Della Street came out of the bathroom, smiling a cordial welcome.
“My secretary,” Mason said. “Della Street, Marcia Whittaker. Give her a hand, Della, if you will please.”
Mason returned to sit by the fireplace smoking in thoughtful silence until Marcia and Della returned.
“All right,” Mason said, “let’s have it. I want exact, detailed information. You can’t afford to indulge your emotions. Get right down to bedrock. You’ve cried before. You can cry afterward. Right now, you can’t cry.”
She said, “I can take it now, Mr. Mason. It was a hell of a wallop. I should have expected it. Life’s done that to me ever since I was a kid.”
“Forget that,” Mason said. “I want facts — all the facts — and I want them fast.”
She said, “I didn’t give you a fair break the first time I saw you. I knew Louie Conway and John Milicant were the same. John’s sister is a hypocrite. She’s knocked around plenty in her time, but now she’s developed complexes and wants the family to amount to something. I’m a little tart, and I mustn’t be in the family— Oh, dear no!”
“Skip all that,” Mason said. “Let’s get down to brass tacks. What happened to Louie? Tell me...”
She stopped him with a gesture. “You have to know about this other,” she said. “Let me tell it first — then I’ll tell... tell the other.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“Louie — John, is — was a good scout. He was too weak. I’m no tin angel myself. John liked good clothes, good cars. He hadn’t the training for a job. He couldn’t have held one down anyway. He went in for promoting. He liked horses, cards, dice, and gambling... John wasn’t young any more. Things were getting harder for him.
“I could understand him. His sister was figuring on marrying into a rich family. She wanted to keep the family background on the up and up, and make a nice impression on Alden Leeds. She had some dough, some settlement she got from a former husband. I don’t know how much. She told John he’d have to become respectable — no ponies, gambling, or promoting — until she’d got her hooks into Alden Leeds.
“John wasn’t the kind who could do that. His sister put him on an allowance. He stayed straight for a week or two, and then went back to the old life, keeping his sister in the dark. He took the name of Louie Conway and started the Conway Appliance Company. That was where I met him. I was clerking at a cigar counter. John came in and shook me a couple of games of twenty-six. He was lucky with dice all right, and the game was on the square. I’ve knocked around a bit myself, and I saw to that. A couple of customers came in and pretty quick they were shooting craps.
“John was rolling the dice. I was selling cigars. I saw the dice were crooked, but I didn’t say anything. If the suckers wanted to get trimmed, that was up to them. The way I figure it, a sucker is a sucker. If John hadn’t taken them, someone else would.
“Well, John knew that I’d spotted the dice. He came back later, and said, ‘Sister, you’ve got a nice mouth.” I said, ‘Most men talk about my eyes.“He said, ‘I’m talking about your mouth. It stays closed at the right time. Here’s fifty bucks. Buy yourself some glad rags.’
“I took a shine to him. I knew him as Louie Conway. We played around for a while. I was tired of living in little bedrooms and cheap furnished apartments with the furniture all battered up, and the thin mattresses having a ridge down the center.
“Louie got serious — and told his sister. She blew up, said everything was fixed with Alden Leeds and that it would ruin the play to have John bring a cigar-counter girl into the family.
“John wouldn’t give me up. He pretended to his sister that he had. She was suspicious. John started scheming, and then, one day, he came to me and said he’d used the Conway connection to get a stake out of Alden Leeds, and Leeds would never know that Conway and John Milicant were one and the same person. He told me I’d have to help him put it across, that then we’d get married, and he’d tell his sister to go jump in the lake.”
“Did you know what the shakedown was?”
“No, not then. I still don’t know.”
“Go on,” Mason told her.
“I didn’t want to do it. I’d never had a police record. I knew him well enough to know he was keeping himself in the background and pushing me out in front.”
“You can skip that,” Mason said. “Hell, we don’t need a blueprint. You did it. Then what?”
“Of course, I did it!” she blazed. “And why not? And don’t blame Louie too much either. Leeds is lousy with the dough. He can’t take it with him. It’s all right to talk about respectability if you’ve been educated so you can get by and be respectable, but when you have nothing back of you, you have to take things as they come.
“That’s the way John found life, and that’s the way I found it. I suppose some women think I’m cheap and flashy, but... well, John thought I was swell, and I thought he was swell... Anyhow, I was to go to his apartment at ten-thirty, and in the morning we were to get married, and be on our way. And... and I went up there about ten-twenty. I had a key. I walked on in, calling to John. I didn’t get any answer. I looked around the place. Things had been turned topsy-turvy. I was frightened and I ran into the bathroom. John was in there on the floor with the handle of a carving knife st-st-sticking... sticking...” She broke into tears, shook her head, and dropped down into a chair. “I c-c-can’t do it,” she said. “I c-c-can’t.”
“Take it easy, Marcia,” Mason told her. “I know how you feel, but you’re loaded with dynamite. If you found John had been murdered and didn’t notify the police, you’re in a fix, and, now that you’ve told us, if we don’t notify the police, we’re in a fix. You’re not our client. Alden Leeds is our client. This isn’t a privileged communication. We’re going off the deep end for you.”
Marcia Whittaker took a quivering breath, and said, “I go nuts every time I think of it... I knew what they were searching for. They didn’t find it.”
“How do you know they didn’t find it?” Mason asked.
“Because I have it,” she said.
Mason’s eyes narrowed.
“Louie wasn’t a fool,” she said. “He knew that his apartment might be searched. He had to have this stuff where he could get at it at any time. He left it with me.”
“What?”
“Papers.”
“What kind of papers? What would they buy?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I know that it got Louie twenty grand, and he said it was going to get him another twenty grand, maybe another eighty grand, before he’d let go of them.”
Mason, frowning thoughtfully, said, “Where did John get these papers?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Mason said, “All right, Marcia. Where is the stuff?”
“I have it.”
“Get it.”
“If I do, what do I get?”
Mason said, “Are you holding an auction?”
She said, “Don’t think I’m going to take the rap on this. Alden Leeds has dough. He can see me through. He’s the only one who can.”
“What’s the proposition?” Mason asked.
“I give Alden Leeds the papers if he agrees to stand by me.”
Mason thought for a moment, then said, “Suppose it should appear that Alden Leeds was in that apartment just before you were?”
She thought that over silently, then shook her head, and said, “No.”
“I think he was,” Mason said. “That puts you both on a spot. The natural way for you to get out is to try to pin the murder on him. The natural way for him to get out is to try to pin it on you.”
“If he does that,” she threatened, “I’ll... I’ll...”