“When she marries Reeger?” Mason asked.
“Yes,” Freel said, his eyes still avoiding those of the lawyer.
“Go ahead and tell me about it.”
“That’s all there was to it. I was out of work, and desperate. Mrs. Tump had detectives hunt me up. She made me this proposition. That thousand dollars looked big to me. I’d have agreed to anything.”
“And that’s all bunk about this Russian blood in the girl’s veins?”
“Not entirely. The father is a Russian, the son of a headwaiter who was a refugee from Russia.”
Mason abruptly turned away from the little man and started pacing the floor. His hands were thrust deeply down in his trousers pockets. His eyes from time to time swung to study Freel’s face.
Drake, manifestly uncomfortable in the conventional, straight-backed, rickety chair, watched Mason in silent interest.
After several minutes of thoughtful floor-pacing, Mason said, with slow deliberation, “I can’t understand what interest Tidings had in bribing you to change your testimony… Exactly what did he want?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Mason,” Freel said hastily. “It never got that far. He tried to bribe me, and I let it be known right at the start that I wasn’t interested — that I wasn’t that sort of a man.”