He answered the telephone himself.
‘What do you make of him, Justin?’
‘I don’t think he did it,’ Francon said briskly. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can get him off. I’ll try, but it looks pretty hopeless. The frame’s too good. Whoever planted the evidence knew his business. The money is damning. Shall we get together tomorrow morning at my office? We’ll have a look at it from every angle and see what we can do. Make it ten. All right?’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said.
‘Don’t expect too much, Vic. I don’t like to say it, but I think he’s a dead duck.’ ‘He isn’t dead yet,’ I said shortly and hung up.
III
Justin Francon sat in his desk chair with his legs hanging over one of the arms, his thumbs hooked into the armholes of his vest, a dead cigar jutting out of his face.
He was a thin, small, leathery man with a straggly black moustache, high cheekbones, a big, bony nose and small, bright black eyes. He reminded me of a ferret. You wouldn’t think to look at him he was the smartest lawyer on the Pacific Coast, but he was. He was in a class of his own, and had more millionaire clients in his fee-book than any other lawyer in the country.
Paula, Kerman and I sat in a half-circle before the massive desk. Francon allowed us the doubtful privilege of studying his profile while he stared out of his office window at the golden beach stretched out twenty storeys below him. The silence mounted in the big air office while he turned the facts over in his mind.
Finally, he shrugged, swung his legs off the arm of the chair and faced us.