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questions."
    "What do you know about Grieb?"
    "Nothing much. Just what my granddaughter tells me. He's hard and ruthless. I warned you he wouldn't be easy."
    "Know anything about Duncan?"
    "Sylvia says he doesn't count. He's sort of a yes-man."
    "I think your granddaughter is fooled," Mason said.
    "I wouldn't doubt it. She's too young to know much about men of that type. She can size up the sheiks all right, tell just about when they're going to start getting ambitious and what their line's going to be, but she can't size up gamblers."
    "Her husband wants to get a divorce?"
    "Yes."
    "Why?"
    "Why do men usually want to get divorces?"
    Mason shook his head impatiently and said, "You'll have to play fair with me, Mrs. Benson. What's behind all this?"
    She smoked in silence for a few seconds and said, "When my granddaughter is twenty-six, which'll be next year, she gets one-half of a trust fund, and her daughter, Virginia, who's six, gets the other half, unless a judge should decide Sylvia isn't a fit person to have the custody of Virginia. In that case, Virginia gets all of it."
    "And with a situation like that brewing," Mason said incredulously, "she's given IOU's to a couple of gamblers?"
    Matilda Benson nodded. "Sylvia's always done pretty much as she pleased. That's why the property was left in trust and not given to her outright."
    "So her husband's trying to get some evidence which'll give him a divorce and cause Sylvia to lose her share of the trust funds?"
    "Yes."
    "Why?"
    "So his daughter will have twice as much money, and so he can have the handling of that money. If he ever finds out about those IOU's, he'll get them and use them to show Sylvia can't be trusted with money. He has other evidence, too, but, right now, he wants to show she can't be trusted with money. You'll have to work fast. I want those IOU's before Sam Grieb finds out how important they are."
    Mason said slowly, "I think Grieb already knows."
    "Then we're licked before we start."
    "No, we're not licked, but I begin to see why you wanted a lawyer. How much is the trust fund?"
    "Half a million in all. If Frank Oxman ever gets the custody of Virginia and gets his hands on the money it'll be like signing the kid's death warrant."
    "Surely not that bad," Mason said.
    "That man's like a rattlesnake."
    "He'd be under the control and supervision of the courts," Mason pointed out.
    She laughed mirthlessly. "You don't know Frank Oxman. Sylvia isn't any match for him. As long as I'm here I'll fight him, but I'm almost seventy. I'm not going to be here forever."
    "But look here," Mason said, "a court wouldn't deprive Sylvia of the custody of her child simply because she'd been gambling."
    "There are other things," Matilda Benson said grimly.
    "How about Frank Oxman; does he have any money?"
    "He has a little to gamble with."
    "What sort of gambling?"
    "The stock market mostly. That's considered respectable. Sylvia plays roulette, and that's considered immoral. People make me sick. They're hypocrites."
    "What I'm trying to find out," Mason said, "is how Oxman is going to get the money to take up those IOU's."
    "Don't worry, he'll raise that all right."
    "How?"
    "There's a ring that will put up money for things like that," she said. "Occasionally Frank is able to fix a prize fight or a horse race or something of that sort. He can always raise the necessary money to make a killing then."
    "Sylvia will pay off those IOU's if she gets that money from the trust fund?"
    "Of course."
    "No matter who has the IOU's?"
    Matilda Benson nodded.
    "It would help a lot," Mason said slowly, "if she wouldn't."
    "What do you mean?"
    "If Frank Oxman is going to buy those IOU's he'd have to offer cash for them. He'd have to offer the amount of the notes plus a bonus. If he's borrowing the money, he'd have to put up the IOU's as collateral. If the people who were loaning the money thought the collateral wasn't good, they'd refuse to put up the money."
    "No," she said slowly, "that