“I didn’t,” she said. “I just made a shot in the dark.”
“You hit quite a bull’s-eye,” Mason said.
“Do you suppose they arranged things so that duplicate picture was actually hung in the salon in the yacht?” Drake asked.
“No,” Mason said. “They weren’t ready to switch paintings until after Olney had taken the bait. They needled Olney and Rankin, knowing someone would fall for it and walk into the trap. After Olney had filed his suit and had his experts all ready to go on the stand and swear that the picture was genuine, if he could have arranged it, Durant would have had the duplicate substituted, so that it was the duplicate that was brought into court.
“The experts, having seen and appraised the original, would be lulled into a false security, would get up on the stand and swear that this was an original Feteet. Then Durant’s attorney would have asked them to take a closer look and started cross-examining them. Suddenly the experts would have become just a little dubious and started looking for telltale marks of identification and perhaps not find them. They might have either continued to swear that it was an original or they might have backed up on their opinion and become more or less panic-stricken. Durant would have won out in either event.”
“But could he have proven that it was a copy?” Drake asked.
“They’ve got some secret mark on it, something that would have enabled him to prove it was a copy; that is, there’s some way of proving it was painted years after Feteet’s death.”
“Then, if he’d lived, Durant would have been able to have taken Olney for quite a ride.”
“If he’d lived,” Mason said dryly.
“So now?” Drake asked.
“Now,” Mason said, “you’d better keep your men working but go get yourself a night’s sleep, Paul. You look tired.”
“The reason I look tired,” Drake said, “is because I am tired. For your information, I’m going to stumble into a Turkish bath and sweat a lot of fatigue poisons out of me. Then I’m going to hit the hay and it’s going to be someplace where you can’t reach me on a telephone. Tomorrow morning I’ll be back on the job. Tonight I’m bushed, finished, all in, down and out, and I’m not going to get back on the job no matter what happens.”
“Tomorrow,” Mason said, “You’ll be like a new man.”
“Tomorrow is a long way off,” Drake told him.
“And tomorrow you’ll cover the banks?”
“What about the banks?”
“Where,” Mason asked, “does a man get hundred-dollar bills?”
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “I wish I did. I could use some.”
“From banks,” Mason told him. “You don’t go into a store and say, ‘May I cash a check and would you give it to me in hundreds, please?’ You don’t go to a motion picture theater and slide a thousand-dollar bill under the wicket and say, ‘Please give me the change in hundreds.’ ”
Drake blinked thoughtfully.
“Durant,” Mason went on, “had no bank account that meant anything. He couldn’t pay his rent. He was in debt. He bought painters’ supplies and ran behind. Then he paid off with hundred-dollar bills. That was two weeks ago. He had painting supplies sent to a beatnik artist. He paid the artist in hundred-dollar bills. Then he was broke again. Then he wanted Maxine out of town. He didn’t have any money to give her. He went away. He came back. He had hundred-dollar bills.”
“You mean he had another bank account under an assumed name?” Drake asked.
“The banks were closed,” Mason said.
“I’m tired,” Drake told him. “I don’t want to cope with it.”
“Go get a Turkish bath,” Mason told him, “and you can cope tomorrow.”
The lawyer turned to Della Street. “I’m taking you home, Della, and tomorrow at eight-thirty we have a conference in the office.”
“Nine-thirty,” Drake said.
“Eight-thirty,” Mason repeated.
“Nine.”
“Eight-thirty.”
“All right,” Drake said. “Eight-thirty. What’s an hour out of a night’s sleep?”
Chapter Eleven
Mason opened the door of his office promptly at eight-thirty.
Della Street evidently had been there for some time. The electric coffee percolator had filled the room with the aroma of coffee.
As Mason walked in, Della Street smiled a greeting, turned the silver spigot and filled a cup with steaming coffee.
“Paul?” Mason asked.
She shook her head. “Not at his office yet and he hasn’t shown.”
Mason looked at his watch, frowned.
Abruptly Drake’s code knock sounded on the door.
Mason indicated the coffee percolator to Della, said, “I’ll open the door.”
The lawyer opened the door. Drake entered and almost mechanically extended his hand as Della Street put the cup and saucer in it.
“Now, that’s service!” Drake said.
“Up and at ’em, Paul,” Mason told him. “This is the day you’re going to have to cope.”
“What do we cope with?” Drake asked.
“Police,” Mason said. “We have to know how much of a case they have against Maxine. There’s something they’re not releasing. We have to find out about Collin Durant’s hundred-dollar bills. When he needed money bad enough he could get it, in hundred-dollar bills. But he had to need it for some dire business necessity. For personal expenses such as paying his rent, he didn’t have money.”
“He had it all right,” Drake said, “but he wasn’t putting out. He had it stashed away somewhere. When you get hundred-dollar bills after the banks close, you have the money cached away somewhere.”
“Ten thousand bucks?” Mason asked.
Drake sipped the coffee, said after a moment, “He was going places. He had cleaned out his whole hiding place.”
“All right,” Mason said, “try and find it.”
“I can help you on the police end,” Drake said after a moment.
“How come?”
“I stopped by the office. One of my men had a report. He’d talked with a newspaper reporter. They had Maxine in a show-up box. Some woman identified her absolutely and positively. The police were tickled to death.”
Mason put down his coffee cup, started pacing the room.
Paul Drake held out his empty coffee cup. Della Street filled it.
“They aren’t taking her before a grand jury,” Drake said. “They’re going to file a complaint and have her bound over for trial and prosecute the case by information.”
“Where did you get all this?” Mason asked.
“My operatives were working all night,” Drake said. “I haven’t had a chance to do more than skim through the reports. I took a quick look and then came on in here.”
Mason picked up his brief case. “I’m going down to have a talk with Maxine,” he said.
“Want me with you?” Della Street asked.
Mason shook his head. “I’m going to talk with her and see at what point she starts lying. She’d be more cautious with another woman present. I want to have her turn on the charm and try to make a believer out of me.”
“She’s already done that or you wouldn’t have taken the case,” Drake said.
“I know,” Mason said. “I felt that way yesterday. Today I need a little reassurance.”
“You’ll fall for her all over again, hook, line and sinker,” Drake said.
“I hope I do,” Mason told him. “If she can sell her story to me the way I feel this morning, she can sell it to a jury.”
Della Street said, “Don’t be a square, Paul. That’s why he’s going to see the girl.”
“Oh, Lord,” Drake moaned. “You picked up the jargon last night. I’m a square!”