“Well,” she went on, “it’s just guesswork, but I can’t figure Miss Hastings on any other basis. As one woman judging another woman, I’d say she was in love with Peltham… At any rate, she has a faith in him which doesn’t seem entirely justified by the circumstances, and she’s taking pains to make that faith public.
“The rest of it all fits in. You can see what would happen if it should appear that Peltham, as one of the trustees, had been carrying on a surreptitious intimacy with Adelle Hastings.”
“But why should it be surreptitious?” Mason asked. “Why couldn’t he have courted the girl or gone out and married her?… assuming, of course, he wasn’t already married.”
Della Street said, “Probably because of things we’ll find out later on. I’m just offering to bet that that Hastings girl holds the other half of your ten-thousand-dollar bill.”
Mason was reaching for a cigarette when Paul Drake’s knock sounded on the door which opened from Mason’s private office to the corridor.
“That’ll be Paul, Della,” he said. “Let him in… By George, the more I think of it, the more I believe you’re right. That, of course, would mean that there’d be no objection on Peltham’s part to our taking that Gailord case… But I have ideas about Mrs. Tump.”
“What sort of ideas?” she asked, opening the door to Paul Drake.
“I’ll tell you later,” Mason said. “Hello, Paul.”
Paul Drake was tall and languid. He spoke with a drawl, walked with a long, slow-paced stride. He was thinner than Mason, seldom stood fully erect, but had a habit of slouching against a desk, a filing cabinet, or slumping to a languid seat on the arm of a chair. He gave the impression of having but little energy to waste and wishing to conserve that which he had.
“Hi, Perry. Hi, Della,” Drake said, and walked over to the big leather chair. He dropped down with a contented sigh into the deep cushions, then after a moment raised his feet and twisted around so that his back was propped against one arm of the chair while his knees dangled over the other. “Well, Perry,” he said, “I’ve got to hand it to you.”