The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse

“Apparently the police don’t consider he has sufficient connection with things to bother very much about him. But my men have looked him up. He’s apparently just a common ordinary businessman, with a pretty good judgment when it comes to investments, but he’s the best poker player at his club and they say he never loses, regardless of how the cards happen to run.”

“You mean he cheats?”

“No, he bluffs, and when he’s bluffing, the other players think he has them bigger than a house. When he has them, they think he’s bluffing. Fellows who have played with him for years still get fooled. What do you want to see him for, Perry? What do you think he can tell you?”

“Damned if I know,” Mason said, “but I’m going to round up every angle of this case. Hang it, Paul, I’ve got to do it. I’m really in a mess this time, and they’ve got Della roped into it. That’s what comes of trusting a golddigger. Oh well, there’s no use conducting post mortems. By the time the police let me get in touch with Sally Madison she’ll have been bled white. I’m getting out a writ of habeas corpus and that of course will force their hand. They’ll have to put a charge against her. But by the time they do that, they’ll have really put her through a clothes wringer. Keep working, Paul, and if you get anything new, let Della Street know. Work on this case as you’ve never worked on anything else in your life. We’re working against time and we’ve got to find out not only the evidence, but we’ve got to interpret that evidence.”

“Did the broken goldfish bowl mean anything to you?”

“It means a lot,” Mason said.

“How come?”

“Suppose Sally Madison isn’t as dumb as she appears. Suppose back of that poker face of hers is a shrewd, calculating mind that isn’t missing a bet.”

“I’ll go with you that far,” Drake said.

“And suppose,” Mason went on, “she reasoned out what had happened to the bullet that Faulkner had taken to the office. Suppose when Faulkner gave her the key there in the café at the time he made the deal with her and told her to get Tom Gridley and go out and treat his fish, Sally Madison went out instead and used the soup ladle to get the bullet out of the tank. Then suppose she very shrewdly sold that bullet to the highest bidder.”

“Wait a minute,” Drake said. “You’ve got something wrong there, Perry.”

“What?”

“According to all the evidence, those goldfish must have been gone when Sally got there. Faulkner must have given her a complete double-cross on that.”

“All right, so what?”

“So when she went there to get the bullet, she would have known that the goldfish were gone.”

“Not goldfish,” Mason said, “a pair of Veiltail Moor Telescopes.”

“Okay. They’re goldfish to me.”

“You won’t think so after you’ve seen them,” Mason said. “If Sally Madison went in there to get that bullet, the fact that the fish weren’t there wouldn’t have stopped her from getting what she was after.”

“And then she went back and got Tom Gridley and came out the second time?”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” Drake said, “it’s a theory, Perry. You’re giving that girl credit for an awful lot of sense.”

Mason nodded.

“I think you’re giving her too much credit,” Drake said.

Mason said, “I didn’t give her enough credit for awhile. Now I’m going to make my mistakes on the other side. That girl’s batted around a bit, Paul. She knows some of the answers. She’s in love with Tom Gridley. You take a woman of that type, when she falls for a man, it’s usually a combination of a starved mother instinct and a sex angle. My best guess is that that girl would stop at nothing. Anyway, I haven’t time to stay here and talk it over now. I’m on my way to see Dixon.”

“Be careful with Dixon,” Drake warned.

Mason said, “I’m going to be careful with everybody from now on, Paul, but it isn’t going to slow me down any. I’m going to keep moving.”

Mason drove to the address of Wilfred Dixon, found the house to be a rather imposing edifice of white stucco, red tile, landscaped grounds, a three-car garage and an atmosphere of quiet luxury.

Mason had no difficulty whatever in getting an immediate audience with Wilfred Dixon, who received him in a room on the southeast side of the house, a room which was something of a cross between a den and an office, with deep leather chairs, Venetian blinds, original oils, a huge flat-topped desk, a portable bar, and a leather davenport which seemed to invite an afternoon siesta. There were three telephones on the desk, but there were no filing cases in the room, no papers visible on the desk.

Wilfred Dixon was a short, chunky man with perfectly white hair, steel-gray eyes, and a face which was deeply tanned from the neck to the roots of the hair. His complexion indicated either considerable time spent on the golf links without a hat, or regular treatments under a quartz lamp.