“I’ll say. What about the newspaper, Chief?”
“Shortly after midnight,” Mason said, “I received a two-thousand-dollar retainer and a piece out of a ten-thousand-dollar bill. I had an interesting session with a masked woman and a man who seemed very much worried about something, who intimated that some startling news would be found in the morning newspaper.”
“And you can’t find it?” she asked.
“I haven’t looked as yet,” he said with a grin. “Sufficient for the day are the business hours thereof.”
“Who were the parties?”
“The man,” he said, “was Robert Peltham, an architect. He didn’t seem particularly pleased when I discovered his real identity. He wanted me to believe that he was John L. Cragmore of 5619 Union Drive. That was the one slip he made. There isn’t any Cragmore listed at that address in the telephone book. It was a slip which I can’t understand. He had so thoroughly prepared all the other steps in his campaign that I can’t imagine him falling down on such a simple matter. If he’d only given me a name that appeared in the telephone book, I’d have fallen for it — at least temporarily.”
“Go on,” she said.
Mason told her briefly of the mysterious caller and what had taken place at the interview.
“How did he get your unlisted telephone number, Chief?”
“That is simply another indication of the care with which he’d prepared his campaign.”