The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

Chapter Ten

It was a highly nervous, excited Harlow Bancroft who kept his appointment the next morning.

The man seemed to be almost on the point of cracking up.

“What is it, Bancroft?” Mason asked.

“My wife,” Bancroft said.

“What about her?”

“Mr Mason, what I’m going to tell you has to be in absolute confidence.”

“Certainly,” Mason said. “It is. Anything you say is a privileged, professional communication.”

“You said there were four ways of dealing with blackmailers,” Bancroft said. “Do you remember the methods?”

“Yes.”

“One of the ways,” Bancroft said, “was to kill the blackmailer.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. “You mean your wife has done that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Where?”

“Aboard my yacht, the Jinesa.”

“Who knows about it?” Mason asked. “Did you report it to the police?”

“No. I’m afraid that’s where we’ve made our big mistake.”

“Better tell me about it,” Mason said, “and tell me about it fast.”

Bancroft said, “My wife had some charitable bazaar work that she was going to do the first part of the evening last night and then she wanted me to join her at our apartment, saying that she might be late getting in, on account of her other commitments.

“Now, apparently what actually happened was this... Now, Mason, you’ve got to assure me this will be absolutely confidential.”

“Keep talking,” Mason said. “You may not have much time.”

“Well, it seems that Jetson Blair had a brother, Carleton Rasmus Blair, who was supposed to have been dead—”

“I know all about that,” Mason interrupted.

“All right. Carleton Blair was living at the Ajax-Delsey Apartments under the name of Irwin Victor Fordyce. He had a very close friend by the name of Willmer Gilly, who was also living there. The place has rather a low reputation. Apparently crooks know about it as a good place to hole up where the landlord doesn’t ask too many questions and isn’t at all curious.

“Gilly had been released from San Quentin at about the same time Fordyce had and the two were inseparable; that is, Fordyce thought that Gilly was his great friend.

“So Fordyce, reading in the paper all about the society gossip connecting Jetson Blair and Rosena Andrews, finally confided to Gilly that he was a member of the Blair family, that he was the black sheep of the family and everyone thought he was dead.

“Apparently Gilly decided to cash in on the information. He put the bite on Rosena and he put the bite on Phyllis, my wife, and Phyllis paid off.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Then, after all this publicity in connection with the money in the coffee can, Gilly tried to get Rosena to make another payment. Rosena was smart enough to pretend she thought she was talking with some newspaper reporter and refused to commit herself.

“So Gilly apparently decided to go to Phyllis personally.

“Now, here comes the thing I can’t understand. Phyllis decided that since Irwin Fordyce was the club the blackmailers were using, she should go and find out exactly what Fordyce knew about all this.

“So she found out where Fordyce was, at the Ajax-Delsey Apartments, went there and put it up to him, asking him whether he was a blackmailer and a heel as well as being the black sheep of the family.

“Fordyce was completely flabbergasted to think that Gilly would have tried anything like that. He swore he would kill Gilly. Then he calmed down somewhat and told Phyllis that he’d take care of it, to pay no more attention to any blackmail demands.

“Phyllis became alarmed.

“Phyllis also knew, from what Gilly had said, that the police might be looking for Fordyce in connection with a service-station holdup and she was afraid of what would happen if Fordyce got together with Gilly. She was afraid the fat might really be in the fire, so she suggested to Fordyce that he come with her, that she would drive him down to our yacht, the Jinesa, then get him some money, and he could spend a week or two on the yacht, which would be the last place anyone would look for him.

“Now, of course, Phyllis had no right to do that, particularly as she knew that Fordyce was wanted by the police.”

“How did she know it?” Mason asked.

“Gilly had told her.”

“The word of a blackmailer,” Mason said. “That’s nothing.”

“I’m glad to hear you say so because that part of it bothered me.”

“All right. Let’s get down to Gilly. What about him?”

“Well, Phyllis took Fordyce down to the yacht, put him aboard the yacht, told him to stay there. Then she took the dinghy, rowed back to the yacht club, got in her car, went to some friends whom she knew she could trust and whom she knew always kept quite a bit of cash on hand because they quite frequently took off for Las Vegas to gamble. She got those people to cash her cheque for three thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds.

“Then she returned to the boat, intending to give the money to Fordyce, but when she got aboard the boat she found to her consternation that Fordyce had disappeared and Gilly was aboard the boat.”

“What had happened to Fordyce?” Mason asked.

“Probably,” Bancroft said, “he was murdered, because Gilly was the only one aboard the boat and Gilly’s attitude was decidedly threatening.”

“And what happened?”

“Phyllis had this gun in her purse and the three thousand dollars. She started stalling for time. Now, there’s quite a long story here. When she first came aboard she saw this shadowy figure up in the bow of the boat, raising the anchor. She thought it was Fordyce.”

“The boat was not on a mooring?”

“Not at the time. It was on an anchor because the mooring was undergoing repair.”

“All right,” Mason said, “go on.”

“This figure heard her come aboard and made a halfhitch around the bitt in the bow with the anchor chain, then came on back to the main cabin. Now, the point is the engine had been started and the boat was underway at that time. A thick fog was coming in and within a matter of seconds the boat was enveloped in this blanket of fog.”

“Why was the boat underway?” Mason asked.

“Apparently so that whatever happened would be masked by this fog. Gilly had definite plans and he evidently was planning to beach the boat and then leave it so Phyllis would be blamed for the disappearance of Fordyce.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“Well, Gilly accused Phyllis of double-crossing him and Phyllis wanted to know what had happened to Fordyce, and one thing led to another and Gilly told her that he knew she’d gone to get some money and he wanted that money. She told him she wasn’t going to give it to him and Gilly became threatening. He said out in this fog he could weight her body and throw her overboard.

“That was when Phyllis pulled the gun out of the purse and told him to put his hands up.

“She thought, of course, that as soon as she pointed a gun at him and told him to put his hands up, he’d wilt. Instead of that he cursed and started for her.”

“And then?” Mason asked.

“Remember,” Bancroft said, “the anchor was dragging. That is, there was about fifteen or twenty feet of chain out — somewhere along there, I guess, and at that moment the anchor hit something, either a submerged log or a rock or a piece of hard ground, and Phyllis was thrown off balance and involuntarily her finger tightened on the trigger. She shot Gilly at point-blank range and he went down like a log.”

“What did your wife do?”

“She was in a panic. She dashed to the side of the boat and jumped overboard.”

“The gun?” Mason asked.

“She thinks she had the gun and the purse in her hand when she went overboard, but overboard she went and started swimming toward the shore. She dropped the gun. Her purse slipped off her wrist.”

“It was thick fog. Could she see the shore?”

“She could see the dim aura of lights, and as it turned out it was only a few feet to a place where the water was shallow enough so she could wade. She waded out of the water and found she was right near one of the fuelling wharves where we get gas for the boat. That was only a few hundred feet from the yacht club parking space, so she just kept on running in her wet clothes, got to the parking lot, jumped in her car and drove to the apartment.”

“Leaving the boat right there?”

“Right there.”

“With the body in it?”

“Yes.”

“How does she know he was dead?”

“She felt sure he was from the way he fell and the fact that she shot him at point-blank range, right in the chest.”

“And that was Gilly?”

“That was Gilly.”

“And she doesn’t know what happened to Fordyce?”

“No.”

Mason said, “All right, this thing begins to check into a pattern. Fordyce confided in Gilly. Gilly has a friend, a very expert blackmailer and confidence man known as Con-King Kelsey... Now, what about the yacht?”

“That’s the point,” Bancroft said. “As soon as it was daylight I drove down to the yacht, and the yacht isn’t there.”

“It isn’t there?” Mason repeated.

Bancroft shook his head. “You see, when this happened last night the tide was low. The tide had just turned and was starting to come in. So apparently during the night the tide came in enough so the boat floated and drifted back out into the harbour and then ran aground someplace at high tide.”

“When did your wife tell you this?”

“About ten o’clock last night.”

“Why didn’t you call me or the police?”

“I didn’t dare call the police and I felt I’d better wait until this morning to see you. I didn’t know where I could reach you except through the Drake Detective Agency, and... Well, hell’s bells, Mason, my wife was absolutely hysterical. If she’d called the police in that condition she’d have gone all to pieces. That would have meant the newspapers would have had the whole story of Fordyce... Damn it, it wasn’t murder. It was self-defence. I took it on myself to assume the responsibility. We’ll let the police come to us.”

“All right. That’s a hell of a way to play it, however. It could have been self-defence if she’d gone to the police. It can be murder by the time the police go to you.”

“Well, I had a decision to make and I made it. I put my wife under heavy sedation with some drugs I had in the apartment.”

“But don’t you realize,” Mason said, “that all of this blackmail story is going to come out anyway? This is a murder.”

“I know it will eventually, but that’s why I’m telling you now and putting things in your hands. You’ve got to adopt the attitude that Phyllis can’t tell her story now without disclosing a blackmail plot we can’t afford to have become public property, and therefore she refuses to make any statement at all.

“We’re playing for time. We have to play it that way.”

“We do now,” Mason said grimly. “Last night we could have had an option. We have none now. It isn’t going to do any good to go to the police at this late date and tell our story. We’re hooked now. And we’ve got to find out more about the facts. The first thing to do is to find that yacht.”

“There’s still a thick fog over the bay.”

“We’ll get a helicopter,” Mason said, “and sit on top of it until it lifts.”

The lawyer turned to Della Street. “Ring up our airport service. Tell them we want to charter a four-place helicopter as of now.”

The lawyer reached for his hat. “Come on, Bancroft, let’s go.”

The phone rang as Mason was halfway to the door. Della glanced inquiringly at the lawyer, received his nod and moved back to pick up the receiver. “Yes, Gertie,” she said. “What is it?”

She motioned to Perry Mason, said, “Eve Amory is calling.”

Mason frowned, turned back to the telephone on his desk, picked up the receiver, said, “I’ll talk with her. Put her on.”

A moment later when he had Eve Amory on the line he said, “Yes, Eve. This is Perry Mason. What seems to be the trouble?”

She said, “I’m going to have to chicken out on you, Mr Mason.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “that I’m signing a statement that this whole thing was a publicity stunt, that the money was put up by a friend of mine, an angel, and we concocted the blackmail note and arranged for me to find the money and get publicity that way, that the whole thing was a scheme for publicity.”

“You can’t do that, Eve,” Mason said. “That isn’t the truth and you know it.”

“But if I sign that statement,” she said, “I can get out from under.”

“From under what?”

“Things that... well, pressures.”

“You aren’t going to get out from under any pressures that way,” Mason said.

“They tell me I am.”

“Who tells you?”

“Well... people.”

“Did they leave a statement with you for you to sign?” Mason asked.

“Yes.”

Mason said, “I want you to do something, Eve. I want you to come up to my office and talk with me before you sign that statement.”

“They’ve given me a deadline of two o’clock this afternoon.”

“All right,” Mason said, “tell whoever it was that you’re going to be at my office at two o’clock this afternoon and you’ll sign the statement then.”

“I don’t think these people will come to your office.”

“Then tell them they can’t get the statement. Tell them you’re willing but you have to get a clearance with me.”

“I don’t think that would work. They wouldn’t—”

“Well, try it,” Mason said. “Will you do that much?”

“I’ll try, yes.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” Mason said, and hung up the telephone.

“These damned blackmailers,” Mason said to Bancroft, “certainly get around. If a man is clever enough and ruthless enough and has enough sources of information... Oh well, let’s go.”