Mason nodded grimly. “Okay,” he said.
She looked at him with eyes that showed a trace of concern. “Wouldn’t it be better, Chief, to sit tight now and let things develop?”
“I’m not built that way,” he said. “It would probably be the prudent thing to do. In any event, it would be the conventional thing to do, but you never get far being prudent and conventional. Right now, this case is wide open. If I sit back and wait, it’ll crystallize against the client I’ll eventually have to represent.”
“But if you keep doing things which are advantageous to that client, you’ll never be paid,” she pointed out.
Mason said, “From now on the things I’m going to do will make their hair stand up… Take that ad down to the Contractor’s Journal and leave word in Drake’s office that he’s to come in here as soon as he gets back to the office… That little devil, Adelle Hastings, figures she can trump my aces and make me like it.”
“How can you stop her playing it that way, Chief, as long as you keep working on the case?”
Mason grinned, but without humor. “I’m going to make it no-trumps,” he said.
Della Street adjusted her hat in front of the office mirror. “Well,” she observed, “there’s no use telling you to be careful.”
“Whoever got anything in life by being careful?” Mason retorted. “Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow’s going to do, you unconsciously figure what you’d do in his place. The result is that you’re not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense.
“The best fighters don’t worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking.”