working.—I presume you heard about Mr. Shelby?”

  “Yes, I heard about it this morning,” she said. “I rang his office and a detective answered the phone. He wanted to know all about me and who I was, took my number. Tell me, what are the details, Mr. Mason?”

  Mason said, “He went out on a yachting trip with Parker Benton.”

  “Yes, I know. Weren’t you along?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He was going to try to make some settlement on that oil lease, I understand.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what happened?”

  “He apparently fell overboard.”

  “Was his wife along?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why did you ask?”

  She smiled and said nothing. “Please come in. Let’s sit down.”

  They entered the apartment. Tragg looked around in a swift survey. There was nothing to indicate that anyone else was in the place.

  “You have a two-room apartment?” Mason asked.

  “They call it a three-room, but the kitchen isn’t much more than a good sized closet. There’s a living room and bedroom and this kitchen.”

  Mason said, “It was most unfortunate that Mr. Shelby died just as he did. But he told us before he died that he was representing you, that you had an interest in the oil lease.”

  “Yes.”

  “He said a half interest.”

  She laughed and said, “That was a little window dressing we’d agreed on.”

  “Then that wasn’t true?”

  “It didn’t represent the entire facts. No.”

  “Then what did?”

  She said, “I own it all.”

  Mason flashed Lieutenant Tragg a quick glance, said, “Mr. Shelby said it was only a half interest.”

  “Yes. I wanted him to pose as the owner of at least a half interest because I thought he could carry on negotiations better than I could. You know how it is. A man can do things that way that a woman can’t. Mr. Shelby was very clever at that sort of thing.”

  “Known him long?” Mason asked.

  “About six months.”

  “This the only business deal you’d had with him?”

  She laughed and said, “Really, Mr. Mason, don’t you think your questions had better be confined more to the exact matter under discussion? I take it you’re interested in working out some sort of a settlement on that lease?”

  “I might be.”

  “Well, I’m open to propositions.”

  “Of course,” Mason said, “I had acted on the assumption that you only had a half interest. The fact that you have a whole interest might change the situation.”

  “Wouldn’t that make it less complicated?”

  “Yes.”

  “Therefore, you could make a better offer.”

  Mason smiled. “My client might or might not look at it that way. But, of course, there’s the question of proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “That you have the whole interest in the lease.”

  She said, “I can answer that very simply.”

  “It would have to be rather simple,” Mason said, “because in view of Mr. Shelby’s declaration that you owned only a half interest the administrator of his estate would naturally claim that that was the only interest you had, and under the law you can’t testify.”

  “I can’t?” she asked in some surprise.

  “No. It’s a general rule of law that when the lips of the one party are sealed by death the law seals the lips of the other party and he can’t testify to anything.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Mason said, “It would therefore take Mr. Shelby’s signature on some document to enable you to establish your claim.”

  “Oh, that’s very easy.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. I have his signature.”

  “Oh.”

  “So,” she said, “we can go right ahead discussing the compromise proposition.”

  Mason took a cigarette case from his pocket, selected a cigarette thoughtfully, tapped it on the edge of the cigarette case, said, “It might not be that simple. My client would naturally want to know something about that instrument by which all rights in the oil lease were assigned to you. Did his wife sign that transfer?”

  “What does she have to do with it?”

  “It was probably community property.”

  “No,” Ellen Cushing said with some feeling, “she didn’t sign it, and I don’t think we need her signature. Marion Shelby certainly didn’t enjoy her husband’s confidence in business matters—or in anything else.”

  “You know what?”

  She said, “Of course I know it.”

  “How?”

  “By keeping my eyes open and by little things that Scott let drop here and there. If you ask my opinion, I think she was the one who gave him the poison.”

  “That’s rather a broad statement to make,” Mason said.

  “Yes, I guess it is,” she amended hastily. “I didn’t mean it in exactly that way. But … Well, I just don’t like her. That’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think she’s a double-crosser. I think she was double-crossing Scott … But come, Mr. Mason, that doesn’t have anything to do with this oil lease.”

  “The point is,” Mason said, “that I’d want to see that assignment and pass on it. If it was an assignment made covering that one particular oil lease, the question would naturally arise why Scott Shelby said last night that he only owned a half interest in it and you owned the other half. If it was a blanket assignment providing that you should, after his death or in the event anything happened to him, be considered as owning everything … Well, that would be a gray horse of another color.”

  “What would be wrong with that?”

  “In the first place,” Mason said, “it would probably be invalid. In the second place, it would quite probably result in my client taking a radically different position.”

  “Well, there’s no need for us to beat around the bush,” she said. “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can tell you the whole story.”

  “What is it?”

  She said, “Scott Shelby actually never did own anything in that lease—that is, not for the last few months. He had decided to let the lease go by the board. I happened to be in his office and talking over oil propositions and he told me that he had a lease that I could have cheap if I wanted it. All I would have to do would be to pay up the back rentals and reinstate it, then I would have to pay a hundred dollars a month. He said it as sort of a joke.”

  “Go on,” Mason said. “What happened after that?”

  She looked at him defiantly and said, “What’s the use of lying to you, Mr. Mason?”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “All right. I’ll come clean. I’m in the real estate business. I happened to know that the island had been sold to Parker Benton and that the deal was in escrow. I didn’t tell Scott Shelby anything about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I didn’t think I had to. I didn’t think that was anyone’s business. After all, Mr. Shelby was in business and I was in business.”

  “Go on, what happened?”

  “I told him that I would be willing to take the lease up and pay him one hundred dollars for his rights in the lease. That he’d give me a blanket assignment of the lease and I’d pay him the one hundred dollars and then pay the owner of the property five hundred dollars in order to reinstate the lease.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me I could if I wanted to. He said that there had been some oil excitement, but that it had mostly died down.”

  Mason nodded.

  She said, “I’m putting all the cards on the table, Mr. Mason, because I want you and your friends to understand the situation.” She smiled at Lieutenant Tragg and Paul Drake, trying to turn on the magnetism. Drake smiled back. Tragg gave no faintest change of his facial expression.

  Mason said, “It begins to shape up. The way you tell it, it sounds a lot more convincing than as if you had simply relied on your naked assertion that ‘now that Scott Shelby was dead you controlled the entire property.’ ”

  She said, “I put up the money. Shelby agreed that he was to go ahead and handle it in his name but that he would simply act as my trustee, that anything that came from any settlement of the lease would be held by him in trust for me.”

  “Then what?”

  She said, “Then I hired a man to offer the five hundred dollars to Jane Keller. I coached him in what to do. Of course, I knew she couldn’t accept it. I wanted witnesses and I wanted her to take the money, at least to have it in her hands. So I arranged to have my man wait for her at the bank and catch her there. He had to wait for two days before she showed up.”

  “Why the bank?”

  “That’s where reputable people stand in line. That assured me of good substantial witnesses. What’s more, a person will accept money if you push it at her in a bank. Otherwise she might not have touched it.”

  “I see. You’re rather clever in your knowledge of applied psychology. That was very cleverly thought out.”

  “I try to get by.”

  “That offer was made in Scott Shelby’s name.”

  “Naturally, I wanted to keep in the background as much as I could. You see, I’m in the real estate business and … Well, a deal like this wouldn’t do my reputation any good but I thought there was a chance to clean up several thousand dollars on it. But it was chiseling. You know it and I know it. I’d have preferred to have Shelby out in front instead of me.”

  Mason said, “You’re being very frank with us.”

  “Because the way I size you up, I think it’s the best way.”

  “Go ahead. What happened after that?”

  She said, “You got in touch with Mr. Shelby on the telephone. He came rushing to me. By that time I had given him a general idea of what the situation was, and after you telephoned I had to really let my hair down and give him all the details.”

  “And then what?”

  She said, “Shelby got greedy. He thought he should get more money out of it. You were due to call on him within a few minutes. We didn’t have much time.”

  “So what finally happened?”

  “I agreed to pay him twenty-five per cent of anything I received by way of settlement as additional compensation for selling me the lease. I didn’t think he was justified in asking for it, but he thought that I had taken advantage of our friendship and … Well, that’s the way it was.”

  “He thought you had taken advantage of his friendship?” Mason asked.

  “Yes. We have offices in the same building. I’d been able to do him a good turn once or twice and he had thrown a couple of prospects my way. There had never been any great financial benefit one way or the other. Just a matter of—well, what you’d call neighborly accommodation—a lot of little things.”

  “Some of these little things made money?”

  “Some.”

  “No other dealings between you?” Mason asked.

  She started to answer, then looked sharply at him, and said, “After all, Mr. Mason, I’m trying to put my cards on the table, but that’s no reason why I should bare my life’s history.”

  Mason laughed. “You’re doing quite all right. I’m beginning to get the picture now. I presume that inasmuch as you know a sale was pending, you demanded that Shelby execute an assignment?”

  “An assignment and a declaration of trust providing that anything that he would do would be done on my behalf and for me.”

  “Who drew those documents up?”

  “I did.”

  “In writing or on a typewriter?”

  “On a typewriter.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Scott Shelby signed them and gave them to me.”

  “Let’s take a look at them.”

  She got up, started for the bedroom door then suddenly caught herself, whirled, said, “Perhaps, before I put any more of my cards on the table, Mr. Mason, it might be well to look at some of your cards.”

  Mason said, “I might be in a position to offer you a cash compromise.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  She said, “Mr. Shelby thought I could get ten thousand dollars.”

  “Shelby was mistaken.”

  “I thought he might be.”

  She waited a moment and then asked abruptly, “How much could I get, Mr. Mason?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then don’t you think you’d better have your people make me an offer?”

  “They won’t make any until they know that you have the power to accept or reject it.”

  “Why not? What does that have to do with it?”

  Mason said, “It’s just the way some people play the game. They aren’t going to make an offer unless they feel certain it will be accepted, and even then they won’t make it unless they know that when it is accepted, they’ll be able to get what they pay for.”

  “Yes, I can see that. They might not want to tip their hands.”

  “So,” Mason said, “you might make us an offer.”

  She said, “The figure I always had in mind was three thousand dollars net to me. I told Scott that was every cent I thought he’d be able to get.”

  “You mean that he was to settle for three thousand and …”

  “Four thousand,” she interpolated. “You forget that he was to get twenty-five per cent of whatever was actually paid by way of settlement. Personally, I thought that four thousand dollars was as high as anyone would go and was as high as we should ask them to go.”

  “And Shelby thought otherwise?”

  “Shelby insisted that he could get more than that.”

  “Therefore,” Mason said, “he acted a little bit peeved last night when it appeared that four thousand dollars was the absolute top that Benton would even consider.”

  “Oh, did Mr. Benton offer four thousand?”

  “No, but there were some figures discussed and it appeared that Benton might be willing to put in two thousand if Jane Keller would put in two thousand.”

  “That’s exactly the way I wanted Scott to play it,” she said. “I had told him I thought we should ask for four thousand dollars and let each side pay two thousand. That wouldn’t be very much and it wouldn’t be missed. Parker Benton could add two thousand dollars to the price he was paying for the property and Jane Keller could consider it sort of in the nature of … well, you know, a second real estate fee.”

  Mason nodded.

  “Go on,” she asked breathlessly, “what happened? What became of it? Did they agree to the four thousand dollars?”

  “Shelby wouldn’t listen to it. He insisted on going after something big.”

  “I was afraid he might do that. Personally, I’d rather have had the bird in the hand than gone chasing round after the two in the bush.”

  “Well, it’s all over now,” Mason said, then added, significantly, “It’s a most peculiar coincidence that your figure agrees so identically with the figure Benton named last night.”

  “What’s so peculiar about it?”

  “Because you couldn’t know of what was said there on the yacht.”

  “Oh, I see. But I’m accustomed to sizing up people and deals. I instinctively know about how high anyone will go.”

  “I see.”

  “So Mr. Benton and I can really get together then?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not here for Mr. Benton. I don’t want you to think I am.”

  “Then whom are you representing?”

  Mason said, “I’m sorry that I’m not at liberty to answer that question but I would like to see that assignment and declaration of trust.”

  She glanced toward the bedroom, hesitated a moment, said, “Could you let it go for an hour or two? I’ll bring it to your office.”

  Mason glanced at Lieutenant Tragg. “How about it, Mr. Tragg?”

  Tragg shook his head firmly. “As I told you, Mason, I’m in a hurry. If we’re going to do anything, we’re going to do it right now.”

  Mason looked back at Ellen Cushing.

  She got up, said, “All right, wait here just a moment.”

  She walked toward the bedroom, opened the door an inch or so, said in an unnecessarily loud voice, “You gentlemen wait right here and I’ll get it and bring it back. Just wait right there, please.”

  She pushed the door open some eighteen inches, squeezed through it sideways and hurriedly pushed it shut.

  Mason motioned toward the bedroom and said, “There you are, Lieutenant.”

  “You’re sure he’s in there?”