Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

“Very well, Mr Mason, I won’t ask you to commit yourself. We will take it on that basis. I am going to assume certain things to be true, and act upon that assumption.

“I want to state that neither my daughter nor my husband knows that I am here.”

Mason said, “Obviously if I were acting as attorney for your husband I could hardly keep such a visit confidential, and if I am not acting as your husband’s attorney I would definitely not want you to commit yourself by—”

“Oh, stop it,” she interrupted. “I appreciate your position. I’m trying to respect it. Now, if I may, I’ll sit down and tell you a few things in the utmost confidence.”

“You are not asking me to act as your attorney?” Mason asked.

“No, I simply want you to know certain things.”

“Very well. I’m a good listener.”

“And your secretary?”

“Is a very good listener and a very poor talker,” Mason said.

“All right, I’m going to begin at the beginning. My daughter, Rosena, is engaged to Jetson Blair. The Blair family, as you know, is very prominent socially — you might say ‘blue-blooded aristocrats.’ Commercially they’ve failed to distinguish themselves but they maintain a high social status.

“My husband has proven to be a very good businessman.”

“And a good provider?” Mason asked.

“A very good provider.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

She said, “Jetson Blair is twenty-four. He had a brother two years younger, Carleton Rasmus Blair, who was a little wild. In fact, he got into all sorts of trouble and much of it was hushed up. He joined the army, went into aviation and took off on an observation trip from which the plane failed to return.

“He was first reported as missing. It was more than a year before the plane was finally found. It had crashed on a mountainside. Apparently there had been no survivors but they were not able to account for all of the personnel. Some of them had evidently been killed by the crash; some of them had apparently been badly injured. Exposure to weather and the depredations of wild animals had made definite identification virtually impossible.

“Carleton, who had been listed as missing, was subsequently listed as having been killed.”

Mason merely nodded.

“A couple of years ago,” she went on, “a man by the name of Irwin Victor Fordyce was convicted of crime and sent to San Quentin. He was released a few weeks ago. More recently there was a holdup of a service station and, following a usual pattern of procedure, the police gave the victims of the holdup an opportunity to look through what are known in the vernacular as mug shots — the pictures of criminals who have recently been released from custody and the pictures of persons whose modus operandi is such that there would be a definite possibility of involvement.

“One of the victims made a tentative identification of Irwin Fordyce as one of the holdup men.”

Mason’s face showed his keen interest. “Go on,” he said.

At this point Mrs Bancroft weighed her words carefully. “I have been told,” she said, “that because Carleton Blair was officially declared dead, his fingerprints were placed in a closed file. I have also been told that Carleton was not killed, but managed to reach a trapper’s cabin where he found some provisions, nursed himself back to health, and then being fed up with army life and realizing that he had made something of a failure in life, decided to let Carleton R Blair vanish forever. He chose the alias of Irwin Victor Fordyce and eventually made his way back to civilization, where he got in trouble and was sentenced to San Quentin.

“Obviously, Mr Mason, the fact that one of the socially prominent Blairs had served a term in prison and was even now being sought by the police in connection with a service-station holdup would be rather a poor background for a wedding.”

“Your daughter told you this?” Mason asked.

“My daughter did not. The information was given to me by a blackmailer.”

“What did this blackmailer want?” Mason asked.

“What would you presume he wanted? Money, of course.”

Mason’s eyes narrowed. He started to say something, then checked himself.

After a few moments of silence Mrs Bancroft went on, “Naturally, this was at a very crucial period in my daughter’s life.”

“In other words, you paid?” Mason asked.

“I paid.”

“How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

Mason’s fingertips drummed on the edge of the desk.

“It wasn’t until I read the papers that I realized that a separate and presumably a simultaneous demand had also been made on my daughter — and I wouldn’t be too surprised if a demand hadn’t been made upon my husband.”

“And how about the Blairs?”

“If any demand has been made upon them, nothing has been said about it. The Blairs are not poor people by any means, but on the other hand they are not affluent.”

“They would certainly be able to pay a relatively small amount of blackmail at a time like this,” Mason said.

“I would assume so.”

“Can you,” Mason asked, “give me a description of the blackmailer? Was he a man with penetrating grey eyes, perhaps fifty years old and—”

She shook her head. “No, he was a young man. Not over twenty-five or twenty-six. A rather good looking chap with a crew haircut, dark eyes, broad shoulders, but somewhat coarse features.”

“And you paid him a thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“In a package of tens and twenties.”

“He assured you there would be no further blackmail?”

“He assured me that I had purchased his silence.”

“He must have shown you some proof,” Mason said, “something that—”

“Oh, certainly. He had the police photographs of Irwin Fordyce, his fingerprints and measurements. He had photographs of Carleton Blair taken before he joined the army, and I must admit there was a remarkable resemblance. In addition to which he had a set of fingerprints which he claimed were the fingerprints of Carleton R Blair taken when he joined the army.”

“Did you report any of this to your daughter?”

“Certainly not. This is a period of happiness for my daughter. I don’t want it spoiled.”

“Did you say anything to your husband?”

“Certainly not.”

“Why not?”

“He has enough problems of his own.”

Mason said, “Didn’t it occur to you that the blackmailers would call on your daughter and probably call on your husband?”

“No.”

“Why,” Mason asked, “do you come to me now?”

“Because,” she said, “you’ve entered the picture and have stirred everything up.”

“In what way?”

“You know what you’ve done. Now then, Mr Mason, these blackmailers are trying to get in touch with my daughter so that they can make additional demands upon her.”

“You say they are trying to get in touch with her?”

“I’ll put it this way,” she said. “They have contacted her on the telephone.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I listened in on a telephone extension.”

“And what was the conversation?”

“The man said that she had betrayed them, and my daughter either thought the man who was telephoning was a newspaper reporter or was smart enough to pretend that she did.

“My daughter said that she certainly had no comment to make to the press and that she assumed that the man at the other end of the line was a newspaper reporter who was making it his business to call up every person residing along the lake and run a good bluff, hoping that someone would make some statement which would give the newspapers a clue as to the blackmail victim.