The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

Chapter Four

Perry Mason entered his office at nine-thirty.

“Hi, Della,” he said. “What’s new?”

“You have a very, very irate client in the outer office,” she said.

“Harlow Bissinger Bancroft?” Mason asked.

She nodded.

Mason grinned. “Let him come in.”

Della Street went to the door and a moment later returned with Bancroft.

“Mason,” Bancroft said, “what the devil’s this?”

“What?” Mason asked.

Bancroft flung down a morning paper.

Featured on the front page was the photograph of a young woman in a very abbreviated bathing suit and the caption: bathing beauty finds fortune.

“Well, well, well,” Mason said.

“What the hell!” Bancroft said. “I trusted you to use discretion. What’s the idea of raising the ante from fifteen hundred dollars to three thousand? And this business of a woman almost naked?”

Bancroft whipped over a page and said, “Here you are — a photostatic copy of the blackmail note. My God, that thing was to be handled in the strictest confidence.”

“Well, well, well,” Mason said, “what do you know.”

“What do I know!” Bancroft shouted at him. “What do you know? You were supposed to handle this thing discreetly.”

“Your stepdaughter tossed the can and the blackmail note overboard?” Mason asked.

“I suppose so, I haven’t asked her about it. She hasn’t seen fit to confide in me, and I certainly haven’t asked her any questions. But here’s the whole blackmail note spread out in the public press and the demand has been raised to three thousand dollars!”

Mason grinned. “Eve Amory certainly got good coverage, didn’t she?”

“It depends on what you call coverage,” Bancroft snorted. “That bathing suit is just as near to nothing as the law allows. You’d think this was some nudist magazine.”

“Oh, she’s a long way from being nude,” Mason said, reading the account thoughtfully. “What do you know!” he said at length.

“What do I know?” Bancroft told him. “I know that I feel I’ve been let down. I trusted your discretion. I trusted your integrity, and I certainly wanted certain aspects of the matter kept discreetly confidential.”

“It’s confidential,” Mason said.

“Confidential?” Bancroft said, putting the paper on the desk and pounding it with his fist. “God knows how many million readers are going to see this! They tell me it’s been picked up by the wire services and will be syndicated in half the newspapers in the country.”

“It does make quite a story, doesn’t it,” Mason said.

“Is that the best you can say?” Bancroft said.

Mason said, “Sit down, Bancroft, and cool off. Now, let me tell you something.”

Bancroft slowly sat down, glowering at the lawyer.

“In the first place,” Mason said, “publicity is the one thing you wanted to avoid.”

“I’m glad you’re telling me,” Bancroft said sarcastically.

“And, in the second place,” Mason said, “publicity is the one thing a blackmailer has to avoid. He can only work under cover and surreptitiously.

“Now then, quite obviously the blackmailer’s victim didn’t go to the police. The victim did exactly as the blackmailer had instructed. The money was placed in the can, the can was tossed overboard, presumably in accordance with instructions that had been given as to time and place. Therefore, the blackmailer can’t accuse his victim of bad faith.”

“The thing I don’t understand,” Bancroft said, “is how it happened that ante got doubled. When I saw that note, the demand was for fifteen hundred dollars. Now, you saw that note — in fact, you photographed it. Now, how the devil did the blackmailer increase the demand to three thousand dollars?”

“I did that,” Mason said.

“You what?”

“I increased the demand to three thousand,” Mason said.

“But my stepdaughter drew fifteen hundred out of the bank and presumably that was all she had to put in the coffee can. Yet, according to police, the sum of three thousand dollars, together with this note and the ten silver dollars was in the can.”

Mason grinned slowly at Bancroft.

Bancroft started to say something, then, at the lawyer’s grin, his expression suddenly changed.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Mason said. “This note was written on a Monarch portable typewriter. I secured an old Monarch and crossed out the fifteen-hundred-dollar demand and made it three thousand dollars. Then after we picked up the can, we added fifteen hundred dollars to it, so that it made a total of three thousand.”

“You put in fifteen hundred dollars?” Bancroft asked.

“Of your money,” Mason told him, still grinning. “That’s why I told you the expenses would be high.”

“But what... You mean...?”

Mason said, “I am assuming that this was at least a two man job. You’ll notice the note says, ‘we.’ Of course, that may have been simply a blind, but somehow I don’t think it was.

“Now, suppose you were part of a criminal conspiracy and you had a partner. You sent him out to collect fifteen hundred dollars’ blackmail money. The collection was bungled and the police got hold of the money. But by the time the police received the money, it turned out the ante had been boosted to three thousand dollars. Wouldn’t you naturally assume that your partner had double-crossed you and tried to raise an extra fifteen hundred that he was going to hold out on you? And if you reached such an assumption, would the denial of your partner do any good?

“I think we may safely assume that with the publication of this note, we have put the blackmailers on the defensive, and with the fact that the amount in the can actually was three thousand dollars instead of fifteen hundred, we have sowed the seeds of potential discord.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bancroft said.

“Furthermore,” Mason told him, “I think we’re going to get a line on the blackmailers. And once we do that, I’m going to try to keep them occupied with something to think about.”

“Such as what?” Bancroft asked.

“Oh,” Mason said, “we’ll think up things to keep them busy. The trouble with blackmailers is that, while they make their living out of skeletons which are in other people’s closets, they necessarily have to have a whole closet full of their own skeletons. Unless they are rank amateurs, they must necessarily have been making their living out of crime and out of blackmail. That leaves a back trail that bothers them, in case the police should pick it up.”

Bancroft slowly got to his feet. “Mason,” he said, “I owe you an apology. The more I think of it, that’s the cleverest damned move, the most daring move, and the most skilful move anybody could possibly dream up. You’ve put the shoe on the other foot and — damn it, it’s well worth the three thousand dollars.”

“Hold everything,” Mason said. “You haven’t lost a penny of the three thousand dollars yet. It isn’t in the custody of the blackmailers, it’s in the custody of the police.

“Now then, what would you do if you were a blackmailer? Would you go to the police and say, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but that money was intended for me’?”

“No, of course not,” Bancroft said. “But they will, of course, make other demands.”

“Sure, they’ll make other demands,” Mason said, “but they’d have made other demands anyway. And when they make other demands, we’ll find some way of dealing with those demands.”

Bancroft reached out and gripped the lawyer’s hand. “Mason,” he said, “you go ahead, you play this your own way. You call on me for anything you want.”

“I warned you,” Mason said, “that I wouldn’t play this in a conventional manner.”

“You warned me,” Bancroft said, “and you sure as hell meant what you said... Do you want some more money?”

“Not yet,” Mason told him. “At the proper time, I’ll get that money back from the police.”

“How?”

“When I sent my secretary down to the bank to get some money in ten and twenty-dollar bills,” Mason said, “I gave her a cheque for three thousand dollars, which she cashed in tens and twenties. I put fifteen hundred dollars in the safe and took fifteen hundred dollars to plant in that coffee can. At the proper time, I’ll tell the police that the money that was put in the can was bait for a blackmailer and show them my cancelled cheque for three thousand dollars to prove it, with a statement from the banker that the money was paid to my secretary in tens and twenties.”

Bancroft paused for a moment, thinking that over, then suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

He started for the exit door, turned and said, “Mason, when I came into this office I was breathing fire. I’m going out walking on air.”

“Don’t be too sure of yourself yet,” Mason said. “You aren’t out of the woods, but we’re starting a backfire and the blackmailers are going to have to watch out they don’t get burned.”

“I’ll say they’re going to have to watch out,” Bancroft said.

When the door had closed behind him, Mason pulled the paper over and grinned at the photograph of Eve Amory.

“There are more photographs on the back page,” Della Street said, “photographs showing her on the water-skis, showing what happened when she fell in the water and saw the red coffee can floating nearby. Chief, what’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll probably get a pretty darned good contract,” Mason said.

“But she’s going to be in danger.”

“Sure, she’s going to be in danger,” Mason said. “And, as her attorney, I’m going to see she gets protection. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, somebody is going to telephone her, making an anonymous threat.”