The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

Chapter Sixteen

Shortly before noon Drake’s code knock sounded on the door of Mason’s private office.

Della Street let him in.

“Well,” Drake said, “they’ve got the case pretty well buttoned up. The only trouble is they aren’t sure just what they have in the net.”

“Give,” Mason said.

“Well, of course, Willmer Gilly’s fingerprints gave him away. He’s a grifter, a cheap chiseler, a car thief, an ex-con. He doesn’t have a history of blackmail but he could very easily have gone in for blackmail.

“So they searched Gilly’s apartment, which was really just a one-room housekeeping affair with a little electric plate, a sink, a cupboard and a few dishes. Guess what they found.”

“A Monarch Ten portable typewriter,” Mason said.

“That’s it,” Drake said. “And they made a test run on the typewriter and found that the alignment of the letters and everything proved that the typewriter was the one that had been used by the person who wrote that blackmail note. So now they’ve tied the Bancrofts in with the blackmail note and Gilly in with the Bancrofts.

“Now then, they found something else.”

“What?”

“That Mrs Bancroft was down at the yacht club with Gilly during the early part of the evening.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Mason said. “Not Gilly, it was somebody else.”

Drake shook his head. “The attendant has identified a photograph of Gilly and they are going to take him to the morgue to identify Gilly.”

Mason frowned.

“That hits you hard?” Drake asked.

“That hits me hard,” Mason said, “because it’s one of those damned things that happen when the police force an identification. Mrs Bancroft may have been down at the wharf with a young man but it wasn’t Gilly... I tell you what you do, Paul. There was a man named Irwin Fordyce who served time in San Quentin. Get mug shots of him from the police records. Get in touch with that attendant at the yacht club, show him the pictures of Fordyce and ask him if, as a matter of fact, Fordyce wasn’t the man who was with Mrs Bancroft.”

“He’s already made a positive identification,” Drake said.

Mason frowned. “What about the time of death, Paul?”

“They fixed the time of death as nine o’clock.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Mason said, “they can’t fix it at a definite hour when they didn’t discover the body for some eighteen hours.”

“Yes they can,” Drake said. “They have traced Gilly’s motions on the night of the murder. He had a meal consisting of canned beans which he had cooked himself in his little kitchen. The guy was a sloppy housekeeper and he was in a hurry so he didn’t clean up after him. He left part of the beans in the can, put them in the ice box, left the pan that the beans had been cooked in unwashed, and took off in a hurry — evidently in response to some telephone call. The coroner’s been able to check the processes of digestion and pinpoint the time of death with relation to the last meal, with, of course, the usual hocus-pocus about body temperature, rigor mortis and postmortem lividity.”

“No sign of the murder weapon?”

“No sign of the murder weapon, but they sure are trying to pin it on the Bancrofts. The records show that Bancroft had a permit for a .38-caliber revolver, and that seems to have disappeared.”

Mason said, “Unless they can find that revolver and match it with ballistics they can’t tie this crime to the Bancrofts. Not unless they can show an association with Gilly on the night of the murder. Now, that man at the yacht club is mistaken. Get busy immediately, Paul, and line up the mug shots of Irwin Fordyce. Then start work on that attendant at the yacht club. I’ve simply got to break down that identification; otherwise, we’re in a hell of a shape.”

“Then you’re in a hell of a shape,” Drake said, “because I don’t think you’re going to break it down.”

“All right,” Mason said, “now here’s something else. I want a diver. I want a man of unquestioned integrity, someone who is perhaps the president of an amateur association of skin-divers. I want a diving enthusiast, and I want him to do a job.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as it gets dark,” Mason said.

Drake frowned thoughtfully. “I have an operative who’s a skin-diving enthusiast. He and his wife go out Sundays to—”

“Get them,” Mason said.

“When?”

“Right away.”

Drake looked at him thoughtfully. “You aren’t going to use them to plant any evidence, Mason.”

Mason said, “Get them. I’m not going to have them do anything unethical, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

“All right,” Drake said, “I’ll get them. How soon?”

“Within an hour, if possible.”

“Okay,” Drake said, “we’ll do the best we can.”

Mason waited until Drake had left the office, then said to Della Street, “Go down to the bank, Della, and cash another three-thousand-dollar cheque. I want the money in fifties and hundred-dollar bills and I want the bank to retain the numbers of each bill.”

“They’re certainly going to wonder what’s going on, after that other cheque for three thousand we cashed and asked for the numbers of the bills.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but when you’re fighting for existence you have to use the weapons that come to hand. Try and keep them from getting any more suspicious than you have to, and above all I don’t want any talk about it. Not to the police or anyone else. Just get the bills.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“On my way,” she said.

Within thirty minutes Della was back with the three thousand dollars in bills.

Within an hour Della Street said, “Mr and Mrs Chambers are in the office. They’re the skin-divers who work for Paul.”

“Tell them to come in,” Mason said.

Della Street brought the young couple into the office.

“Hello, Mr Mason,” the man said. “I’m Dunston Chambers. This is Lorraine, my wife. I understand you want some skin-diving.”

Mason sized them up, young people radiant with vitality and health.

“Your hobby seems to agree with you,” Mason said.

Chambers grinned. “It does.”

“I have a diving job I want done, and I want to be sure that no inkling of it leaks out anywhere.”

“When?”

“Just as soon as it’s possible to get under water without being detected.”

“Where?”

“Down at Newport Harbour.”

“I understand there’s been a murder down there,” Chambers said.

“Your understanding is correct,” Mason told him.

“Does this have anything to do with the murder?”

“It has to do with the murder case.”

“Are we clean?”

“You’re clean.”

“Okay, we’re ready,” Chambers said.

“We’ll need a place to change,” his wife pointed out. “We can hardly do that in an open boat.”

“You do skin-diving on weekends?”

“Yes.”

“How do you change then?”

“We have a friend who has a cabin cruiser and—”

“Would he rent it?”

“Why... why, I suppose so.”

“If you used that boat, could you do your diving where no one would know what was being done?”

“They’d know we were diving, but they wouldn’t know where we were exploring. If the fog continues to hang on the water the way it’s doing now, no one would know we were diving.”

Mason nodded to the phone. “Get busy,” he said. “See what you can fix up. Where are your outfits?”

“In the trunk of our car.”

“And your car?”

“Downstairs.”

Mason grinned and said, “Come on, we’re going to hurry before that fog lifts.”