The coffee cup wobbled as she started to put it back on the saucer.
“The corpse of Collin Durant, sprawled in your shower, shot in the back, very, very dead. He...”
The coffee cup dropped from her nerveless fingers. Hot coffee spilled over the table. Not until some of it trickled to her lap and the hot liquid had burned through her dress did Maxine scream.
Mason held up his hand.
The attentive waitress was instantly on the job.
“We’ve had an accident,” Mason said.
The waitress gave Mason a shrewd, searching look. Then, with her face a mask, said, “I’ll get a towel. Would you like to move over to another booth?”
Maxine moved out into the aisle, shook her skirt, took a napkin and sponged at the coffee stain. Her face seemed as white as the plaster on the wall.
“Right in here and sit down,” Mason said.
The waitress appeared with a towel, mopped up the spilled coffee, hurried away to get another cup of coffee and brought it back to them in the next booth.
Mason said, “Now, get hold of yourself. Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t know Durant’s body was in your apartment when you gave Della Street the key and told her to go up?”
“Honest, Mr. Mason, I didn’t... You aren’t lying to me, are you?”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“That,” she said, after a moment, “changes things a lot.”
“I thought it would,” Mason said. “Perhaps you’d like to tell me how.”
“You’re not — you’re not trying to trap me, are you, Mr. Mason?”
“What do you mean?”
“Collin Durant is— He’s really dead?”
“He’s dead,” Mason said. “He was evidently shot in the back, perhaps two or three times. His body fell forward in your bathroom. I wouldn’t want to make anything more than a guess right now but as a guess I’d say that he was searching the apartment when he was killed, that he stepped into the bathroom, parted the shower curtains, and that, as he did so, someone put a small-caliber revolver right up against the back of his coat and pulled the trigger two or three times. Now, does that mean anything to you?”
She said, “I didn’t do it, if that’s what you want to know.”
“Suppose,” Mason said, “you tell me a little bit about Durant.”
“Durant was a... a devil.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
She said, “Durant had the most horrible pair of ears in the world. He heard everything and he forgot nothing. He would encourage people to talk, getting them to tell about their own affairs, about their own background. He’d be the most attentive, sympathetic listener in the world, and he’d be remembering everything he heard. Sometimes I think he must have gone home and put everything on a tape recorder or something and kept notebooks.
“He’d pick up every piece of gossip, every little thing from lots of different people and then he’d start correlating them, putting them all together, fitting them into a pattern until gradually he knew more about you than you could possibly realize.”
“Blackmail?” Mason asked.
“It wasn’t exactly blackmail,” she said. “It was trying to build himself up, trying to get what he wanted, trying to get influence. I don’t think he used it for money but— Still, I don’t know.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Nearly three years.”
“And what was his hold on you?”
She looked up at Mason, then lowered her eyes, started to say something, checked herself.
“Go on,” Mason said. “I’m going to find out anyway. You may as well tell me.”
She said after a moment, “He knew certain things about me.”
“I gathered as much,” Mason said dryly and waited for her to go on.
She didn’t go on, but sipped her coffee with weary resignation.
“All right,” Mason said, ‘let’s begin on another angle. Who’s Phoebe Stigler?”
“My sister.”
“Married?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Happily?”
“Very happy.”
“What’s her husband’s name?”
“Homer Hardin Stigler. He’s a big real estate operator and financier in Eugene.”
“What,” Mason asked, “was Durant’s hold on you?”
“I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you.”
“Why?” Mason asked.
“Because it... it’s something I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“Come, come,” Mason said, “the world has moved a long ways since the time when some purple chapter in a girl’s history would—”
She said, “Oh, don’t be silly! It isn’t anything of that sort. After all, Mr. Mason, I’ve been around. I’ve made a living being an artists’ model. I’m not a prude and I’m not dumb.”
Mason, watching her shrewdly, tried a shot in the dark. “I know,” he said sympathetically, “it’s not that it involves you, but it does involve your sister.”
She stiffened as though she had been shocked with an electric current. “What are you saying?... What do you know?”
“I know a great deal,” Mason said, “and I intend to find out more — if I have to.”
“How could you possibly find those things out?”
“The way I find out everything,” Mason said. “It costs money but I get the information. How did I know you were here? How did I know you had wired your sister to send you twenty-five dollars here and waive identification? How did I know where you were? How did I know that you had a hard time finding a motel you felt you could afford last night in Bakersfield?”
“How do you know these things?” she asked.
“I make it my business to find out,” Mason told her. “I have to do it. If you want to tell me about your sister, I’ll try and co-operate as far as I can. If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out anyway and then I won’t be under any obligations.”
“You mustn’t — you mustn’t ask questions, particularly around Eugene. That would be...”
She broke off as though the mere contemplation of what might happen filled her with panic.
“Then,” Mason said, “you’d better tell me of your own accord so I’ll know what to do and what not to do.”
Maxine hesitated for a moment, then refilled the coffee cup from the container, closed her eyes wearily, said, “I just don’t have the strength to struggle, Mr. Mason. I— No, I’m not going to tell you. I can’t, but Durant had a hold on me.”
“And,” Mason said, “he had a good racket. He’d brand a painting as a forgery, have you pass the word that he’d declared it a forgery. Then when a lawsuit was filed, you’d skip out and not be available. How many times has he worked this?”
“He’s never worked it. I didn’t know he ever did anything of the sort,” she said.
“The painting Lattimer Rankin sold that was supposed to have been forged?”
She said, “I just don’t understand that. There’s something weird about that.”
“Go on,” Mason said. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well,” she said, “we were at this party and Durant told me the painting was a forgery. I got mad because I knew that Rankin had sold that painting and I knew he wouldn’t be fooled on a matter of that sort and I didn’t like the idea of Collin Durant talking that way and I told him so. And he dared me to go and tell Rankin what he had said. Then he told me I must tell him.”
“So then what?”
“I thought it over for a while and then went to Mr. Rankin. I didn’t really intend to tell him what Collin had said, but I did ask him if there could be any possible doubt about the authenticity of that painting, and Rankin said ‘heavens no’ and wanted to know why I was asking... Finally he got the whole story out of me and was furious.
“So then I became frightened. I simply couldn’t have Collin angry with me. So I told him about my conversation with Rankin.”