“What’s Drake doing?”

  “Waiting inside.”

  One of the officers took Mason’s arm. The other ran ahead up the sidewalk and into the house. Drake came sauntering down the corridor to meet them, a cigarette dangling from his lips. “Hello, boys,” he said. “I see you got my call all right. I’ve notified Homicide.”

  “Okay,” one of the officers said, “where do you fit into the picture?” Drake showed them his card and his license as a private detective. “You haven’t touched anything, have you?”

  “Nothing except the telephone,” Drake said.

  “And why the telephone?”

  “I had to call Homicide, some way, didn’t I?”

  Mason said, “Drake was careful to avoid using the telephone in the room where the body was found. We haven’t touched anything in there. The man was shot once. It looks as though robbery was the motive.”

  A siren screamed in the distance. One of the men said, “Okay, Jim, here comes Homicide. Let’s give it a quick look before they get here…. Hell, it’s dark in the corridor.”

  “That’s what I told you,” Mason said. “One of the fuses is blown.”

  “How did you see the stiff?”

  “With a flashlight.”

  “Where’s the flashlight?”

  Mason took it from his pocket.

  “You usually carry a flashlight with you?” the officer asked suspiciously.

  “Drake does,” Mason said. “It’s his flashlight.”

  One of the officers produced a flashlight from his own pocket, played the beam around the room, brought it to rest on the corpse and said, “Dead all right.”

  The sirens screamed at the corner. A car skidded to a stop. Pounding feet came up the cement walk and across the porch. Sergeant Holcomb, of the homicide squad, stared at Mason. “So you’re in on this, are you?”

  “I’m in on nothing except the house,” Mason told him.

  “What was your lead?”

  “I wanted to see Mr. Cullens on a matter of business.”

  “What business?”

  “Something about which he’d consulted me.”

  “Was he a client of yours?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “All right, then, what was the business?”

  Mason said, “I was looking for a man named George Trent, a gem expert. I had reason to believe Cullens knew something.”

  “What made you think so?”

  “Call it a hunch if you want to,” Mason said.

  “I don’t want to,” Holcomb told him, “and it doesn’t sound logical.”

  “All right, then,” Mason said, letting anger creep into his voice, “it wasn’t a hunch, and it isn’t logical. So what?”

  Holcomb said to one of the officers, “Take these two guys into a separate room. Don’t talk with them and don’t let them talk with you. Don’t let them do any telephoning. Don’t let them touch anything. And, above all, don’t let them do any rubber-necking around. … Okay, boys, go through the house. We’ll take the room in here…. Make sure the men are posted at the back … Okay, let’s go.”

  Mason and the detective were escorted into the dining room by an officer who indicated seats with silent hostility, and continued to watch over them in sullen silence while Mason heard steps on the stairs, the pound of feet in the upper corridors, heard additional cars roar down the boulevard to come to a stop in front of the house, and men pell-mell up the cement walk to the front door.

  It was twenty minutes later when Sergeant Holcomb descended on the pair for questioning, and at the end of fifteen minutes’ questioning he knew no more than when he had started. “All right,” he said, “you birds can go. But there’s something about this I don’t like.”

  “I don’t know of anything else we could have done to cooperate,” Mason said. “Drake notified the police the minute we arrived and found the body.”

  “Where were you just before you came here?” Holcomb asked.

  “Immediately before I arrived here,” Mason said, “it happened that I was in a drug store telephoning.”

  “To whom?”

  “To my secretary, if you want to know.”

  “About what?”

  “Trying to find out the address of a certain client.”

  “This address?”

  “No, it was another client.”

  “Who?”

  “It has nothing to do with this case,” Mason said, “and, as it happens, I didn’t get the address.”

  “Then how’d you happen to come here?”

  “I wanted to see Cullens.”

  “And you decided you wanted to see him right after you found out you couldn’t get that other address?”

  Mason said, “As a matter of fact, I looked up Cullens’ address in the telephone book in the drug store.”

  Holcomb said, “Okay, you birds can go…. And remember, Drake, your license is coming up one of these days.”

  Mason said, “I resent that as an attempt at intimidation. Drake has been entirely courteous throughout this entire matter. Both of us have answered every question you’ve asked.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Holcomb said, “but somehow I have a feeling I haven’t asked the right questions.”

  “Then go ahead and ask the right questions,” Mason told him.

  “How the hell can I when I don’t know what they are?”

  “Well,” Mason said irritably, “how the hell can I answer them when you don’t ask them?”

  Holcomb jerked his thumb to the door. “On your way,” he said, “and don’t just happen to stumble on any more corpses before morning. There is such a thing as a private detective being altogether too damned efficient, if you get what I mean, Drake.”

  Drake started to say something, but Mason interrupted. “Is it your pleasure,” he asked, “that in the future Drake refrain from notifying the homicide department of any corpses he may stumble on?”

  Holcomb’s face darkened. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Get started.”

  The officers ushered them past a corridor, which, by this time, was well filled with newspaper photographers, a representative from the coroner’s office, and half a dozen plainclothes officers. Half way to the car, Drake said vindictively, “Damn him! He’ll try to give me a black eye with the Board of Prison Directors when my license renewal comes up.”

  Mason laughed. “He’s just being nasty on general principles,” he said. “He can’t block your license except for cause, and he can’t get any cause. Try to be respectful to a man like that, and he keeps pushing you around. Stand up to him and tell him where he gets off at.”

  “Just the same,” Drake said, “let’s not find any more corpses.”

  “Okay,” Mason agreed.

  “Where to now?”

  “Where we can telephone your office and find out what’s in the wind. If nothing startling has developed, we go down to The Golden Platter and try to get some information before the police frighten those birds to cover.”

  Drake said, “That’s the thing I don’t like about your business, Perry. You’re always trying to beat the police to something.”

  “That’s the way I protect my clients,” Mason said.

  “And some day it’s gonna cost me my license.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that I’m withholding information from the police.”

  “Just what information do you have that the police should know about?” Mason asked.

  “Nothing. But I have a hunch you have.”

  “All right,” Mason said grimly. “Try not to be a mind reader, then. In other words, Paul, as your attorney, my best advice to you is to not only act dumb, but be dumb and follow directions.”

  Drake said, “Okay, Perry, I’m dumb.”

  Chapter 5

  Mason drove around the block, looking for a parking space. “Tell me, Paul,” he said, “just what you’ve found out about them.”

  “Understand, Perry,” Drake apologized, “the information’s a little sketchy. After all, my men only had a few minutes. …”

  “Sure, never mind all that stuff,” Mason said. “Give me what you have.”

  “Well, in the beginning, it started out to be a legitimate restaurant. They called it The Golden Plate then. They changed the name to The Golden Platter about the time they opened up the gambling joint upstairs.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  “That’s right, Bill Golding and Eva Tannis. Lately they’ve been passing as husband and wife, but apparently they aren’t married.”

  “Any gambling experience before?” Mason asked.

  “Lots of it. Golding ran a place in San Francisco, and then was floorman at a big casino in Mexico. Then he came back here, apparently broke, but always intending to open up a gambling place as soon as he got the funds.”

  “How about the girl?”

  “Eva Tannis was a come-on girl in the San Francisco place where Golding worked. You know, she gives the boys lucky hunches and a few drinks. Makes them feel like gay young blades. Pulls a little sex stuff and imbues the boys with the idea that faint heart never won fair lady. Then they feel their oats, and start plunging on the gambling table.”

  “And it’s all fixed beforehand?” Mason asked, turning the corner to the right and preparing to edge into a parking place.

  “No, that end of it’s on the up-and-up. All the gambling house wants is to get the play.”

  “What if the boys win?” Mason asked.

  “Then she’s already in strong with them. She keeps them playing until the house wins it back. In case the sucker quits while he’s still winner, she goes out with him, keeps in touch with him, makes a date for a couple of nights later, and steers him back to the joint. By that time, he’s cold and imbued with the idea that he has to buck the game in order to get anywhere. Then it’s all over.”

  Mason, looking the neighborhood over, said, “Doesn’t look like much of a soup-and-fish trade, Paul.”

  “It isn’t,” the detective told him. “It’s a joint. They’re trying to make a stake for a bigger place.”

  “Okay,” Mason said, looking at the numbers, “let’s go.”

  They detoured past a bedraggled blonde who held down the cashier’s desk, and Drake indicated a door which opened on a stairway. There was no protest as they climbed up a flight of dark stairs to a feebly illuminated corridor. The front end of the corridor was apparently fitted up as the office of a rooming house. There was a little counter, a register, a call bell on the table, and a sign saying, “Ring for the Manager.” Drake smacked his hands down smartly on the bell button and said to the lawyer, “We’d better flash a roll and act a little bit hilarious.”

  The lawyer pulled a wallet from his pocket, leaned against the counter, and started counting money with the grave dignity of a drunk man trying to act sober. A door opened and a man said, “What do you boys want?”

  Mason looked up at him and grinned. Drake motioned vaguely down the corridor and said, “Action. Wha’d’yuh s’pose?”

  “I don’t exactly place you,” the man said dubiously.

  Mason lunged against Drake, pushing the bills back into his wallet. “C’mon, Paul. The guy don’t want us. Let’s go back the other place.”

  Drake said, “Not’n your life. This joint owes me a hun’erd forty bucks. I’m gonna collect.”

  The man behind the counter said, “Okay, boys, go on in. Second door to the left.”

  They walked down what was apparently the corridor of an ordinary rooming house, turned the knob of the second door on the left. Mason heard the sound of an electric buzzer, then a bolt shot back and a man opened the door.

  What had, at one time, apparently been a series of rooms, had been joined into a large room. There was some pretense of giving it a veneer of elegance. The painted board floors were covered with brightly colored rugs. There were cheap oil paintings on the walls, but they were illuminated after the manner of masterpieces, with little individual electric lights shielded in chromium cylinders. There were two roulette tables, a crap table, two games of 21, and a wheel of fortune. A bar at the far end of the room was elaborately fitted with mirrors and subdued lights. There were probably thirty or forty men in the place, Mason judged, and perhaps fifteen women, of whom seven or eight were wearing backless evening gowns. Nearly all of the men were in business suits. Mason noticed but two dinner jackets. “Let’s not waste any time,” Mason said to Drake. “We’ve got this far, let’s go the rest of the way.”

  “Okay,” Drake said.

  The two men walked over to the bar. Mason slapped a five-dollar bill on the counter and said, “A couple of Old Fashioneds, and tell Bill Golding we want to talk with him.”

  “Who does?” the bartender asked.

  “We do.”

  “Who are you?”

  Mason slid one of his business cards across the moist mahogany bar. “Take that to him,” he said, “but don’t forget the Old Fashioneds.”

  The bartender nodded, summoned a floorman and spoke to him in an undertone, his eyes on Mason and Drake. He handed the card to the floorman, who looked at it, scowled, and vanished through a door. The bartender mixed up the Old Fashioneds and was just serving them when the floorman returned and nodded at the bartender, then stationed himself by the door.

  “Okay,” the bartender said, “Golding will see you.” He made change out of the five dollars. Mason said to Paul Drake, “Cover this end, Paul. Keep your eyes open.” He left his liquor and walked across the room. The floorman opened the door. Mason pushed his way through heavy green hangings and into an office. A man stared coldly at him from behind a desk. A woman, some years younger, her contours displayed by a clinging blue evening gown, stood near the corner of the desk. Her hair was glossy black and filled with highlights. Her full red lips held no smile. Her brilliant black eyes blazed with emotions she strove to suppress. Full-throated, well-nourished, she seemed seductively full of life, in striking contrast to the man who sat behind the desk, his waxy skin stretched so tightly across his prominent cheekbones that there hardly seemed enough left to cover the teeth, which showed in that ghastly grin seen on starving people. Against the pallor of his skin, just below where it crossed his cheekbones, were twin patches of brilliant coloring. His eyes were as dark as those of the woman, but where hers sparkled with vitality, his glittered feverishly.

  “Sit down,” the man said in a husky voice.

  Mason sat down on a leather davenport and crossed his long legs in front of him. In the seconds of silence which followed, it became apparent that the man was not going to introduce the woman, equally apparent that she did not intend to depart. Mason took his cigarette case from his pocket, glanced at the woman and asked, “Mind if I smoke?”

  “On the contrary,” she said, “I’ll have one with you.”

  She moved over to Mason’s side, the muscles of her well-developed figure sliding smoothly under the blue satin of her evening gown.

  “Don’t get up,” she said.

  Mason struck a match, and she steadied his hand in hers as she held the flame to the cigarette.

  Bill Golding, behind the desk, husked, “Okay, what do you want?”

  “Where are the stones you got from George Trent?” Mason asked.

  The man behind the desk moved uneasily. The red patches of color on his cheeks intensified. “So,” he said, “you’re going to sing that song, are you?”

  “Take it easy, Bill,” the woman remarked, seating herself beside Mason, her bare arm propped on the back of the davenport, her body so close that Mason could detect the faint scent of perfume behind her ears.

  Golding said, “I didn’t get any stones from George Trent.”

  “A couple of hours ago—perhaps three hours ago,” Mason went on, “Austin Cullens was up here.”

  “I don’t know any Austin Cullens.”

  “He’s a big man,” Mason said, “around six feet, somewhere in the forties, curly chestnut hair, a big diamond ring and a diamond scarf pin.”

  “Haven’t seen him.”

  “He’d have been up here, asking questions about George Trent and talking about redeeming gems Trent had left with you.”

  “He hasn’t been here. No man like that has been in here.”

  “I think he has,” Mason said calmly.

  “I’m lying, is that it?”

  Mason grinned mirthlessly. “Let’s say you’re mistaken,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not lying and I’m not mistaken. The way you came in is the way out. You’d better start while you can still go under your own power.”

  Mason said, “Nice radio you have there on your desk.”

  “I like it,” Golding said.

  “Why not turn that switch,” Mason said, “and listen to some music?”

  “I’m not demonstrating radios, thank you.”

  “The reason I asked,” Mason went on, in a conversational voice, “is because I notice that it’s turned over to the short wave dial and the hand points to police calls. Perhaps you heard the announcement that Cullens had been murdered.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Golding said.

  Mason maintained his calmly conversational tone. “Cullens stopped to telephone while he was on his way up here. Perhaps that will change the situation some.”

  “You’re nuts!” Golding said.

  “Of course,” Mason went on, “I can appreciate your position. Running a place of this kind, you’re not anxious to attract any publicity. With the police investigating the murder, you’d prefer to be dealt out.”

  “Go on,” Golding said with a sneer, “you’re singing a solo. Don’t think I’m going to make it a duet.”

  “Of course,” Mason remarked, “if you wanted to be friendly, we could talk things over. If you didn’t, I could telephone my friend, Sergeant Holcomb, on Homicide, and give him a tip. He’s accused me of holding out lately. This would square things a lot.”

  “Go ahead,” Golding said. “See if I care. Telephone the whole damn force if you want to.”

  “No,” Mason said casually, “Holcomb would be enough. He’d come up here and start asking questions—not only of you two, but of some of the customers in the front room. Perhaps they saw Cullens go in or come out.”