Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Stepdaughter’s Secret

“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.”

The day was warm and sunny inland but a thick bank of white clouds stayed motionless in the west.

The helicopter pilot, moving at about five hundred feet above the ground, said to Mason, “I don’t like the looks of it, Mr Mason. We can skirt along the edges but I doubt very much if we can see anything.”

“You can fly low?” Mason asked.

“Sure, I can fly low. I can fly five feet over the water as far as that’s concerned, but I’m not going to go messing around there in a fog at low elevation without knowing what I’m getting into.”

“Do the best you can,” Mason said.

“Sometimes the action of the helicopter clears fog up quite rapidly,” the pilot said. “We churn up a lot of air and if we can get on the boundary between the clear air and the fog we may be able to get enough agitation to start things clearing. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Well, let’s try it,” Mason said.

The helicopter moved at a steady seventy-five knots an hour, moving toward the white bank of clouds which seemed to grow higher and thicker as the machine approached them.

“I’m afraid it’s no go,” the pilot said. “We can hang around on the edges of the fog and survey the situation but this isn’t going to do you much good. It’s a thick, pea-soup fog and it’s hanging on all day, apparently.”

“Can you get down right along the ground and see how far you can go?”

“I’ll try it but as soon as I lose visibility I’m going to backtrack.”

“Well, sometimes it’s lighter right along the water,” Mason said. “Let’s try it.”

The pilot lowered the helicopter until they were flying over fields at housetop level. Then the first tendrils of fog enveloped them. The action of the rotor on the helicopter caused the fog particles to swirl and for a moment the fog right around the machine seemed to lift. Then it settled down again and the pilot suddenly turned the machine, came back up and out.

“Nothing doing,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going into that stuff. This is the thickest I’ve ever seen it at this time of the day. There’s not a breath of air stirring. This is just like flying in milk.”