“Go right ahead,” Mason told him, “and recover your compensation. I was simply giving you a friendly tip that Sabin thinks your charges are too high. He’ll probably bring in a couple of the other experts, who have been waiting to take a rap at you, and have them testify that your fees are outrageous.”

  “Are you trying to blackmail me?” Bolding asked.

  “Just warning you,” Mason said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Me?” Mason asked, surprised. “Why I don’t want anything.”

  “What does Sabin want?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason told him. “You’ll be getting in touch with Sabin when you present your bill. You can ask him then.”

  “I’ll ask him nothing.”

  “Okay by me,” Mason said. “Sabin thinks your charges are plain robbery. He says that whatever you did, you did for Mr. Sabin and not for the estate.”

  “I am doing it for the estate.”

  “I don’t see how,” Mason said.

  “You’d have to understand what it was all about in order to see that,” Bolding said.

  “Doubtless,” Mason admitted, “if I knew all the facts, I’d feel differently about it. Doubtless, if Sabin knew all the facts, he’d feel differently about it. You see, he doesn’t know all the facts, and there’s no likelihood he’ll learn them—in time to do the estate any good.”

  “You’re putting me in a very difficult position, Mason,” Bolding said irritably.

  Mason’s voice showed surprise. “I am? Why, I thought you’d put yourself in it.”

  Bolding pushed back his swivel chair, crossed over to a steel filing case, unlocked the catch and angrily jerked the steel drawer open. “Oh, all right,” he said, “if you’re going to act that way about it.”

  Bolding opened the files and spread papers out on the desk. “Richard Waid,” he said, “was Fremont C. Sabin’s secretary. He held Sabin’s power of attorney and had authority to sign checks up to five thousand dollars. Checks over five thousand dollars had to be signed by Sabin. I have in this file sixteen thousand five hundred dollars in forged checks. The checks are three in number, each is over five thousand in amount, and each purports to have been signed by Sabin. The forgeries were so clever the bank cashed them.”

  “How were they discovered?” Mason asked.

  “Sabin discovered them when he audited his bank account.”

  “Why didn’t Waid discover them?”

  “Because Sabin had the habit of issuing checks from time to time without advising his secretary.”

  “Did Waid finally learn of these checks?”

  “No, Mr. Sabin wanted it kept a closely guarded secret, because he thought it was a family matter.”

  “Just what,” Mason asked, “do you mean by that?”

  Bolding said, “Perhaps I can quote from Mr. Sabin’s letter to me, and it will explain matters more clearly.” He picked up a typewritten letter, turned over the first page and read from the second page:

  “ ‘I suppose it will be difficult for you to detect any handwriting characteristics of the forger from the signature itself. However, it occurs to me that the payees are probably fictitious, that the endorsements on the back of the check will give you something on which to work. I am, therefore, enclosing herewith, in addition to the checks, a letter written to me by Steven Watkins. Inasmuch as this young man is the son of my wife, you can appreciate the importance of regarding the entire matter as most confidential. Under no circumstances must there be any newspaper publicity. The bank is sworn to secrecy. I am saying nothing at this end. Therefore, if there should be any disclosure, I will know that it was brought about through an indiscretion on your part.

  “ ‘As soon as you have arrived at an opinion, please advise me by telephone. I will be in my mountain cabin at least by Monday, the fifth, and will remain there for several days.’ ”

  “What conclusions did you reach?” Mason asked.

  “The checks are clever forgeries. They are free-hand forgeries; that is, the signatures were dashed off at high speed by a competent and daring forger. There are no tremors in the signatures. The signatures were not traced. There is no evidence of the painfully laborious handwriting of the slow, clumsy forger who must rely upon tracing. Such signatures look quite all right to the naked eye, but under the microscope look quite different from the smooth, fast-flowing lines of a quickly executed signature such as these.”

  “I understand,” Mason said.

  “The forged signature may be the work of Steven Watkins, the young man whose handwriting was sent me by Mr. Sabin. I don’t know. I am inclined to think the endorsements, however, were not made by young Watkins. In fact, they have all the earmarks of being genuine signatures, although they may have been fictitious.”

  “How were the checks cashed?”

  “They were put through various banks for collection, in each instance by a person who opened an account, let it remain for a week or two, and then drew out the entire balance. The references, addresses, etc., in each instance were fabricated.”

  “And you don’t think Watkins did it?”

  “To be frank,” Bolding said, “I do not … That is, the endorsements on the checks. As to the forgery of the signature, I cannot say.”

  “Did you so advise Mr. Sabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “On Friday, the second of September. He was in the city and called on me for a brief conference.”

  “Then what?” Mason asked.

  “He said he would think it over and let me know.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About four o’clock on Monday, September fifth. It was a holiday, but I happened to be in my office. Sabin caught me here on a long distance telephone call.”

  “Did he say where he was?”

  “He said he was in his mountain cabin.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, he’d been thinking over the matter of those forgeries and said he was sending me other handwriting specimens in a letter which he would mail that afternoon.”

  “Did you ever receive the letter?” Mason asked.

  “No.”

  “Then you gather that he didn’t mail it?”

  “I think that’s a reasonable inference.”

  “Do you know why he didn’t mail it?”

  “No. He may have changed his mind; he may have postponed it, or he may have entered into some transaction … perhaps some property settlement … which was conditioned upon the fact … Well, you may draw your own conclusions.”

  “What gives you that idea?” Mason asked.

  “Certain circumstances which I am not at liberty to divulge.”

  Mason said, “Under the circumstances, Bolding, it would seem that your services have been of the greatest value to the estate. I would advise the executor to honor your bill.”

  Bolding said, without enthusiasm, “Thank you.”

  Mason said, “If you’re in need of money, I might advance the money myself from my personal account and take payment of your claim in the regular course of administration.”

  Bolding said, “That would be most acceptable.”

  “Your bill was a thousand dollars?” Mason asked.

  “Fifteen hundred,” Bolding said.

  “I would, of course, want to take possession of the documents in the case on behalf of the administrator,” Mason said.

  “That’s understood.”

  Mason pulled out his checkbook, wrote a check for fifteen hundred dollars, scribbled an assignment of Bolding’s bill on the back of the check, and passed it across to Bolding. “Your endorsement on the back of the check,” he said, “will at once constitute a receipt for the amount of the money and an assignment of your claim against the estate.”

  “Thank you,” Bolding said. He pocketed the check, took an envelope from the desk drawer, placed the checks and letters in it, and handed the envelope across to the lawyer. Then he arose, went to the door of the private office and held it open.

  Mason heard the rapid, nervous click … click … click of the high heels on a woman’s shoes. He stepped back so that he was concealed behind the jamb of the door as he heard Helen Watkins Sabin say, “I bet you didn’t think I was going to come back with the cash, did you, Mr. Bolding? Well, here it is, one thousand dollars, ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Now, if you’ll give me a receipt, I’ll take the documents and …”

  Bolding said, “You’ll pardon me, Mrs. Sabin, but would you mind going around to the other office. I have a client here.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, “your client can go right on out. He doesn’t need to mind me. You were standing there in the door to usher him out, so you can just usher me in.”

  She swept past Bolding into the office, and then suddenly whirled to face Perry Mason.

  “You!” she said.

  Mason bowed.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Collecting evidence,” Mason told her.

  “Evidence of what?”

  “Evidence of what may have been a motive for the murder of Fremont C. Sabin.”

  “Bosh,” she said. “Mr. Bolding doesn’t have any such evidence.”

  “You are familiar with what he has then?” Mason asked.

  “I didn’t come here to be cross-examined,” she said. “I have some business to transact with Mr. Bolding, and I don’t care to have you present at my conversation.”

  “Very well,” Mason said, and bowed himself out into the corridor.

  He had just reached the elevator when he heard a door open and close with a violent bang. He heard running feet in the corridor and turned to find Mrs. Sabin bearing down upon him with ominous purpose.

  “You got those papers from Bolding,” she charged.

  “Indeed,” Mason said.

  “You boosted the ante five hundred dollars and took those documents. Well, you can’t get away with it. You have no right to them. I’m Fremont’s widow. I’m entitled to everything in the estate. Give me those papers at once.”

  “There is some doubt,” Mason told her, “about just who will be settling up the estate. There is even some doubt about your being Fremont Sabin’s widow.”

  “You tangle with me,” she said, “and you’ll be sorry. I want those papers, and I’m going to get them. You can save time by turning them over to me now.”

  “But I see no reason to save time,” Mason told her, smiling coldly. “I’m not in a hurry.”

  Her eyes glittered with the intensity of her feeling. “You,” she said, “are going to try to frame something on Steve. You can’t make it stick. I’m warning you.”

  “Frame what on him?” Mason asked.

  “You know perfectly well. Those forgeries.”

  Mason said, “I’m not framing anything on anybody. I’m simply taking charge of evidence.”

  “Well, you have no right to take charge of it. I’ll take charge of it myself.”

  “Oh, no,” Mason said, “I couldn’t think of letting you do that. You might lose the forged checks. After all, this is rather a trying and exciting time, Mrs. Sabin. If you should mislay these checks and couldn’t find them again, it would give the forger altogether too much of a break—particularly when we consider that the forger is, in all probability, the murderer.”

  “Bosh!” she said. “Helen Monteith murdered him! I found out all about her. However, I suppose you’re quite capable of dragging Steve into it in order to save her, aren’t you?”

  Mason smiled and said, “Quite.”

  “Are you going to give me those checks?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll wish you had.”

  “By the way,” Mason observed amiably, “the inquest is to be held tonight in San Molinas. I believe the sheriff has a subpoena for you, and …”

  She stamped her foot. “It’s just the same as larceny. I think there’s a law covering that. All property belonging to the decedent …”

  “Is a forged check property?” Mason asked.

  “Well, I want them anyway.”

  “I gathered you did,” Mason observed affably.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. “You … you … you …”

  She launched herself at him, clawing at the envelope in the inside pocket of his coat. Mason pushed her easily aside and said, “That isn’t going to get you anywhere, Mrs. Sabin.”

  A red light flashed as an elevator cage slid to a stop. Mason entered. “Coming, ma’am?” the elevator man asked Mrs. Sabin.

  “No,” she said, and turned on her heel to stride belligerently back toward the office of Randolph Bolding.

  Mason rode down in the elevator and drove at once to a branch post office. He carefully sealed the envelope containing the forged checks and the various letters and addressed the envelope to Sheriff Barnes at San Molinas. He then placed postage stamps on the letter and dropped it in the mailchute.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  PERRY MASON, Della Street and Paul Drake rode three abreast in the front seat of Mason’s car. The parrot was in the rear of the car, the cage partially covered with a lap robe.

  Drake, looking at his wrist watch, said, “You’re going to get there plenty early, Perry.”

  Mason said, “I want to talk with the sheriff and with Helen Monteith.”

  As Mason guided the car clear of the city traffic and hit the open highway, Drake said, “Well, it looks as though you had the right hunch on this divorce business, Perry. There’s a pretty good chance Helen Watkins never was divorced from Rufus Watkins. We’ve found a witness who says Helen Watkins told her that she hadn’t been divorced. That was two weeks before she started working for Fremont C. Sabin.”

  “Don’t you suppose she got a divorce afterwards?” Mason inquired.

  “I don’t know, Perry, but I’m inclined to think she didn’t. You see, she was a resident of California. She couldn’t leave in order to establish a residence elsewhere. If she’d secured a California divorce, she’d have had to wait a year for the interlocutory decree to become final, before she could have married again. That didn’t suit her purpose at all. She had her hooks out for Sabin before she’d been working there three weeks.”

  “How about Rufus Watkins?” Mason asked. “Don’t you suppose she could have arranged with him to get a divorce?”

  “That,” Drake said, “is the rub. She may have done so, but it looks as though she didn’t do anything until after she’d married Sabin, and by that time Rufus was in a position to do a little fancy blackmail.”

  “Is that surmise?” Mason asked. “Or do you have some evidence to support it?”

  “I can’t tell just yet,” Drake told him, “but it looks very much as though we had some evidence to support it. We got a tip that Helen Watkins Sabin’s bank account showed quite a few checks payable to a Rufus W. Smith. We’re trying to verify that, and find out about this Rufus W. Smith. We know that he answers the general description of Rufus Watkins, but we haven’t as yet definitely established that they are one and the same.”

  Mason said, “That’s good work, Paul. That gives us something to go on.”

  “Of course, Perry, there’s quite a bit of stuff shaping up against Helen Monteith,” Drake pointed out. “I understand, now, they’ve found a witness who saw her in the vicinity of the cabin about noon on the sixth.”

  “That,” Mason admitted, “would be bad.”

  “Well, it may be just rumor,” Drake said. “My operative in San Molinas picked it up.”

  Mason said, “We’re going to go and see the sheriff as soon as we get there. He may be willing to put the cards on the table.”

  Della Street said, “Chief, she simply can’t be guilty of murder. She really loved him.”

  “I know,” Mason said, “but she certainly left a lot of circumstantial evidence hanging around loose … Incidentally, there’s a nice legal point involved. If she actually is the widow of Fremont C. Sabin, then she inherits a share of his property, because the will is invalid as to her.”

  “How so?” Drake asked.

  “A will,” Mason said, “is revoked by the subsequent marriage of the testator. On the other hand, a will in which he makes no provision for his wife, and in which it appears that the omission was not intentional, is also subject to attack. The farther we go into this thing, Paul, the more possibilities it has.”

  They drove for several miles in thoughtful silence, then suddenly, from the back seat, came the hoarse voice of the parrot: “Put down that gun, Helen! Don’t shoot! Squawk. Squawk. My God, you’ve shot me!”

  Drake said, “We have two suspects in this case, both of them named Helen. Perry, if you introduce that parrot in evidence to show that Helen Watkins Sabin fired the shot, the district attorney will turn your own evidence against you to show that Helen Monteith did it.”

  Mason grinned, “That parrot may make a better witness than you think, Paul.”

  Sheriff Barnes had an office in the south wing of the old courthouse. Afternoon sunlight, beating through the windows, illuminated battered furniture, a floor covered with linoleum, which, in several spots, had been completely worn through. Bulletin boards on the wall were adorned with printed circulars of persons wanted for crime. Across from these posters, and on the wall on the opposite side of the room, were glass-framed display cases, in which various lethal weapons, which had figured in historic murder cases in the county, were on display.

  Sheriff Barnes sat behind the old-fashioned roll-topped desk, in a dilapidated swivel chair, which squeaked monotonously as he teetered back and forth.

  While Perry Mason talked, the sheriff slipped a plug of tobacco from his pants pocket, opened a knife, the blade of which had been rubbed thin through many sharpenings, and cut off a corner of moist, black tobacco.

  When Mason had finished, the sheriff was silent for a few moments, rolling the tobacco over the edge of his tongue; then he shifted his steady, thoughtful eyes to the lawyer and said, “Those are all the facts you have?”

  “That’s a general summary of everything,” Mason told him. “My cards are on the table.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that about the telephone bill,” the sheriff said to Paul Drake. “We had some trouble getting a duplicate telephone bill. It delayed things for us a little while.”