“You’ve talked with Gilbert?” Mason asked.
“No, I haven’t, but I’ve checked on him and find that he’s a very expert copyist and has a whale of a lot of talent. Some of his copies have been hung as originals. That is, the guy can copy the style of any given painter. If you’ll give him a picture, say a big colored photograph made by the dye-transfer process or a calendar picture or something of that sort, and tell him to imitate the style of some famous artist, the guy can do it well enough so that at times it fools even the experts — or at least that’s what he claims.
“He’s a typical beatnik, apparently, but he’s rolling in dough which is something most of them don’t have. That is, he’s supposed to be loaded to the extent of being able to get what he wants.
“Now, here’s the funny thing, Perry. Two weeks ago Durant paid off his account at the art store — with hundred-dollar bills. Now, remember that when Durant’s body was found there was ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills and about twenty-five dollars, in smaller stuff.”
Mason said, “What about this man, Gilbert, can we get him tonight? It’s pretty late.”
Drake said, “Sure, we can get him tonight, if you feel you have to see him right away. I’ve got a man riding herd on him and this is just the shank of the evening for those guys.”
“Let’s go,” Mason said. “Let’s try and beat the police to it for once.”
“How about me?” Della Street asked.
“You go home,” Mason said, “and get some sleep.”
Drake said, “This is a dump, Della. It’s not for nice girls.”
“Phooey to you, Paul Drake,” she said. “You’ve whetted my curiosity. I’m not going to sit up here doing all the chores and then when the party gets spicy have you bundle me up and send me home.”
“These people are far out,” Drake said. “The women are artists and models who are — well, they think nothing of posing in the nude.”
“I’ve seen nudes before,” Della Street said, and then added shyly, “and how about you, Mr. Paul Drake?”
Mason grinned. “Come on, Della, if you want. Bring some notebooks and let’s go.”
“Your car or mine?” Drake asked.
“Yours,” Mason said. “I’ll relax and let you worry about the traffic signals and the tickets, if any.”
“There won’t be any,” Drake said. “I’m a chastened guy. I had the job of investigating an automobile accident about two weeks ago, and in case you don’t know, I’ve completely and utterly reformed. After you see people strewn around the road the way I saw them — well, it gives you something to think about, and I mean think.”
“Good,” Mason said. “I got cured a while ago. The Traffic Safety Editor of the Desert News and Telegram in Salt Lake City took me to task for my fast driving. Now I’m glad to see you’ve reformed. You can chauffeur me from now on — until you start getting reckless again. Come on, Della.”
They left Mason’s office, went to the parking lot, and Drake drove them to a so-called apartment building, a combination of studios and living quarters. The building had evidently been used at one time as a warehouse. The elevator was a huge, slow-moving affair which inched its way upward carrying Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake to the third floor.
Drake located the apartment of Goring Gilbert and knocked on the door. When there was no answer he pounded with full knuckles, then turned to Mason, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody home.”
“Is the door locked?” Della Street asked.
Drake hesitated, said in a low voice, “I have an operative around here somewhere, Perry. He’ll know where the guy is. All we need to do is to—”
A door across the corridor opened. A woman somewhere in her late thirties or early forties, heavily fleshed, wearing nothing except a light robe stood in the doorway, a cigarette dangling pendulously from a flabby lower lip.
“Something?” she asked, her eyes impudently curious as she surveyed the group.
“Goring Gilbert.”
“Try thirty-four,” the woman said. “There’s a party down there.”
“Which direction?” Mason asked.
The woman jerked with her thumb.
As the trio moved off down the corridor, the woman stood in the doorway watching.
Hi-fi music seeped its way through the door of Studio 34.
Drake’s knuckles gave a loud knock.
The door was opened by a slender, trim-figured young woman in a bikini bathing suit, who said, “Well, come on—”
She stopped mid-sentence as she surveyed the group, then said over her shoulder, “Okay, Goring, I guess it’s for you. Outsiders.”
A man attired in a sport shirt which was unbuttoned, a pair of slacks and apparently nothing else, came in barefooted silence to the door, surveyed the party.
“Goring Gilbert?” Mason asked.
“That’s right.”
“We’d like to talk with you.”
“What about?”
“A matter of business.”
“What kind of business?”
“A painting.”
“A duplicate painting,” Drake said.
Gilbert called over his shoulder, “See you later, folks.”
A man’s voice said, “Play it cool, man.”
Gilbert stepped out into the hall. “My pad’s down the hall,” he said.
“I know,” Mason told him.
Gilbert surveyed him. “That’s right, you would. Okay, let’s go.”
He led the way down the corridor, walking with long, easy strides. His uninhibited hip motion indicated that walking barefoot was no novelty to him.
He took a key from his pocket, fitted it to the lock, twisted the knob, said, “Come on in.”
The place was a litter of canvases, brushes, two or three easels, and smelled of paint.
“This is a workingman’s shop,” Gilbert said.
“I see,” Mason said.
“All right, what’s worrying you cats?”
“You know Collin Durant?” Drake asked.
“Did know him,” Gilbert said. “The guy’s dead and I hope you’re not trying some of this crude stuff of trying to say ‘How did you know he was dead unless you killed him?’ — I didn’t kill him, I heard it on the radio; that is, I didn’t hear it but my chick did, and made me wise. Now what do you want?”
“You did work for Durant,” Drake said.
“What if I did?”
“Some of those paintings were forgeries that he palmed off as originals.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Gilbert said. “What do you mean forgeries? I don’t give a damn what a guy does with a painting after I sell it to him, but that guy never palmed off anything of mine that way. He always told the customer, ‘I have a painting which almost any expert will pronounce a genuine so-and-so. I don’t think it is, but it’s a swell conversation piece and I can get it for you for peanuts.’
“Now, what’s wrong with that?
“Soon as I heard of the murder I figured guys like you would be down here prying. Now I’ve told you what I know, and that’s all I know.”
Mason, who had been carefully watching Gilbert, said, “You did a certain painting that we’re interested in. It was a copy job. I’m not saying it was a forgery. I simply say that it was a clever copy.”
“That’s better,” Gilbert said.
“The copy,” Mason said, “was of a Phellipe Feteet. It was a copy of a picture of women under a tree with a strongly lighted background—”