Mason hung up the telephone, strolled down the linoleum-floored corridor to the big marble steps in front of the hospital, where he enjoyed the sunlight and concentrated over a cigarette until Paul Drake slid his car in close to the curb. Mason ran down the steps, jumped into the car and said, “Let’s tackle that banker on the gambling angle, Paul.”
“Okay,” Drake said, spinning the wheel. “Why is the gambling-house angle so important?”
Mason said, “Because the books don’t balance, Paul.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason said, “Notice that, according to the reports Cullens gave Lone Bedford over the telephone, George Trent had been up to The Golden Platter on Saturday night and had hocked the stones for six thousand dollars. Cullens was going to get them for three.”
“Well?” Drake asked.
“George Trent’s body,” Mason said, “was found in his office. According to all the reports I get, when he goes out on a drunk he doesn’t shave, bathe or change his clothes. He gets pretty disreputable. Now then, he was neatly dressed, and there wasn’t any stubble on his face when his body was found. He must have been killed in his own office. If he went to the gambling house and pawned those stones for six thousand dollars, he must have returned to his office some time that night and was killed there.”
“Well,” Drake said, “why couldn’t that have happened?”
“It just doesn’t fit into the picture. In the first place, he’d mailed in the keys to his car. He’d gone out to get drunk. It’s a moot question whether he’d have taken the Bedford diamonds with him. Now then, if he did, it’s hard to believe he’d have hocked diamonds which didn’t belong to him — at least that early in the game. After he’d been on a bat for two or three days and his sense of perspective had become pickled in alcohol, it might have been different.”
“What are you getting at?” Drake asked.