"Forget it," Mason interrupted. "He sold us out, and that's that. You can't apologize it away, and you can't explain it away. It's happened, and that's all there is to it. It's one of those things that are bound to happen when you have to work through operatives. You can't expect a man who draws eight dollars a day and expenses to pass up a juicy chunk of coin when a newspaper offers it to him."

  Drake fidgeted uneasily and said, "I should never have hired the fellow in the first place. His record isn't any too good. And I certainly shouldn't have let him get aboard that ship, in view of the fact that he knew Duncan and Grieb. I sent Staples down to the pier to relieve him. Sylvia Oxman had gone aboard before Staples got there, so he didn't pick her up until after she'd left the ship. Then he relieved Belgrade and took up the shadowing job. Staples was the man I wanted for the job all along. He'd been covering her apartment."

  Mason said slowly, "Then Belgrade was relieved before Sylvia went into hiding, is that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Therefore," Mason went on, "Belgrade can't tip the newspaper off to where Sylvia is now?"

  "That's right. Staples picked her up at the wharf and shadowed her into the Christy Hotel, and bribed a bellboy to give him her room number - 318. I reported to Della."

  "Yes, I know," Mason interrupted, "Della told me."

  Drake said, "Well, I wanted to get that off my mind, Perry. You've been damned white about it, but it was a blunder on my part. I shouldn't have let Belgrade have anything to do with the case. So much for the bad part. Now for the good part: I think we've got something that's going to put us in the clear."

  Drake turned to Manning, said, "Turn around, Arthur, so Mr. Mason can see your face. I'm going to ask you some questions and I want you to..."

  "I can tell my story," Manning said eagerly, "and then you can..."

  "No," Drake interrupted, "I want to ask you questions. That's the way your story would come out in court or in front of a grand jury, and I want Mason to see how you handle yourself on answering questions."

  "Okay," Manning said with a grin, "fire away."

  "How long have you been out there on the gambling ship?"

  "Ever since it started."

  "And you were friendly to Grieb and unfriendly to Duncan?"

  "Not exactly. My original contact was with Duncan. He got me the job. But Duncan was the outside man. Grieb was the inside man. Duncan was in the city most of the time buying supplies, handling publicity, making arrangements with the speed boat men, looking after political fences to keep the beach cities from passing ordinances putting the speed boat men out of business, and all that sort of stuff. So naturally I was thrown more and more in contact with Sam Grieb. Then they commenced to start fighting over little things, and I tried to keep neutral. Gradually I found Duncan was steering clear of me, and Grieb was taking me into his confidence. I tried to keep things from drifting too far that way, but I didn't want to put myself in a position where I had both Grieb and Duncan sore at me; and I figured Grieb was going to come out on top because he was the one who had the money."

  "Now then," Drake said, glancing meaningly at Mason, "who murdered Grieb?"

  "Nobody."

  "How do you figure that?" Drake asked.

  "Well, Grieb and Duncan had some IOU's signed by Sylvia Oxman. Grieb was trying to peddle them at a premium, if he could. He had an idea Frank Oxman would pay a bonus to get hold of them.

  "Duncan was anxious to get them in the form of cash, because Duncan knew there was going to be a bust-up of the partnership and he figured it would be easier to divide cash than to hold the sack of notes. So Duncan and Grieb had a big fight yesterday afternoon and Duncan made Grieb promise that he'd get those IOU's reduced to cash by seven o'clock that night. Grieb was going to get a premium for them if he could, and, if he couldn't, he was going to let them go for their face value. It seems Mr. Mason had thrown an awful scare into them when he started handling Sylvia's case.

  "Now, I was sticking around the offices until about fifteen or twenty minutes before Duncan came in and discovered the murder, and I know Grieb was alive when I left. He sent for me and said the crap table had a slicker working the game, and sent me over there to take a look. Now, no one had come in who could have paid off those IOU's before I went over to the crap table. Three people went in afterward - Sylvia, Frank Oxman, and Mr. Mason. After Duncan found the body, the IOU's were gone, and there was seventy-five hundred bucks in the desk drawer. That was just the amount of those IOU's, so I figured Oxman must have paid them off. Sam held out for a premium and Oxman wouldn't give it to him, so finally Sam took just the face value of the IOU's."

  "Then Oxman must have been in there long enough to have talked with Grieb. Is that right?" Drake asked.

  "Yes, that's right. I saw him go in. I didn't see him come out. I thought I was keeping my eye peeled all the time, but you know how it is when you're watching a dice slicker, and Oxman must have gone out without my seeing him. It's a cinch someone paid off those IOU's. I don't think the dame did it. She didn't have the dough for one thing."

  "Well, then," Mason said, "what you're getting at is that Oxman must have killed him."

  "No," Manning said, vigorously shaking his head, "it all builds up to the fact that Oxman didn't kill him."

  Drake said, "Wait a minute, Perry, and let me handle this. I know the whole story... Now, Arthur, why do you think Oxman didn't kill him?"

  "Because if Oxman had paid off those IOU's and then killed him, he certainly wouldn't have left the seventy-five hundred dollars in the desk drawer, and if he'd killed him before he'd paid the IOU's, he'd never have left the money there."

  Mason's face showed disappointment. He said, "I'm sorry, Paul, but this isn't getting us anywhere. This guy's deductions are just deductions. Anyone can guess what happened from..."

  "Wait a minute," Drake interrupted significantly.

  Mason caught the look in the detective's eye and became silent.

  "Now then," Drake said, "having figured that Oxman didn't kill him, who did?

  "Well, like I said," Manning remarked, "I don't think anyone killed him."

  "How did he die, then?"

  "He committed suicide."

  "What makes you think he committed suicide?"

  "I think Duncan had the goods on him. I think Sam had been dipping into the partnership funds. Duncan suspected it. Grieb put most of his money in the business and then had some losses in the stock market. Grieb handled all the money. I think he knew Duncan was calling for a showdown and knew that, as soon as a receiver stepped in, Duncan could send him to jail, and he knew Duncan wouldn't want anything better than that.

  "The only chance Grieb had to make a killing was to get Oxman to pay a fancy sum for those IOU's. I think at first Grieb thought he could get maybe ten thousand bucks premium and make Oxman promise never to say anything about it. Then Grieb could have told Duncan that Oxman wouldn't pay any premium for the notes and he'd had to let them go for their face value. That would have suited Duncan all right for he'd never have checked up on it, and Grieb could have used the extra cash to square off his shortage."

  Mason said impatiently, "Damn it, Paul, this isn't getting us anywhere. I can think up a dozen different theories that..."

  He once more stopped in mid-sentence as he caught the look in Drake's eyes.

  "Now, what makes you think Grieb could have committed suicide?" Drake asked. "The police experts all say it was murder."

  "I know they do, but the reason they say that is because they can't find the gun. Now, Grieb was killed with a .38 caliber automatic that he ordinarily kept in the upper left-hand drawer of his desk."

  "How do you know?" the detective asked.

  "Why, we went over all that in your office," Manning said.

  "Never mind what we went over in my office," Drake told him. "You just begin from scratch and tell Mr. Mason the whole story. I want him to hear it the way you tell it and not the way I'd try to tell it."

  "Well," Manning said, "it's this way. First, you've got to consider the type of man you're dealing with. Charlie Duncan is a smart hombre. He keeps his face buttoned up until he's ready to say something, and when he says something it's a mouthful. But most of the time he's just sitting on the side lines sizing things up; but he doesn't give you that impression, because of those gold teeth of his. He keeps his mouth open in a grin and the gold teeth sort of draw attention to the fact that he's grinning. People don't look at his eyes, they look at his teeth. Now, I know this, because I know Charlie Duncan. I've known Charlie Duncan for ten years, and I know the way he works. He thinks fast and he doesn't say much. Most people figured Sam Grieb was the big-shot of the business, because Sam was always acting like the big executive. Sam liked to sit behind his desk and impress people, while Duncan liked to get out on the firing line and slip things over. Left to himself, Grieb could never have kept that business going because he didn't have brains enough to handle the political end."

  "All right," Drake said, glancing again at Mason, "that gives us a pretty good sketch of Duncan's character. What's that got to do with the suicide?"

  "Well, when they started business," Manning said, "they took out one of these policies of business insurance by which each man insured his life in favor of the other for twenty thousand dollars. If one of them died, the twenty thousand dollars was to go to the other partner, who would use that twenty thousand to pay the heirs of the dead partner for the dead man's share in the business. That's usual in lots of partnerships, I understand. Anyway, that's what the insurance salesman told them. I was there when he talked with Sam. You see, when a partner dies, the surviving partner has to wind up the business and then he has to turn over half of the net assets to an administrator or something. That means that the business is wrecked, because the living partner isn't supposed to buy it in; but when the partners all agree on having an insurance provision of this kind, it's legal, and the other partner simply takes the twenty thousand, pays it over to the heirs in the form of cash, and that represents the value of the dead partner's share in the business. Anyway, that's the way the insurance man put it up to them, and..."

  "Mason's a lawyer. He knows all about business and partnership insurance," Drake interrupted. "Go ahead and tell us the rest of it."

  "Well, those policies had a provision that if a partner committed suicide within the first year, the insurance company only had to pay the amount of the premiums which had been paid in. On the other hand, if the death took place by violence or by accident, the surviving partner got double the face of the policy. Now then, you see where that leaves Charlie Duncan. If Sammy committed suicide, Duncan can't collect a cent under the policy except a few hundred dollars which were paid as premiums. He has to wind up the partnership business and he has to give one-half of all the assets to Sammy's heirs. But if he could prove Sammy was murdered, then he'd get forty thousand dollars instead of twenty. He could keep the whole partnership business, and he'd only have to pay over twenty thousand to the heirs.

  "You see what I mean. When they took out the partnership insurance, the insurance had this clause about death by violence, but in the agreement they overlooked that and agreed on a payment of a flat amount of twenty thousand dollars, which one partner would pay to the other."

  Perry Mason pursed his lips in thought, met Drake's significant glance and nodded his head.

  "Go ahead, Arthur," Drake said.

  "Well, Charlie's a quick thinker. Now, I'm just betting that as soon as he walked into that room and saw Grieb dead, he realized the position that he'd be in. I think he knew Sammy had been dipping into the till, and that was one of the reasons he was so anxious to have a receiver appointed.

  "Now then. Charlie busted into that room and saw Sammy sitting at his desk, dead. He knew damn well it was a suicide, but Perry Mason, the lawyer, was right there in the office, and Charlie had a deputy United States marshal with him who had been called in to serve the papers on Sammy. Now, I think that Charlie knew there was evidence there which would prove Sammy had killed himself, and what he wanted was to ditch that evidence. In order to do it, he had to get rid of both this man Perkins and Perry Mason, and the best way he could think of was to pretend Perry Mason had bumped Sammy off, and, of course, to protect his own interests, he kept yelling murder right from the start. Charlie's an awfully smooth guy when he has to be. He's a fast worker and a quick thinker, and..."

  "Yes, you've told us all that before," Drake interrupted.

  "Well, the logical thing for Charlie to do was to make a build-up so he could accuse Perry Mason of murder and order Perkins to take Mason and lock him up somewhere. Now, Charlie knew just as well as I do - in fact a damned sight better - that it wasn't murder, that it was a case of suicide, but he wanted to get Mason and Perkins out of there, so he accused Mr. Mason of the murder and got Perkins and Mason to go out.

  "Now, I was watching that runway which led to the offices, and I saw Perkins and Mason go out. I went in just a second after they went out. I told the officers that Charlie was looking around in the chair in the entrance room when I went in there, and that's the truth, but before I went in that room, Duncan had been in the room where Sammy's body was slumped over the desk. I know that because when I opened the door to the outer office I could hear the sound of someone moving fast on the other side of the door, just as though Charlie had come running out of that inside office.

  "Now, I'd gone in there on an emergency signal. I didn't know what was up and when I heard all the noise of running feet I stopped long enough to get my gun out of my holster and into my fist. I wasn't going to walk in and have someone stick a gun in my ribs.

  "My gun didn't come out easy, and maybe I was a little yellow. I hated like hell to push that door open the rest of the way, but I did it - and there was Charlie fumbling around in the chair, just like I told the officers.

  "Now, I think that Sammy killed himself, that the gun had slipped down from his hand and was lying on the floor by the desk, that Charlie saw it there. He got rid of Mason and Perkins long enough to run in and pick up that gun. At first he intended to frame the killing on Mr. Mason. So he figured he'd slip the gun down in the cushions of the chair in which Mason had been sitting. But I came in there and found him fussing around that chair, and he didn't dare to do it then, because he was afraid I'd squeal. So he kept the gun in his pocket and ditched it later."

  "How do you know what gun Grieb was killed with?" Mason asked.

  Drake nodded and said, "That's the part that's important, Arthur. Just how do you know that?"

  "Well," Manning said, "I know something about guns. I fooled around quite a bit with ballistics when I was in the army. The marks on a gun barrel fingerprint a bullet which goes through it just the same as a man's fingerprints on a piece of glass..."

  "Yes, we know all about that," Drake said. "Go on."

  "Something else that isn't so generally known," Manning said, "is that the firing pin leaves a distinctive mark on the exploded shell. Firing pins aren't centered dead to rights. They're always a little bit to one side or the other.

  "Well, one day Charlie Duncan and Sammy Grieb got in an argument about who was the best shot. They were both army men. Charlie bet Grieb fifty bucks he could come closer to a mark than Sammy could. Sammy got sore and put up the fifty. I was in the room at the time and they used me as stake holder. We went below the casino into a long storeroom where there were some heavy timbers and put up a target."

  "Who won?" Mason asked.

  "Grieb did. That was where he outsmarted Charlie. Charlie's a crack shot, but Grieb was familiar with the gun and Grieb stipulated that they were only to shoot one shot apiece.

  "Now, after I got to thinking about what might have happened, I went down there below decks and started prowling around. Sure enough, I found one of the exploded shells that had been ejected by the gun and dug one of the bullets out of this heavy beam. Now I can swear those bullets came from Sam's gun and that's the same gun that Sam was killed with."

  Mason raised his head and said to Paul Drake, "Have you checked up on this, Paul?"

  Drake nodded. "I've got a photograph of the exploded shell which they found on the floor in the room where Grieb was killed and checked the mark made by the firing pin with that on the shell Manning found down there in the passageway beneath the casino. There's no question but that they were both fired from the same gun."

  "And how about the bullet he dug out of the beam?" Mason asked.

  Drake took a little glass tube from his pocket. The tube had been sealed up with a strip of gummed paper, on which appeared words written in pen and ink and a scrawled signature.

  "I put the bullet Arthur gave me in this tube and sealed it up in his presence," Drake said. "That tube can't be opened without breaking the seal. You see, I've put the wax over the paper at the top."