The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (4 page)

Duncan said chidingly, "Now, Sammy!"

Mason said, "I'd want to inspect these."

Grieb spread them out on the desk, holding them flat against the glass, his extended fingers pressing firmly against the upper edges. "Look 'em over," he invited grimly.

Mason objected. "That's not what I'd call inspecting them."

"That's what I call inspecting them," Grieb said.

Duncan said soothingly, "Now, Sammy. Now, Sammy. Take it easy."

"I'm taking it easy," Grieb said. "There was a check on this desk and he picked it up to 'inspect' it. Now it's torn in pieces and is in this guy's pocket."

"The check was different," Mason said.

"Well, I didn't like the way you did it," Grieb told him.

Mason's eyes were cold. "No one asked you to," he said shortly.

Duncan interposed. "Now, wait a minute, boys. This isn't getting us anywhere."

Grieb's face darkened with rage. He picked up the oblongs of paper and said irritably, "That's the way he's been ever since he came in. You'd think he was God and I was some sort of a crook. To hell with him!"

Duncan moved over to the desk, extended his hands for the notes. His face still smiling, but his eyes were hard. "This is a business deal, Sammy," he said.

"It isn't with me," Grieb told him. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no dice. We're handing these guys a lawsuit on a silver platter and they're trying to make us come all the way. To hell with it."

Duncan said nothing, but stood by the desk, his hand extended. And after a moment, Grieb handed him the slips of paper and said, "All right, you do it, if you know so much about it."

Duncan handed one of the notes to the lawyer. "The other two," he said, "are like this."

"I'd want to see them all," Mason said, without reaching for the note.

"You can look them over one at a time," Duncan told him.

Drake said, "That's fair, Perry. We'll look them over one at a time."

Mason slowly extended his hand and took the oblong of paper. He and Drake studied it carefully while Duncan watched them with cold eyes over smiling lips. Grieb opened the left-hand drawer of the desk and dropped his hand casually into the interior.

The note was on a printed form such as might have been readily obtained in any stationery store. It was in an amount of twenty-five hundred dollars, signed "Sylvia Oxman," and in the blank left for the name of the payee had been filled in, in the same feminine handwriting, the letters, "IOU." The date showed that the note was sixty days old.

Mason handed it back to Duncan. Duncan handed him another one and said, "This one was made a month earlier," and as Mason finished his inspection and returned it, handed him the third, saying, "This is the first one."

As Mason returned the IOU to Duncan, Grieb removed his hand from the desk drawer and slammed it shut. Mason said softly, "So what?"

"Well," Duncan said, "you're a lawyer. You don't need me to tell you what those things are."

Grieb said, "We know what those things are worth."

Duncan's voice was soothing. "With those in your hand, Mr. Mason," he said, "you'd hold all the trumps. A court would never let a woman handle a kid's money if she was a fiend for gambling. Suppose you make us an offer."

"Offer, hell," Grieb interrupted. "We'll set the price on those, Charlie. This means a lot to Oxman. It's just what he's been looking for, and he can't get to first base without them. They've been snooping around, trying to get some of our men to talk. You know as well as I do how much chance they stand of doing that. We hold the cards and we'll call the trumps." Mason got to his feet.

"Now, wait a minute," Duncan said. "Don't be like that, Mason. My partner's hot-headed, that's all."

"He's not hot-headed, he's cold-hearted."

"Well, after all, it's a matter of business," Duncan pointed out.

Mason nodded. "Sure it is, but you're the ones who don't know it. Sylvia hasn't any money right now. She can't even pay the face of those notes. You think they're worth a lot to me and you think you can hold me up. That's where you're making a mistake. There isn't any competitive market. No one else gives a damn about them."

"Let's put 'em back in the safe, Duncan," Grieb said, "I don't like to do business with pikers."

"And," Mason told him steadily, "I don't like to do business with crooks."

Grieb got to his feet so violently that the swivel chair shot back on its rollers to crash against the wall. His pasty face mottled into bluish patches.

Charlie Duncan, tilting his chair back against the wall, thrust his thumbs through the armholes of his vest and said chidingly, "Now, boys, don't be like that."

Mason walked across to the desk to stare steadily at Grieb. "Now," he said, "I'll tell you something about where you get off. You're out beyond the twelve-mile limit, which means out of the state. I can serve a subpoena duces tecum on you, have a commission appointed to take your deposition, come out here and make you swear under oath that you haven't got those IOU's, or else make you produce them. In that way I won't have to pay so much as a thin dime."

Charlie Duncan laughed softly. "Sammy's memory's awfully bad at times, Mason."

"Well, mine isn't," Mason snapped. "I'd ask you about those IOU's. If you made false answers I'd do things to you in a federal court. You're outside the state, but you're in United States territory as long as your ship is registered under the American flag.

"Now then, the only chance you stand of getting one cent above the face of those IOU's is to sell them to me. I'll offer you a bonus of one thousand dollars. That doesn't grow on bushes. You can take it or leave it. I'm going to give you thirty seconds to say yes or no, and then I'm going to walk out."

Grieb was breathing heavily. "Keep on walking, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "The answer is no."

Duncan didn't bother to look at Grieb. His eyes were appraising Mason. They were hard and merciless, but his gold teeth still glittered through grinning lips. "I've got something to say about this. Sammy, keep your shirt on. Now, Mr. Mason, you know as well as I do that these notes are worth a lot more than a thousand dollars above their face."

"Not to me they aren't," Mason said.

Grieb snorted. "Throw the piker off the ship, Charlie."

"Take it easy, Sammy," Duncan said, still looking at Mason. "Take your weight off your feet and shut up. I'm handling this."

"I guess I have something to say about it," Grieb protested. "I don't know who the hell you think you are. You're gumming the works. These notes are worth ten thousand dollars above their face, and I won't let them go until I get my share."

Duncan, still tilted back in his chair, said, "You see how my partner feels, Mason. Suppose we compromise on five grand."

"I don't give a damn how your partner feels," Mason said. "I've offered you a thousand dollars and that's my limit. If you suckers keep on holding those notes, you'll find yourselves holding the sack. By the time the smoke blows away, Sylvia isn't going to be able to pay even the face of those notes."

"That's a bluff," Grieb said.

"Now, Sammy, keep your shirt on," Duncan told him.

Grieb started toward Duncan. "Listen, Charlie," he shouted. "I'm running the office end of this business. You haven't invested anything here except a lot of conversation. I know what those IOU's are worth, and you ain't going to make a cheapskate out of me."

Duncan turned to look at him then, and his gold teeth vanished. "Sit down, you damn fool," he said, "and shut up. If Frank Oxman doesn't buy these notes, who's going to?"

"Sylvia will take them up."

"When?"

"Pretty soon."

"For how much?"

"Well, if she knew we had a chance to sell them…"

Duncan's coldly contemptuous gaze silenced his partner. He turned to Mason, "Suppose you boys go out in the other room for a little while," he said, "and let me talk to my partner. I want to be reasonable, but I agree with him a thousand dollars is altogether too small a sum to…"

"Then," Mason interrupted, "there's no need of our waiting. I've offered you a thousand dollars, and that's final. Take it or leave it. Don't ever forget I can put you two birds on the witness stand and find out everything I want to know without its costing me a damn cent. Anytime a…"

"Now, take it easy," Duncan interrupted soothingly. "This isn't going to get us anywhere, Mason. It's a business proposition. You two boys go out in the other room and wait a few minutes." He walked over to the heavy door, jerked the lever which pulled the bolts back, twisted the knurled knob of the spring lock and held the door open. "Make yourselves at home, boys. There's some magazines right over there. We won't be over five minutes."

"If you're as long as five minutes," Mason said, "you won't find us here when you come out."

Grieb yelled, "Go ahead and go, you damn piker, and see who cares!"

Duncan, still smiling, closed the door on Mason and the detective. The spring lock clicked into position. A half second later the iron bars shot home.

Drake turned to Mason and said, "Why not boost it to fifteen hundred, Perry? They'd take that. It would give Grieb a chance to save his face."

Mason said, "To hell with Grieb, and his face too. I don't like his damned blackmailing hide."

Drake shrugged his shoulders. "It's your funeral, Perry."

Mason slowly grinned and said, "No, it isn't. Duncan's nobody's fool. That talk I gave him about taking their depositions scared hell out of him. It's just a question of how long it'll take him to whip Grieb into line… Evidently there's friction between them."

"That's going to make it all the harder for us," Drake said.

Mason shook his head. "No, it isn't, Paul, it's going to make it easier."

"Why?"

"Because this partnership isn't going to last very much longer. They're fighting. Duncan is a shrewd thinker. Grieb flies off the handle. Now then, figure it out. If this partnership is going to bust up, it's a lot better to have eighty-five hundred dollars in cash to divide than seventy-five hundred in IOU's to try and collect."

Drake said, "That's so, Perry. I hadn't figured on that."

"Duncan's figuring on it," Mason said.

They were silent for a moment. Quick, nervous steps sounded in the passageway outside of the office. The two men listened while the steps swung around the right-angle turn in the corridor and approached the door of the reception office. Iron bars were jerked back on the other side of the door from the inner office. A knob twisted. The door opened explosively and Duncan, carrying the IOU's, said to Mason, "Okay. Pay over the money. It'll have to be cash."

"How about your partner?" Mason asked.

"Pay over the cash," Duncan said. "I have the IOU's here. That's all you want…"

The door from the hallway opened. A woman in her middle twenties, her trim figure clad in a dark, tailored suit, stared at them with black, disinterested eyes, then turned to Duncan and said, "I want to see Sam."

Duncan crumpled the oblongs of paper in his right hand and pushed them down into his coat pocket. His gold teeth came into evidence. "Sure, sure," he said. "Sam's right inside." But he continued to stand in the doorway, blocking her passage.

Once more she flashed her eyes in quick appraisal of the two men, then stepped forward until she was standing within two feet of Duncan, who kept his left hand on the knob of the partially opened door. "Well?" she asked smiling. "Do I go in?"

Duncan shifted his eyes to study Mason and Drake, and she, following the direction of his gaze, glanced at them for the third time. Duncan's smile expanded into a grin. "Sure," he said, his eyes focused on Drake's face, "go right on in." He shoved the door open, stepped to one side, raised his voice and said, "Don't you two talk any business until I get there."

She swept through the door and Duncan, still grinning pulled it shut behind her.

"Well, boys," he said, "it's too bad your little scheme didn't work. I'll see a lawyer tomorrow, Mason, and see if we can't pin something on you. We may have something to take before the D.A. In the meantime, don't forget the ship, boys. It's a nice place to gamble. We give you a good run for your money."

Mason said, "No, Duncan, we won't forget the ship."

"And," Duncan assured him, "we won't forget you." He escorted them down the corridor until the uniformed guard had opened the outer door. "Well, good night, boys," he said. "Come back any time."

He turned and retraced his steps down the corridor. Mason took the detective's arm and led him toward the gangway where departing patrons caught the speed boat.

"Was that Sylvia Oxman?" Drake asked.

"It must have been," Mason said, "and when she failed to recognize you and you gave her a dead pan, Duncan saw the play. Remember, you're supposed to be the lady's husband."

"Doesn't that leave us in something of a spot," Drake asked anxiously, "having tried to pick up the lady's notes and pulled all this hocus-pocus?"

"That depends on the breaks," Mason said gloomily. "Evidently it isn't our night to gamble."