Mason said nothing, continued to regard her with steady, penetrating eyes.
She said, “Well, I guess that did it. I seem to have walked into your trap.”
Mason remained silent.
“All right,” she said suddenly. “I’ll tell you. I’m a stockholder of Texas Global. I have a fair block of stock in that company. I have a feeling that that stock is about all of the financial nest egg I’m going to get, and if Gifford Farrell gets control of that company, I don’t think the stock will be worth the paper it’s written on within a period of two years. If Jerry Conway continues as president, that stock is going to be very valuable.”
“Therefore, you’re for Conway.”
“I’m for Conway, but I don’t dare let it be known. I don’t dare do anything that could be seized upon by Gifford’s attorneys and twisted and distorted into evidence that they could use against me. I... Mr. Mason, how did you find that I made those calls?”
“That’s quite a long story,” Mason said. “Something has happened that makes it quite important to get at the facts in the case. Now, you sent Conway to the Redfern Hotel. Why?”
“I sent him to the Redfern Hotel?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
She shook her head.
“Yes, you did,” Mason said. “You had him running around so as to ditch persons who were supposed to have been shadowing him. Then you telephoned him at six-fifteen and told him to—”
“What did I tell him at six-fifteen?” she asked.
“You know,” Mason told her. “You told him to go to the Redfern Hotel and ask for messages for Gerald Boswell.”
She picked up the ivory cigarette holder and began twisting it in nervous fingers.
“Didn’t you?” Mason asked.
“I did not, Mr. Mason. I don’t know anything about the Redfern Hotel. I didn’t tell Mr. Conway to go there.”
“What did you tell him?” Mason asked.
She hesitated thoughtfully.
Mason said, “I think it’s going to be to your advantage to confide in me, Mrs. Farrell.”
“All right,” she said suddenly, “you seem to know enough. I’m going to have to trust to your discretion. You could place me in a very embarrassing position if you let Gifford know what I had done.”
“Suppose you tell me just what you did do.”
“I wanted to give Mr. Conway some information I had. I had a list of the persons who had sent in proxies. I thought it was an accurate, up-to-the-minute list that would be of the greatest value to him. I wanted him to have that list.”
“Why didn’t you mail it to him?”
“Because I was afraid someone knew that I had this list. If it was ever traced to me, and then my husband could prove that I had given it to the person he was fighting for control of the company, he’d use it to prejudice the court against me.”
“So what did you do?”
“I intended to give him a big build-up, send him out to a motel somewhere to keep a mysterious appointment, and then phone him and tell him that I’d planted the list in his car while he was waiting. I wanted it to be handled with such a background of mystery and all that he’d think I was very, very close to Gifford and terribly frightened. I wanted to do everything as much unlike myself as I possibly could. I wanted to cover my trail so thoroughly he’d never suspect me.
“I tried to arrange a meeting with him twice. Tonight he was to ditch the shadows, go to a public telephone in a drugstore that was a couple of blocks from here. I was to telephone him there at six-fifteen.”
“And you did?”
“I did,” she said, “and he didn’t answer.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You didn’t get him on the telephone and tell him to go to the Redfern Hotel and ask for messages in the name of Gerald Boswell?”
She shook her head, said, “I know nothing whatever about the Redfern Hotel. I’ve heard the name, but I don’t even know where it is.”
Mason said, “You’ll pardon me, but I have to be sure that you’re telling the truth.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” she said, “and I’m not accountable to you. I don’t propose to have you sit there and cross-examine me. I don’t owe that much to Mr. Conway and I don’t owe that much to you.”
“Perhaps,” Mason said, “you owe that much to yourself.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“For your information,” Mason said, “a woman was murdered at the Redfern Hotel this evening. Conway was in the suite where the murdered girl was found. He was sent there by someone who telephoned the drugstore where he was to get his final directions and—”
“So that’s it!” she exclaimed.
“What is?”
“I lost control of him. Someone must have called him there just a few minutes before I did. I called him a minute or two before six-fifteen, got a busy signal on the line. I called him at almost exactly six-fifteen, and there was no answer. I kept ringing and finally a man’s voice answered. I asked if Mr. Conway was there, and he said he was the druggist in charge of the store, and that no one was there. He said a man had been there a few minutes earlier, and had left.”
Mason took out his cigarette case, started to offer her one of his cigarettes.
“Thanks, I have my own,” she said.
Mason started to get up and light her cigarette, but she waved him back, said, “I’m a big girl now,” picked up a card of paper matches, lit her cigarette, dropped the matches back on the table.
Mason snapped his lighter into flame, lit his cigarette.
“Well?” he asked.
She said, “It’s his phone that’s tapped. It’s not mine. I put in the calls from pay stations. You can see what happened. I was anxious to see that he wasn’t followed. I didn’t want anyone to know I had had any contact with him. Someone listened in on the conversation. What about that secretary of his? What do you know about her?”
“Very little,” Mason said.
“Well, you’d better find out,” she said, “because someone beat me to the punch on that telephone call and sent him to the Redfern Hotel. I was going to tell him to meet me in a cocktail lounge about a block and a half from the drugstore, but I wanted to be certain he wasn’t followed,”
“Do you now have an accurate list of the proxies, or—?”
“I now actually have such a list.”
“May I ask how you got it?”
She smoked for a moment in thoughtful silence, then extricated herself from the chair with a quick, lithe motion, said, “Mr. Mason, I’m going to confide in you.”
The lawyer said nothing.
She walked over to a bookcase, took down an atlas, said, “When a woman marries, she wants a man for her very own. She wants security. She wants a home. She wants companionship on a permanent basis.”
Mason nodded.
“I should have known better than to have married Gifford Farrell in the first place,” she said. “He’s a playboy. He doesn’t want a home, he doesn’t want any one woman, and he can’t give anyone security. He’s a gambler, a plunger, a sport.”
Mason remained silent.
Mrs. Farrell opened the atlas. She took out an eight-by-ten glossy photograph from between the pages and handed it to Mason.
Mason saw what at first seemed to be a naked woman, but after a moment saw she was wearing the very briefest of light-colored Bikini bathing suits.
Mason looked at the voluptuous figure, then suddenly started as his eyes came to focus on the girl’s face. He moved over closer to the light.
Mrs. Farrell gave a short laugh. “I’m afraid you men are all the same,” she said. “She’s wearing a light-colored Bikini suit, Mr. Mason. She’s not nude. She’s dressed!”