Mason ushered them out through the exit door. “Well,” he said, with a smile, “at least she’s energetic.”
As his visitors turned the corner in the corridor, Mason stood in the door, waiting for Drake. The detective appeared within a matter of seconds. “Coast clear?” he asked.
“The coast is clear,” Mason told him, ushering him into the room. “I’ve just had a session with Charles Sabin and Richard Waid, the secretary. What do you know, Paul?”
“You wanted the long distance telephone calls which had been put in from the cabin,” Drake said. “Well, I’ve had men breaking down numbers into names. Here’s what we find. The last call of which there’s any record came through on the afternoon of Monday the fifth at about four o’clock. Now as I understand it, the secretary says that when Sabin called him at ten o’clock, he reported the telephone at the cabin was out of order. Is that right?”
Mason nodded.
“Well,” Drake said, “if the telephone was out of order, Sabin couldn’t put in any calls and couldn’t send out any calls. Do you get what I mean?”
“No, I don’t,” Mason told him. “Go on and spill it.”
“Well,” Drake said. “Something happened to cause Sabin to send Waid to New York. We don’t know what that something was. We don’t know where the pay station was that Sabin telephoned from, but in all probability it was the nearest one to the cabin. We can tell more when we check up on calls; but suppose that it was twenty minutes or half an hour away from the cabin.”
“What are you getting at?” Mason asked.
“Simply this,” Drake said. “If the telephone was out of order from four o’clock on, and Sabin telephoned Waid to go to New York, Sabin must have received some information between the hours of four o’clock in the afternoon and probably nine-thirty at night which convinced him that Mrs. Sabin would be in New York on the evening of Wednesday the seventh to surrender a certified copy of the divorce decree and pick up the money.
“Now then how did he get that information? If the telephone was out of order, he couldn’t have received it over the telephone. He evidently didn’t have it at four o’clock. In other words, Perry, that information must have been obtained from someone who came to the cabin.”
“Or sent Sabin a message,” Mason said. “That’s a good point, Paul. Of course, we don’t know that the telephone went out of commission immediately after four o’clock.”
“No,” Drake said. “We don’t, but on the other hand it’s hardly probable that the telephone would have been in commission when Sabin received word that the divorce was going through all right and then gone out of commission as soon as he tried to telephone the news to Waid — which would have been immediately afterwards.”
“You forget,” Mason pointed out, his eyes narrowing into thoughtful slits, “that the telephone line was tapped.”
“By George, I do at that!” Drake exclaimed.
“Anything may happen on a tapped line,” Mason said. “The wire-tappers could have thrown the telephone out of commission at a moment’s notice, and may have done so.”
“What would have been their object?” Drake asked.
“That,” Mason said, “remains to be discovered.”
“Well,” Drake told him, “I thought you might be particularly interested in that four o’clock call because of what had happened.”
“I am,” Mason said. “Whom was it to?”
“To Randolph Bolding, the examiner of questioned documents.”
Mason frowned. “Why the devil did Sabin want to ring up a handwriting expert?” he asked.
“You don’t suppose he’d had a look at that certified decree of divorce and figured it was a forgery?” Drake asked.
“No,” Mason said. “The decree wasn’t dated until the sixth. If he’d seen it on the fifth, he’d have known it was a forgery.”
“That’s right,” Drake admitted.
“Have you talked with Bolding?” Mason asked.
“One of my operatives did,” Drake said, grinning, “and Bolding threw him out on his ear. Said that anything which had transpired between him and Sabin was a professional confidence. So I thought perhaps you’d better go down there, Perry, and talk him into being a good dog.”
Mason reached for his hat. “On my way,” he said.
Chapter ten
Randolph Bolding had carefully cultivated an expression of what Mason had once described to a jury as “synthetic, professional gravity.” His every move was calculated to impress any audience he might have with the fact that he was one of the leading exponents of an exact science.
He bowed from the hips. “How do you do, Mr. Mason,” he said.
Mason walked on into the private office and sat down. Bolding carefully closed the door, seated himself behind the huge desk, smoothed down his vest, mechanically adjusted papers on the blotter, giving his visitor an opportunity to look at the enlarged photomicros of questioned signatures which adorned the walls.
Mason said abruptly, “You were doing some work for Fremont C. Sabin, Bolding?”
Bolding raised his eyes. They were bulging, moist eyes which held no expression. “I prefer not to answer that question.”
“Why?”
“My relations with my clients are professional secrets — just as yours are.”
Mason said, “I’m representing Charles Sabin.”
“That means nothing to me,” Bolding said.
“As Fremont C. Sabin’s heir, Charles Sabin is entitled to any information you have.”
“I think not.”
“To whom will you communicate this information?”
“To no one.”
Mason crossed his long legs and settled back in the chair. “Charles Sabin,” he said, “wanted me to tell you that he thought your bill was too high.”
The handwriting expert blinked his moist eyes several times in rapid succession. “But I haven’t submitted one yet,” he said.
“I know; but Sabin thinks it’s too high.”
“Well, what’s that got to do with it?”
“Sabin,” Mason said, “will probably be the executor of the estate.”
“But how can he say my bill is too high when he doesn’t know how much it is?”
Mason shrugged his shoulders. “That,” he said, “is something you’ll have to take up with Sabin. Of course, you know how it is, Bolding. If an executor approves the charge against the estate, it goes right through. If he doesn’t approve it, then you have to bring suit to establish your claim. In case you don’t know it, it’s a long way to Tipperary.”
Bolding gazed down at the blotter on his desk for several thoughtful seconds.
Mason stretched, yawned prodigiously, and said, “Well, I guess I’ll be going. I’ve got lots of work to do.”
“Wait a minute,” Bolding said, as Mason rose to start toward the door. “That attitude isn’t fair.”
“Probably not,” Mason agreed carelessly. “However, Sabin is my client and that’s what he says. You understand how it is dealing with clients, Bolding. We have to follow our client’s wishes and instructions.”
“But it’s so manifestly unfair,” Bolding protested.
“I don’t think it is,” Mason said.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Mason told him, “you aren’t submitting a bill to Fremont C. Sabin for anything you did for him personally, you’re submitting a bill to the estate for things which were done to conserve the property during Sabin’s lifetime... at least, I suppose that’s the theory of it.”
“That’s the theory of it,” Bolding agreed.
“Well,” Mason said, “you haven’t conserved anything.”