Thats a safe assumption, Stone said, now change the subject. Devines attention was then drawn to a cab that pulled slowly down the street and stopped in front of the house. Two people got out, a man and a woman. They looked to be in their fifties. The man was bald and dressed in slacks and a white dress shirt. He looked like death itself. The womans face held the anguish of the recently bereaved. The man pulled out a large roller suitcase from the cabs trunk and then the cab drove off. Whats irregular is your people barging into her office without a search warrant, breaking into her safe, and taking her money.Thats highly irregular. Refunding it is highly regular. He picked up the grey file that he had placed on the table and leafed through it. When he found what he seemed to be searching for he looked back up at me. The one thats about to run over you! He wasnt sure about that, because he couldnt see it, but he thought it was the safe thing to say. Mason, his voice sharp, said,Dont try to tell me over the phone. Grab a cab and get up here as fast as you can. Dont go to the outer office. Come down the corridor to the side-exit door marked Private. Tap on it and I’ll let you in. Mason said,I mean this, Pete, that if you had just picked up the bottle the way you said, youd have put it in your boat someplace and the next time you happened to be over around the yachts and saw the ThayerbeUe anchored there youd have got in your skiff, rowed over to pass the time of day with Alder, and casually mentioned this bottle youd found. A man who has shaken the shackles of civilization the way you have doesn’t go around telephoning collect because he finds a bottle and … “ Mason said,By the time Hamilton Burger gets him in front of a jury, hell have changed his story all around. But well have this transcript on which we can impeach him, and that will keep his testimony somewhat in line. After hes thought it over, he’ll state that, giving the matter second thought,he feels that you probably were one of the two women who got in the taxicab later on in the evening and that you also were the one whom he took to the Union Station. Yes. She yawned.Sorry. Its time for me to pack it in. Ive got a husband at home who always makes breakfast for me no matter what time I roll in. That and bed sound pretty darned good right now. A woman died at your place of employment. Rachel Potter. Channel Forty-Four, but Im working my way up to the single-digit stations and you might just be my ticket. She eyed her beefy cameraman, who was driving. We have room in the front seat. Mason grinned.Im a stockholder in the company that owns the building. Even Hamilton Burger cant find a loophole in that. Just got a call from my office, and they insist they cant get along without me any longer. Ive asked Joan to book me on a flight home; ask her to send my bag, will you? It was great fun; lets do it again! And again, and again! Mason opened his cigarette case and he and Drake lit up. It was two or three seconds before he heard the door close behind him and he had taken three more steps before he heard the bolt shoot angrily into place. The roll, dummkopf, Stone breathed. Herbie liked the roll better..