“All right,” she said, her chin coming up, “I can take it. You do what’s necessary to help Belle.”
“You see,” Mason told her, “I’ve arranged for a detective to meet me at the dock. We’ll fly to Los Angeles and get busy. When I fight, I don’t stand up and block the other man’s punches. I try to find his weak point and hit him there. Now, in order to build up a good case against you, the district attorney will claim you wanted to get that money from Carl so you could get immunity for your husband, thereby saving Belle the unhappiness incident to exposure. It’ll take the district attorney a little while to get all that motivation pieced together. By the time he does, I want to have brought enough pressure to bear on the Products Refining Company so they won’t dare to make the embezzlement charge.”
Mason moved toward the door. She came to his side. There was animation in her eyes. “You can depend on me, Mr. Mason,” she said. “I’ll sit tight. They can’t drag a word out of me.”
“All right,” Mason told her. “Don’t answer any questions about your past. Don’t give them any clue which will enable them to link your husband with Carl Moar. Every minute you can delay them will give me that much more time within which to work. And,” he said grimly, as he opened the door, “I’ll need it.”
Mason found Belle Newberry in her stateroom with Della Street.
“How goes it, Belle?” he asked.
“Okay so far,” she told him. “They questioned me up one side and down the other.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them they weren’t officers of justice,” she said, “but persecutors. I refused to answer any of their questions. I said that anyone who would accuse my mother of a crime like that was a monster.”
Mason’s eyes were sympathetic. “I’m sorry I had to tell you to play it that way, Belle,” he said, “but for certain reasons it was the only thing to do.”