Grieb started toward Duncan. "Listen, Charlie," he shouted. "I'm running the office end of this business. You haven't invested anything here except a lot of conversation. I know what those IOU's are worth, and you ain't going to make a cheapskate out of me."

  Duncan turned to look at him then, and his gold teeth vanished. "Sit down, you damn fool," he said, "and shut up. If Frank Oxman doesn't buy these notes, who's going to?"

  "Sylvia will take them up."

  "When?"

  "Pretty soon."

  "For how much?"

  "Well, if she knew we had a chance to sell them..."

  Duncan's coldly contemptuous gaze silenced his partner. He turned to Mason, "Suppose you boys go out in the other room for a little while," he said, "and let me talk to my partner. I want to be reasonable, but I agree with him a thousand dollars is altogether too small a sum to..."

  "Then," Mason interrupted, "there's no need of our waiting. I've offered you a thousand dollars, and that's final. Take it or leave it. Don't ever forget I can put you two birds on the witness stand and find out everything I want to know without its costing me a damn cent. Anytime a..."

  "Now, take it easy," Duncan interrupted soothingly. "This isn't going to get us anywhere, Mason. It's a business proposition. You two boys go out in the other room and wait a few minutes." He walked over to the heavy door, jerked the lever which pulled the bolts back, twisted the knurled knob of the spring lock and held the door open. "Make yourselves at home, boys. There's some magazines right over there. We won't be over five minutes."

  "If you're as long as five minutes," Mason said, "you won't find us here when you come out."

  Grieb yelled, "Go ahead and go, you damn piker, and see who cares!"

  Duncan, still smiling, closed the door on Mason and the detective. The spring lock clicked into position. A half second later the iron bars shot home.

  Drake turned to Mason and said, "Why not boost it to fifteen hundred, Perry? They'd take that. It would give Grieb a chance to save his face."

  Mason said, "To hell with Grieb, and his face too. I don't like his damned blackmailing hide."

  Drake shrugged his shoulders. "It's your funeral, Perry."

  Mason slowly grinned and said, "No, it isn't. Duncan's nobody's fool. That talk I gave him about taking their depositions scared hell out of him. It's just a question of how long it'll take him to whip Grieb into line... Evidently there's friction between them."

  "That's going to make it all the harder for us," Drake said.

  Mason shook his head. "No, it isn't, Paul, it's going to make it easier."

  "Why?"

  "Because this partnership isn't going to last very much longer. They're fighting. Duncan is a shrewd thinker. Grieb flies off the handle. Now then, figure it out. If this partnership is going to bust up, it's a lot better to have eighty-five hundred dollars in cash to divide than seventy-five hundred in IOU's to try and collect."

  Drake said, "That's so, Perry. I hadn't figured on that."

  "Duncan's figuring on it," Mason said.

  They were silent for a moment. Quick, nervous steps sounded in the passageway outside of the office. The two men listened while the steps swung around the right-angle turn in the corridor and approached the door of the reception office. Iron bars were jerked back on the other side of the door from the inner office. A knob twisted. The door opened explosively and Duncan, carrying the IOU's, said to Mason, "Okay. Pay over the money. It'll have to be cash."

  "How about your partner?" Mason asked.

  "Pay over the cash," Duncan said. "I have the IOU's here. That's all you want..."

  The door from the hallway opened. A woman in her middle twenties, her trim figure clad in a dark, tailored suit, stared at them with black, disinterested eyes, then turned to Duncan and said, "I want to see Sam."

  Duncan crumpled the oblongs of paper in his right hand and pushed them down into his coat pocket. His gold teeth came into evidence. "Sure, sure," he said. "Sam's right inside." But he continued to stand in the doorway, blocking her passage.

  Once more she flashed her eyes in quick appraisal of the two men, then stepped forward until she was standing within two feet of Duncan, who kept his left hand on the knob of the partially opened door. "Well?" she asked smiling. "Do I go in?"

  Duncan shifted his eyes to study Mason and Drake, and she, following the direction of his gaze, glanced at them for the third time. Duncan's smile expanded into a grin. "Sure," he said, his eyes focused on Drake's face, "go right on in." He shoved the door open, stepped to one side, raised his voice and said, "Don't you two talk any business until I get there."

  She swept through the door and Duncan, still grinning pulled it shut behind her.

  "Well, boys," he said, "it's too bad your little scheme didn't work. I'll see a lawyer tomorrow, Mason, and see if we can't pin something on you. We may have something to take before the D.A. In the meantime, don't forget the ship, boys. It's a nice place to gamble. We give you a good run for your money."

  Mason said, "No, Duncan, we won't forget the ship."

  "And," Duncan assured him, "we won't forget you." He escorted them down the corridor until the uniformed guard had opened the outer door. "Well, good night, boys," he said. "Come back any time."

  He turned and retraced his steps down the corridor. Mason took the detective's arm and led him toward the gangway where departing patrons caught the speed boat.

  "Was that Sylvia Oxman?" Drake asked.

  "It must have been," Mason said, "and when she failed to recognize you and you gave her a dead pan, Duncan saw the play. Remember, you're supposed to be the lady's husband."

  "Doesn't that leave us in something of a spot," Drake asked anxiously, "having tried to pick up the lady's notes and pulled all this hocus-pocus?"

  "That depends on the breaks," Mason said gloomily. "Evidently it isn't our night to gamble."

  Drake pushed his fingers down inside his collar, ran them around the neckband of his shirt, and said, "Let's beat it. If we're going to be pinched, I sure as hell don't want to go to jail in this outfit."

  CHAPTER 4

  MASON LOOKED across his desk at Matilda Benson and said, "I sent for you because I'm going to ask you a lot of questions."

  "May I ask you some first?" she inquired.

  He nodded.

  "You saw Grieb?"

  "Yes."

  "Get anywhere?"

  Mason shook his head and said, "Not yet. The breaks went against me."

  She eyed him in shrewd appraisal. "I suppose you don't go in much for alibis and explanations."

  Mason shook his head and was silent.

  "Do you want to tell me about it?"

  "No."

  "Well, then, what's the next move?" she asked.

  Mason said, "I'm going to try him again - this time from another angle. Before I do, I want to know more of what I'm up against."

  She opened her purse, took out her cigar case and selected a cigar. While she was cutting off the end, Mason scratched a match and held it across the desk to her. She regarded him with twinkling eyes through the first white puffs of cigar smoke and said, "All right, go ahead. Ask your questions."

  "What do you know about Grieb?"

  "Nothing much. Just what my granddaughter tells me. He's hard and ruthless. I warned you he wouldn't be easy."

  "Know anything about Duncan?"

  "Sylvia says he doesn't count. He's sort of a yes-man."

  "I think your granddaughter is fooled," Mason said.

  "I wouldn't doubt it. She's too young to know much about men of that type. She can size up the sheiks all right, tell just about when they're going to start getting ambitious and what their line's going to be, but she can't size up gamblers."

  "Her husband wants to get a divorce?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Why do men usually want to get divorces?"

  Mason shook his head impatiently and said, "You'll have to play fair with me, Mrs. Benson. What's behind all this?"

  She smoked in silence for a few seconds and said, "When my granddaughter is twenty-six, which'll be next year, she gets one-half of a trust fund, and her daughter, Virginia, who's six, gets the other half, unless a judge should decide Sylvia isn't a fit person to have the custody of Virginia. In that case, Virginia gets all of it."

  "And with a situation like that brewing," Mason said incredulously, "she's given IOU's to a couple of gamblers?"

  Matilda Benson nodded. "Sylvia's always done pretty much as she pleased. That's why the property was left in trust and not given to her outright."

  "So her husband's trying to get some evidence which'll give him a divorce and cause Sylvia to lose her share of the trust funds?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "So his daughter will have twice as much money, and so he can have the handling of that money. If he ever finds out about those IOU's, he'll get them and use them to show Sylvia can't be trusted with money. He has other evidence, too, but, right now, he wants to show she can't be trusted with money. You'll have to work fast. I want those IOU's before Sam Grieb finds out how important they are."

  Mason said slowly, "I think Grieb already knows."

  "Then we're licked before we start."

  "No, we're not licked, but I begin to see why you wanted a lawyer. How much is the trust fund?"

  "Half a million in all. If Frank Oxman ever gets the custody of Virginia and gets his hands on the money it'll be like signing the kid's death warrant."

  "Surely not that bad," Mason said.

  "That man's like a rattlesnake."

  "He'd be under the control and supervision of the courts," Mason pointed out.

  She laughed mirthlessly. "You don't know Frank Oxman. Sylvia isn't any match for him. As long as I'm here I'll fight him, but I'm almost seventy. I'm not going to be here forever."

  "But look here," Mason said, "a court wouldn't deprive Sylvia of the custody of her child simply because she'd been gambling."

  "There are other things," Matilda Benson said grimly.

  "How about Frank Oxman; does he have any money?"

  "He has a little to gamble with."

  "What sort of gambling?"

  "The stock market mostly. That's considered respectable. Sylvia plays roulette, and that's considered immoral. People make me sick. They're hypocrites."

  "What I'm trying to find out," Mason said, "is how Oxman is going to get the money to take up those IOU's."

  "Don't worry, he'll raise that all right."

  "How?"

  "There's a ring that will put up money for things like that," she said. "Occasionally Frank is able to fix a prize fight or a horse race or something of that sort. He can always raise the necessary money to make a killing then."

  "Sylvia will pay off those IOU's if she gets that money from the trust fund?"

  "Of course."

  "No matter who has the IOU's?"

  Matilda Benson nodded.

  "It would help a lot," Mason said slowly, "if she wouldn't."

  "What do you mean?"

  "If Frank Oxman is going to buy those IOU's he'd have to offer cash for them. He'd have to offer the amount of the notes plus a bonus. If he's borrowing the money, he'd have to put up the IOU's as collateral. If the people who were loaning the money thought the collateral wasn't good, they'd refuse to put up the money."

  "No," she said slowly, "that won't work. Sylvia would never go back on her word."

  Mason said, "I have an idea. I don't know how good it is, but I think it may work. From what I saw last night, I think there's friction between Grieb and Duncan. I have an idea that friction may be sufficiently intensified to throw them into a court of equity. A court wouldn't consider the gambling business an equitable asset. But there's quite a lot of money invested in furniture and fixtures, and the partnership must have that gambling ship under lease. Now, if I could start the pair fighting, and one of the partners should drag the other into court and have a receiver appointed to wind up the partnership business, they couldn't transfer those notes. And if I pointed out to a federal court that the notes had been given to secure a gambling debt, it would probably refuse to consider them as assets."

  Matilda Benson leaned forward. "Listen," she said, "I don't want to be held up by a couple of crooked gamblers. But if you can pull something like this, the sky's the limit so far as expenses are concerned."

  "Which brings us," Mason said casually, "to the question of why you're so anxious to get those IOU's. If you make Sylvia a present of them, the effect is just the same as though you'd given her the money to go and pay them off. And that wouldn't take any premium. Therefore..."

  Della Street gently opened the door from the outer office and said in a low voice, "Charles Duncan is in the outer office, Chief. He says he wants to see you personally and that it's important."

  Matilda Benson's gray eyes stared significantly at the lawyer. "That means," she said, "they've already approached Oxman, and Duncan is going to play one bidder against the other."

  Mason shook his head, his forehead furrowed into a puzzled frown. "I don't think so," he told her. "I have detectives on Oxman, Duncan and Grieb. This certainly isn't a matter they'd discuss over the telephone, and if there'd been a personal meeting I'd have known of it."

  "Then what does he want to see you about?"

  Mason said, "The best way to find out is by talking with him." She nodded. He turned to his secretary and said, "Della, take Mrs. Benson into the law library. Tell Mr. Duncan to come in... Does Duncan know you, Mrs. Benson?"

  "No, he never saw me in his life."

  "All right, you wait in the law library. I think Duncan is going to make some proposition. It may prove interesting."

  Della Street said, "This way, please," escorted Matilda Benson into the law library, and then brought Charlie Duncan into Mason's private office.

  Duncan's face was twisted into his customary cordial grin, prominently displaying the burnished gold teeth in his upper jaw, "No hard feelings because of last night?" he asked.

  "No hard feelings," Mason said.

  "You played a pretty smart game," Duncan went on. "If it hadn't been that the breaks went against you, you'd have had us licked."

  Mason said nothing.

  Duncan said, "Oh, well, we can't always win, you know."

  Mason indicated a chair and said, "Sit down."

  Duncan took a cigar case from his pocket and extended it to Mason.

  "No," Mason told him, "I only smoke cigarettes."

  Duncan sniffed and then indicated Matilda Benson's leather cigar case which she had left on the desk.

  "Looks like some client must have left a cigar case here, then."

  Mason frowned and said, "My law clerk." He pressed a button which summoned Della Street, handed her the leather cigar case and said, "Take this out to Jackson and tell him he left his cigars in here."

  Della Street nodded, a twinkle showing in her eyes. "Yes," she said demurely, "Jackson will be missing his cigars."

  She took the cigar case and left the room. Duncan grinned and said, "So the grandmother's your client, eh?"

  Mason raised his eyebrows. Duncan laughed and said, "Don't think we're quite such damn fools as you made us seem last night, Mason. Naturally we tried to figure out how you fitted into the picture. We didn't think you were representing Oxman, or you wouldn't have tried to run a ringer on us. You certainly weren't representing Sylvia. But Sylvia has a grandmother who smokes cigars. That was a woman's cigar case."

  "Are you asking me or telling me?" Mason asked.

  "I'm telling you."

  "Nice of you," the lawyer remarked, yawning. "And that's all you wanted to see me about?"

  "No."

  "What did you want to see me about?"

  "About those IOU's."

  "What about them?"

  Duncan crossed his knees, said, "Now listen, Mr. Mason, I want you to get me straight. I like the way you played the game last night. Checking back on the conversation you had with Sam, we found we couldn't pin anything on you. You never claimed the man with you was Frank Oxman. You had him try to cash a check, and Sam did all the leading from there on. And the damn fool led with his chin. We thought we might have you on that check business because Sam remembered the name of the bank. But we did a little snooping around and found you'd plugged up that loophole. If we could have found a weak point in your play, we'd have been mean about it. But we couldn't find any. It was a slick piece of work."