“That’s understood.”
Mason pulled out his checkbook, wrote a check for fifteen hundred dollars, scribbled an assignment of Bolding’s bill on the back of the check, and passed it across to Bolding. “Your endorsement on the back of the check,” he said, “will at once constitute a receipt for the amount of the money and an assignment of your claim against the estate.”
“Thank you,” Bolding said. He pocketed the check, took an envelope from the desk drawer, placed the checks and letters in it, and handed the envelope across to the lawyer. Then he arose, went to the door of the private office and held it open.
Mason heard the rapid, nervous click... click... click of the high heels on a woman’s shoes. He stepped back so that he was concealed behind the jamb of the door as he heard Helen Watkins Sabin say, “I bet you didn’t think I was going to come back with the cash, did you, Mr. Bolding? Well, here it is, one thousand dollars, ten one-hundred-dollar bills. Now, if you’ll give me a receipt, I’ll take the documents and...”
Bolding said, “You’ll pardon me, Mrs. Sabin, but would you mind going around to the other office. I have a client here.”
“Oh, well,” she said, “your client can go right on out. He doesn’t need to mind me. You were standing there in the door to usher him out, so you can just usher me in.”
She swept past Bolding into the office, and then suddenly whirled to face Perry Mason.
“You!” she said.
Mason bowed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Collecting evidence,” Mason told her.
“Evidence of what?”
“Evidence of what may have been a motive for the murder of Fremont C. Sabin.”
“Bosh,” she said. “Mr. Bolding doesn’t have any such evidence.”
“You are familiar with what he has then?” Mason asked.
“I didn’t come here to be cross-examined,” she said. “I have some business to transact with Mr. Bolding, and I don’t care to have you present at my conversation.”
“Very well,” Mason said, and bowed himself out into the corridor.
He had just reached the elevator when he heard a door open and close with a violent bang. He heard running feet in the corridor and turned to find Mrs. Sabin bearing down upon him with ominous purpose.
“You got those papers from Bolding,” she charged.
“Indeed,” Mason said.
“You boosted the ante five hundred dollars and took those documents. Well, you can’t get away with it. You have no right to them. I’m Fremont’s widow. I’m entitled to everything in the estate. Give me those papers at once.”
“There is some doubt,” Mason told her, “about just who will be settling up the estate. There is even some doubt about your being Fremont Sabin’s widow.”
“You tangle with me,” she said, “and you’ll be sorry. I want those papers, and I’m going to get them. You can save time by turning them over to me now.”
“But I see no reason to save time,” Mason told her, smiling coldly. “I’m not in a hurry.”
Her eyes glittered with the intensity of her feeling. “You,” she said, “are going to try to frame something on Steve. You can’t make it stick. I’m warning you.”
“Frame what on him?” Mason asked.
“You know perfectly well. Those forgeries.”
Mason said, “I’m not framing anything on anybody. I’m simply taking charge of evidence.”
“Well, you have no right to take charge of it. I’ll take charge of it myself.”
“Oh, no,” Mason said, “I couldn’t think of letting you do that. You might lose the forged checks. After all, this is rather a trying and exciting time, Mrs. Sabin. If you should mislay these checks and couldn’t find them again, it would give the forger altogether too much of a break — particularly when we consider that the forger is, in all probability, the murderer.”
“Bosh!” she said. “Helen Monteith murdered him! I found out all about her. However, I suppose you’re quite capable of dragging Steve into it in order to save her, aren’t you?”
Mason smiled and said, “Quite.”
“Are you going to give me those checks?”
“No.”
“You’ll wish you had.”
“By the way,” Mason observed amiably, “the inquest is to be held tonight in San Molinas. I believe the sheriff has a subpoena for you, and...”
She stamped her foot. “It’s just the same as larceny. I think there’s a law covering that. All property belonging to the decedent...”
“Is a forged check property?” Mason asked.
“Well, I want them anyway.”
“I gathered you did,” Mason observed affably.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You... you... you...”
She launched herself at him, clawing at the envelope in the inside pocket of his coat. Mason pushed her easily aside and said, “That isn’t going to get you anywhere, Mrs. Sabin.”
A red light flashed as an elevator cage slid to a stop. Mason entered. “Coming, ma’am?” the elevator man asked Mrs. Sabin.
“No,” she said, and turned on her heel to stride belligerently back toward the office of Randolph Bolding.
Mason rode down in the elevator and drove at once to a branch post office. He carefully sealed the envelope containing the forged checks and the various letters and addressed the envelope to Sheriff Barnes at San Molinas. He then placed postage stamps on the letter and dropped it in the mailchute.
Chapter eleven
Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake rode three abreast in the front seat of Mason’s car. The parrot was in the rear of the car, the cage partially covered with a lap robe.
Drake, looking at his wrist watch, said, “You’re going to get there plenty early, Perry.”
Mason said, “I want to talk with the sheriff and with Helen Monteith.”
As Mason guided the car clear of the city traffic and hit the open highway, Drake said, “Well, it looks as though you had the right hunch on this divorce business, Perry. There’s a pretty good chance Helen Watkins never was divorced from Rufus Watkins. We’ve found a witness who says Helen Watkins told her that she hadn’t been divorced. That was two weeks before she started working for Fremont C. Sabin.”
“Don’t you suppose she got a divorce afterwards?” Mason inquired.
“I don’t know, Perry, but I’m inclined to think she didn’t. You see, she was a resident of California. She couldn’t leave in order to establish a residence elsewhere. If she’d secured a California divorce, she’d have had to wait a year for the interlocutory decree to become final, before she could have married again. That didn’t suit her purpose at all. She had her hooks out for Sabin before she’d been working there three weeks.”
“How about Rufus Watkins?” Mason asked. “Don’t you suppose she could have arranged with him to get a divorce?”
“That,” Drake said, “is the rub. She may have done so, but it looks as though she didn’t do anything until after she’d married Sabin, and by that time Rufus was in a position to do a little fancy blackmail.”
“Is that surmise?” Mason asked. “Or do you have some evidence to support it?”
“I can’t tell just yet,” Drake told him, “but it looks very much as though we had some evidence to support it. We got a tip that Helen Watkins Sabin’s bank account showed quite a few checks payable to a Rufus W. Smith. We’re trying to verify that, and find out about this Rufus W. Smith. We know that he answers the general description of Rufus Watkins, but we haven’t as yet definitely established that they are one and the same.”
Mason said, “That’s good work, Paul. That gives us something to go on.”
“Of course, Perry, there’s quite a bit of stuff shaping up against Helen Monteith,” Drake pointed out. “I understand, now, they’ve found a witness who saw her in the vicinity of the cabin about noon on the sixth.”