“How many do I cash?”
“Four or five, then try to let someone get suspicious.”
“Okay. I’ll keep you posted.”
Mason telephoned a restaurant to send up sandwiches and coffee.
At one-thirty Della Street telephoned again. “Two department stores, twenty bucks each. Okay. I’m ready to try for a big one now.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be right here.”
Mason called the switchboard operator and said, “I won’t see any client this afternoon. Keep my line open. I’m expecting Della Street to call in. It may be important. I don’t want her call to run into a busy signal.”
He hung up and lit a cigarette, smoked four puffs, and threw it away. Thirty seconds later, he lit another one. He got up and began pacing the office floor. From time to time, he looked at his wrist watch.
There was a timid knock at the door of the outer office, and the switchboard operator opened the door and eased herself into the room. “Mr. Clint Magard is out there,” she said. “He says he has to see you, that it’s important, that...”
“I won’t see him. Get back to the switchboard.”
She backed out of the room.
A moment later, she returned. “He said I was to give you this note.” She ran across the office, dropped the note into Mason’s palm, and dashed back.
Mason read:
You have a duty to your client. If you don’t see me right now, it will be just too bad for that client.
Think it over.
Mason crumpled the note into a ball, threw it down into the wastebasket, picked up the telephone and said, “He’s called the winning number. Send him in.”
Magard was heavy-set, bald-headed, with a fringe of red hair around his ears and the back of his head. He wore spectacles and had a triple chin. Mason recognized him at once as the man in evening clothes he had seen going into Sindler Coll’s apartment.
“Sit down,” Mason said. “Start talking. I’ve got something on my mind. I didn’t want to be disturbed. I’m nervous as hell, and I’m apt to be irritable. If what you have to say will keep, it had better keep.”
“It won’t keep.”
“All right then, spill it.”
Magard said, “I presume you think I’m a heel.”
Mason said, “It’s a temptation to answer that question in detail. That’s not an auspicious beginning.”
Magard’s face was as fat and placid as a full moon on a summer evening. “I know how you feel,” he said.
“What did you want to tell me?”
“I want you to know where I stand.”
“I don’t give a damn where you stand.”
“Your client’s interests...”
“Go ahead,” Mason interrupted.
“Lynk and I are partners in the Golden Horn.”
“You mean you were.”
“All right, we were. We didn’t get along too well together. I didn’t have enough money to buy him out at the price he wanted, and I wouldn’t sell. It’s a good business. I had no idea Lynk was playing around with this stuff on the side.”
“What stuff?”
“Sindler Coll, Esther Dilmeyer, crooked horse racing, a sort of glorified tout service.”
“But you were friendly with Sindler Coll?”
“I never saw him in my life until last night — that is, this morning — when I called on him at his request.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”
“I’m listening.”
“Coll thought we should get together. He said you’d be representing the murderer, that you’d try to get her off, and...”
“Why do you say her? Why not him?”
“Because I think it was a woman.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I have my reasons.”
“All right, Coll sent for you. He thought that I was going to be representing the murderer. So what?”
“That you’d be clever as the very devil and would be trying to get your client off.”
“That’s natural.”
“That in order to do it you’d pin the murder on someone else. Coll said that he’d long been interested in the way you tried cases. He said you never tried them by simply trying to prove your client innocent. You always tried to pin it on someone else. He said that it happened too often. He figured you framed on someone, and then stampeded a jury.”
“And he called you at that hour of the morning to tell you that?”
“No, to suggest that we take steps to see that we were protected.”
“In other words, that I couldn’t pin the murder on you or him.”
“That’s right.”
Mason said, “It’s an idea at that. Thanks for giving it to me.”
“You’re welcome,” Magard said, and smiled a little.
“So you had this conference,” Mason said, “then you come to me. Why?”
“Because I thought you should know what Coll was doing. He wanted me to give him an alibi, and then he’d give me one. We’d swear we were together.”
“And you decided not to play ball with him?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because,” and this time Magard’s smile was very much in evidence, “I happen to have an alibi.”
“And Coll doesn’t?”
“Not one that he thinks would stand up.”
“Will yours stand up?”
“Absolutely.”
“Why did you come to me?”
“Because I want something.”
“What?”
“I’m not a fool, Mr. Mason. I know that when you start fighting, you rip things wide open. I know that Lynk was mixed up in a bunch of stuff. It isn’t going to look good, no matter how it’s dressed up. But you can — well, you can make it look like hell.”
“And you want me to pull my punches?”
“No. But if you can get your client acquitted without making a stink about my business, I’ll appreciate it.”
“I’m not making any promises.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“Won’t the police close you up anyway?”
Magard’s triple chin rippled as his lips twisted into such a broad smile that the pouches of fat on his cheeks pushed his eyes almost closed. “You leave that to me, Mr. Mason.”
“I intend to,” Mason said. “What’s your proposition?”
“I’m interested in helping you get your client off before trial.”
“So there won’t be any publicity?”
“That’s right.”
“What do you want in return?”
“I want you to go easy with the newspapers. If there’s a preliminary hearing, I want you to leave the Golden Horn out of it just as much as you can.”
“No dice,” Mason said.
“Wait a minute,” Magard went on, holding up a pudgy forefinger. “There’s one qualifying phrase I was going to add. I want you to leave the Golden Horn out of it as much as you can if you find it will be to the advantage of your client to do so.”
“That’s different.”
“I thought it would be.”
Mason said, “I won’t hamstring myself one bit, Magard. I won’t make any promises. I won’t...”
Magard interrupted him by holding up his hand, making a waving motion of the wrist as though patting the words back in the lawyer’s mouth. “Now, wait a minute, Mason. Keep your shirt on. If it’s to the best advantage of your client not to burn me up, you won’t do it. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“My client comes first.”
“Then the answer is yes?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’m going to keep you posted on what’s going on. I’m going to give you enough dope so that I’ll be valuable to you. I’ll keep coming in here and telling you things just as fast as I find them out — as long as you don’t throw mud on the Golden Horn. Now you’re not under any obligation to me whatever. You can go ahead and throw mud any time you want to, but the minute you do that, you’ve quit getting any information from me.”