She nodded, then after a moment said, “Chief, do you notice something peculiar about that?”
“What?”
“The way Adelle Hastings sticks up for Robert Peltham. After all, you know, Tidings has disappeared. That bloodstained coat could well be a blind to throw police off the track. Peltham has skipped out. Parker Stell is available and doing everything he can. Yet she accuses him of credulity and inefficiency.”
“Keep it up,” Mason encouraged. “You’re doing fine, Della. If you can think this thing out, I won’t have to work up a headache wrestling with a lot of confusing facts.”
She said, “Miss Hastings apparently had some pretty definite information as to what was going on, something on which she could base definite accusations.”
Mason nodded.
“She went to the bat and blew the lid off,” Della Street said. “Now according to all outward indications, Peltham is just as deep in the mud as Tidings is in the mire, but Adelle Hastings sticks up for him. Parker Stell, judging from newspaper accounts, is the only one who is doing the logical, reasonable, manly thing. Yet Miss Hastings doesn’t hesitate to accuse him of inefficiency.”
“You mean,” Mason asked, “that you think Adelle Hastings got her inside information as to what was going on from Robert Peltham?”
She said, “Goosy, wake up. I mean that Adelle Hastings holds the other half of the ten-thousand-dollar bill which we have in the safe.”
Mason sat bolt upright in his chair. “Now,” he said, “you have got something.”