“They did so?” Mason asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And when did you pay the money?”

  “I paid that on the evening of Wednesday, the seventh, at a New York hotel.”

  “How was it paid?”

  “In cash.”

  “Certified check or currency or …”

  “Cash,” Waid said. “It was paid in one hundred bills of one thousand dollars each. That was the way Mrs. Sabin wanted it.”

  “You have a receipt from her?” Mason asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And how about the certified copy of the decree of divorce?”

  “I have that.”

  “Why,” Charles Sabin asked, “didn’t you tell me about this before, Richard?”

  “I wanted to wait until Mr. Mason was here.”

  Mason turned to Mrs. Sabin. “How about it, Mrs. Sabin? Is this correct?” he asked.

  “This is Waid’s party,” she said. “Let him go ahead with the entertainment. He’s played his first number, now let’s have an encore.”

  “Fortunately,” Waid said, “I insisted on the money being paid in the presence of witnesses. I thought that perhaps she was getting ready to pull one of her fast ones.”

  “Let’s see the certified copy of the decree of divorce,” Mason said.

  Waid took from his pocket a folded paper.

  “You should have delivered this to me,” Charles Sabin said.

  “I’m sorry,” Waid apologized, “but Mr. Sabin’s instructions were that I was to keep the decree of divorce and deliver it to no one except himself. I was not, under any circumstances, to mention it to anyone. The nature of the business which took me to New York was to be so confidential that no one, save his New York counselors, was to know anything about it. He particularly cautioned me against saying anything to you. I realize now, of course, that the situation is changed. Either you or Mrs. Sabin is going to be in charge of the entire estate, and my employment—if it continues—is going to be subject to your instructions.

  “Mrs. Sabin has taken particular pains to tell me that she’s going to be in the saddle and that if I say anything to anybody, I’ll suffer for it.”

  Mason reached out and took the folded paper from Waid’s hand. Sabin crossed over to look over the lawyer’s shoulder.

  “This,” Mason said, as he examined the printed form with the certification attached to it, “appears to be in proper form.”

  “It was passed on by the New York lawyers,” Waid said.

  Mrs. Sabin chuckled.

  Sabin said, “In that event this woman isn’t my father’s widow. As I take it, Mr. Mason, under those circumstances she isn’t entitled to share in any part of the estate—that is, unless there’s a specific devise or bequest in a will.”

  Mrs. Sabin’s chuckle became harsh, mocking laughter. “Your lawyer isn’t saying anything,” she said. “You overplayed your hand, Charles; you killed him too soon.”

  “I killed him!” Charles Sabin exclaimed.

  “You heard what I said.”

  “Moms,” Steve Watkins pleaded, “please be careful of what you say.”

  “I’m more than careful,” she said, “I’m truthful. Go ahead, Mr. Mason, why don’t you tell them the bad news.”

  Mason glanced up to confront Sabin’s troubled eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” Charles Sabin asked. “Isn’t the decree good?”

  Waid said, “It has to be good. The New York lawyers passed on it. A hundred thousand dollars was paid on the strength of that decree.”

  Mason said quietly, “You’ll notice, gentlemen, that the decree of divorce was granted on Tuesday the sixth. There’s nothing on here to show at what time on the sixth the decree was rendered.”

  “What does that have to do with it?” Sabin asked.

  “Simply this,” Mason said. “If Fremont C. Sabin was killed before Mrs. Sabin was divorced, the divorce was inoperative. She became his widow immediately upon his death. You can’t get a divorce from a dead man.”

  And the silence which followed was broken by Mrs. Sabin’s shrill laughter. “I tell you, Charles, you killed him too soon.”

  Slowly, Charles Sabin crossed the room to sit down in his chair.

  “But,” Mason went on, “in the event your father was killed after the divorce decree was granted, the situation is different.”

  “He was killed in the morning,” Mrs. Sabin said positively, “after he’d returned from a fishing trip. Richard Waid has gone over all the facts with me in a preliminary conference. Those facts can’t be changed and can’t be distorted … because I’m going to see to it that no one changes them.”

  Mason said, “There are several factors involved in fixing the time, Mrs. Sabin.”

  “And that,” she said, “is where I come in. I’m going to see that none of the evidence is tampered with. My husband met his death before noon on the sixth. I didn’t get my divorce until four-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “Of course, the decree of divorce doesn’t show at what time during the day the decree was granted,” Mason said.

  “Well, I guess my testimony amounts to something, doesn’t it?” she snapped. “I know when I got the divorce. What’s more, I’ll get a letter from the lawyer who represented me in Reno.”

  Charles Sabin looked at Mason with worried eyes. “The evidence,” he said, “shows my father met his death some time before noon, probably around eleven o’clock.”

  Mrs. Sabin said nothing, but rocked back and forth, triumphantly, in the big rocking chair.

  Charles Sabin turned to her savagely. “You have been rather free with your accusations directed at me,” he said, “but what were you doing about that time? If anyone had a motive for killing him, you did.”

  Her smile was expansive. “Don’t let your anger get the best of you, Charles,” she said. “It’s bad for your blood pressure. You know what the doctor told you…. You see, Charles, I was in Reno getting my divorce. Court was called at two o’clock, and I had to wait two hours and a half before my case came up. I’m afraid you’ll have to find a pretty big loophole in that alibi to pin the crime on me—or don’t you think so?”

  Mason said, “I’m going to tell you something which hasn’t as yet been made public. The authorities at San Molinas will probably discover it shortly. In the meantime, the facts happen to be in my possession. I think you all should know them.”

  “I don’t care what facts you have,” Mrs. Sabin said. “You’re not going to bluff me.”

  “I’m not bluffing anybody,” Mason told her. “Fremont C. Sabin crossed over into Mexico and went through a marriage ceremony with a librarian from San Molinas. Her name is Helen Monteith. It has generally been supposed that the parrot which was found in the cabin, with the body, was Casanova, the parrot to which Mr. Sabin was very much attached. As a matter of fact, for reasons which I haven’t been able to uncover as yet, Mr. Sabin purchased another parrot in San Molinas and left Casanova with Helen Monteith. Casanova remained with Helen Monteith from Friday, the second, until today.”

  Mrs. Sabin got to her feet. “Well,” she said, “I don’t see that this concerns me, and I don’t think we have anything further to gain here. You, Richard Waid, are going to be sorry that you betrayed my interests and violated my instructions. I suppose now I’ve got to go to a lot of trouble making affidavits as to when that divorce decree was actually granted…. So my husband has a bigamous wife, has he? Well, well, well! Come, Steve, we’ll go and leave these gentlemen to themselves. As soon as I’ve gone, they’ll try to find evidence which will show that Fremont wasn’t killed until the evening of Tuesday the sixth. In order to do that, it’s quite possible they’ll try to tamper with the evidence. I think, Steve, that it will be wise for us to retain a lawyer. We have our own interests to protect.”

  She swept from the room. Steve Watkins, following her, turned to make some fumbling attempt to comply with conventions. “Pleased to have met you, Mr. Mason,” he said, and to Charles Sabin, “You understand how things are with me, Uncle Charles.”

  When they had left the room, Charles Sabin said, “I think that woman has the most irritating personality of any woman I have ever encountered. How about it, Mr. Mason? Do I have to sit quietly by and let her accuse me of murdering my father?”

  “What would you like to do?” Mason asked.

  “I’d like to tell her just what I think of her. I’d like to let her know that she isn’t fooling me for a minute, that she’s simply a shrewd, gold-digging, fortune-hunting …”

  “That wouldn’t do you any good,” Mason interrupted. “You’d tell her what you thought of her. She’d tell you what she thought of you. I take it, Mr. Sabin, you haven’t had a great deal of experience in giving people what is colloquially known as a piece of your mind, have you?”

  “No, sir,” Sabin admitted.

  Mason said, “Well, she evidently has. When it comes to an exchange of personal vituperation, she’d quite probably have you beaten before you started. If you want to fight her, there’s only one way to fight.”

  “What’s that?” Sabin asked, his voice showing his interest.

  “That is to hit her where she least expects to be hit. There’s only one way to fight, and that’s to win. Never attack where the other man is expecting it, when the other man is expecting it. That’s where he’s prepared his strongest defense.”

  “Well,” Sabin demanded, “where can we attack her where she hasn’t her defenses organized?”

  “That,” Mason said, “remains to be seen.”

  “Why,” Sabin asked, “should my father have gone to all these elaborate preparations to insure secrecy about that divorce? I can understand, of course, that my father didn’t like publicity. He wanted to avoid all publicity as much as possible. Some things are inevitable. When a man gets divorced, it’s necessary for the world to know he’s divorced.”

  “I think,” Mason said, “that your father probably had some reasons for wanting to keep his picture out of the newspaper at that particular time, although it’s rather hard to tell.”

  Sabin thought for a moment. “You mean that he was already courting this other girl, and didn’t want her to know who he was?”

  Richard Waid said, “If you’ll pardon me, I think I can clear that situation up. I happen to know that Fremont C. Sabin was rather … er … gun-shy about women, after his experience with the present Mrs. Sabin … Well, I feel quite certain that if he had wanted to marry again, he would have taken every possible precaution to see that he wasn’t getting a gold-digger.”

  Charles Sabin frowned. “The thing,” he said, “gets more and more complicated. Of course, my father had a horror of publicity. I gather that the plans for this divorce were made before he met this young woman in San Molinas, but probably he was just trying to avoid reporters. What’s all this about the parrot, Mr. Mason?”

  “You mean Casanova?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apparently,” Mason said, “for reasons best known to himself, your father decided to put Casanova in a safe place for a while, and take another parrot with him to the mountain cabin.”

  “Good heavens, why?” Sabin asked. “The parrot wasn’t in any danger, was he?”

  Mason shrugged his shoulders and said, “We haven’t all the facts available as yet.”

  “If you’ll permit me to make a suggestion,” Waid said, “it seems that the parrot most decidedly was not in any danger. The person who murdered Mr. Sabin was especially solicitous about the welfare of the parrot.”

  Mason said, “Peculiarly solicitous, would be a better word, Waid … Well, I must be going. I have quite a few irons in the fire. You’ll hear from me later on.”

  Sabin followed him to the door. “I’m particularly anxious to have this cleared up, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason grinned. “So am I,” he said. “I’ll have photostatic copies made of this divorce decree and then we’ll chase down the court records.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  MASON was two blocks from the office building which contained his office and that of the Drake Detective Agency, when his car was suddenly enveloped in the red glare of a police spotlight. A siren screamed him over to the curb.

  Mason stopped his car and frowned across at the police automobile being driven by Sergeant Holcomb. “Well,” he asked, “what’s the excitement?”

  Holcomb said, “A couple of gentlemen want to talk with you, Mason.”

  Sheriff Barnes opened the door in the rear of the car, and was followed by a closely coupled man, some ten years younger, who pushed his way across to Mason’s car, and instantly assumed the conversational lead. “You’re Mason?” he demanded.

  Mason nodded.

  “I’m Raymond Sprague, the district attorney from San Molinas.”

  “Glad to know you,” Mason told him.

  “We want to talk with you.”

  “What about?” Mason asked.

  “About Helen Monteith.”

  “What about her?” Mason inquired.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason told him.

  Sheriff Barnes said, “We’d better go some place where we can talk it over.”

  “My office is within a couple of blocks,” Mason pointed out.

  “And the Drake Detective Agency is in the same building, isn’t it?” Sprague inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “You were on your way there?” Sprague asked.

  “Does it,” Mason inquired, “make any particular difference?”

  “I think it does,” Sprague told him.

  “Well, of course,” Mason remarked, “I have no means of knowing just what you have in mind.”

  “That isn’t answering my question,” Sprague said.

  “Were you asking a question?”

  Sheriff Barnes interposed. “Now, wait a minute, Ray,” he said. “That’s not getting us anywhere,” and, with a significant glance toward the curious pedestrians, who had gathered on the sidewalk, “It isn’t doing the case any good. Let’s go up to Mason’s office.”

  Mason kicked out the clutch and snapped the car into low gear. “I’ll see you there,” he said.

  The others jumped into the police car, followed closely behind, until Mason had parked his machine. They rode up in the elevator with him and entered his private office. When Mason had switched on the lights and closed the door, Sergeant Holcomb said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you birds about this guy.”

  “You didn’t warn me,” Raymond Sprague said, “you warned the sheriff.”

  “Just what,” Mason asked, “is the beef about?”

  “What have you done with Helen Monteith?”

  “Nothing,” Mason said.

  “We think differently,” Sprague announced.

  “Suppose you tell me what you think,” Mason said.

  “You’ve had Helen Monteith take a powder.”

  Mason faced them, his feet spread far apart, his shoulders squared, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his coat. “All right,” he said, “let’s get this straight. I’m representing Helen Monteith. I’m also representing Charles Sabin. I’m trying to solve the murder of Fremont C. Sabin. I’m being paid money by my clients for doing just that. You gentlemen are being paid money by your county for solving the same murder I’m trying to solve. Naturally, you’re going to solve it your way, and, by the same token, I intend to solve it mine.”

  “We want to question Helen Monteith,” Sprague said.

  Mason met his eyes squarely. “Go ahead and question her, then.”

  “Where is she?”

  Mason pulled his cigarette case from his pocket and said, “I’ve told you once I don’t know. You’re running this show, I’m not.”

  “You wouldn’t want me to charge you with being an accessory after the fact, would you?” Sprague asked ominously.

  “I don’t give a damn what you charge me with,” Mason told him. “Only, if you want to talk law, remember that I can’t be an accessory after the fact, unless I give aid to the murderer. Now then, do you intend to claim that Helen Monteith is the one who committed the murder?”

  Sprague flushed and said, “Yes.”

  Sheriff Barnes interposed a drawling comment. “Now wait a minute, Ray, let’s not get our cart before our horse.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Sprague said.

  Mason turned to Sheriff Barnes and said, “I think you and I can get along, Sheriff.”

  “I’m not so certain,” Barnes said, pulling a sack of tobacco from his pocket, and spilling rattling grains to the surface of a brown cigarette paper. “You have quite a bit to explain before I’ll give you my confidence again.”

  “What, for instance?” Mason asked.

  “I thought you were going to co-operate with me.”

  “I am,” Mason told him, “to the extent that I intend to find out who murdered Fremont C. Sabin.”

  “We want to find out, too.”

  “I know you do. You use your methods. I’ll use mine.”

  “We don’t like having those methods interfered with.”

  “I can understand that,” Mason told him.

  Sprague said, “Don’t waste words talking with him.”

  “If you birds want to charge him with compounding a felony, or being an accessory after the fact,” Sergeant Holcomb said, “I’ll take him into custody with the greatest of pleasure.”

  Mason struck a match and held it to Sheriff Barnes’ cigarette, then lit his own. The conversation came to an abrupt standstill. After a few moments Mason said to Sprague, “Are you going to take him up on that, Sprague?”

  “I think I am,” Sprague snapped, “but I’m going to get some evidence first.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find much here in my office,” Mason pointed out.

  Holcomb said, “I’ll take him down to headquarters, if you fellows say the word.”

  Sheriff Barnes turned to face them. “Now listen,” he said, “you boys have been kicking me around because I gave Mason a break. I still don’t see any reason why we should be stampeded into going off half cocked. Personally, I’m not going to get antagonistic until I find out a few things.” He turned to Mason and said, “Did you know that the gun which killed Fremont C. Sabin was taken from a collection at the public library in San Molinas?”