“While she was sunbathing at the beach.”
“She looks expensive,” Mason observed, and, after a moment, added, “and interesting.”
Della Street, studying the picture with that skeptical appraisal which one woman gives to another, said, “She spends money on herself, and she wasn’t wearing that suit to attract sunshine so much as attention. Notice that wrist watch?”
Mason studied the wrist watch. “Any dope on it, Paul?” he asked.
“I can probably get some,” Drake said. “Why?”
Mason said, “We’re going to make a play on that wrist watch, Paul, and we’re going to have to work fast.”
“What sort of a play?” Drake asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Mason told him, “but we’re going to get Rooney in some sort of a jam. The only way he can get himself out is by giving us the low-down on that embezzlement and, using that as ammunition, we’ll scare the Products Refining Company into keeping its mouth shut.”
Drake said, “I can tell you what I think is the joker, Perry. The Products Refining Company, and a couple of other companies, have an interlocking directorate and a holding company. There are a lot of accounts payable and accounts receivable. Some of the subsidiary companies pay in money and others borrow that money and give notes for the indebtedness. Then they gradually retire the notes, and that money is borrowed by another company, and everybody gets dizzy.”
“You mean they’re dodging income tax?” Mason asked.