“Go ahead,” Sheldon said.

  I said, “Before Bishop got into the gambling business he’d been doing a little blackmailing on the side. I don’t know whether he’d blackmailed anyone other than Billings’s son, but he’d been coming down pretty hard on the boy. I don’t know just what he had on him. I haven’t gone that far, but I think before we get done Mr. Billings, here, will tell us what it was.”

  Sheldon glanced inquiringly at Billings.

  Billings was sitting there with his eyes tightly shut and his fists clenched, his mouth pushed together as though he were afraid some word might inadvertently spill out when he didn’t want it to. His face was the color of wet concrete.

  I said, “After Bishop got into The Green Door he didn’t care so much about blackmail. That was penny-ante stuff. But, remember, Bishop had something on young Billings. He knew it and Channing probably knew it. Channing may not have known what it was.

  “Anyway, Channing started moving in on the business and Bishop didn’t like that. Bishop became a little worried about Channing. He needed some dummy whom he could trust to carry on the business end of things, but Channing was rapidly getting himself in the position where Bishop couldn’t trust him and Bishop was about ready to see that Channing got put away where he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk.

  “Then Gabby Garvanza decided he’d move in. Someone filled him full of lead and didn’t do a good job of it.”

  “Know who it was?” Sheldon asked.

  “Sure. It was George Bishop. He thought he’d done a good job of it at the time. When he read in the morning papers that Gabby would recover, he almost passed out. His widow will confirm that.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Go on, Lam.”

  I said, “Bishop had been sweet on Maurine Auburn at one time. Channing had introduced Maurine to Gabby Garvanza, then Bishop married Irene, the strip-tease artist, and Maurine teamed up with Gabby; but Maurine kept carrying the torch for Bishop.

  “Then Bishop and Gabby Garvanza got at cross-purposes. Bishop tried to put him out of the way and it was an amateurish job. Bishop was a gambler and a blackmailer but not a killer. He didn’t do a neat, workmanlike job.

  “When Bishop partially recovered from the shock of finding that Gabby was still with us, he decided he had to make another pass at Gabby before Gabby got ready to move around.”

  “Go ahead,” Sheldon said.

  I said, “Bishop wanted Maurine to put Gabby on the spot where they’d be sure Gabby didn’t escape the next time, so it was all fixed up that Maurine was to get a little bit crocked and impulsive and fall for a handsome stranger. The stranger was in reality an aviator who was hired by Bishop but was really Channing’s man. It had to be that way. You can’t account for what happened on any other theory. Channing knew Bishop was getting restless; he decided he’d better beat Bishop to the punch. He also knew that gambling houses don’t go through probate.”

  “Okay, tell me about the aviator,” he said.

  “The aviator took instructions from Bishop, but reported to Channing. That aviator picked Maurine up and flew her right fast up to a field north of San Francisco where Bishop was waiting.

  “The only trouble was Channing was waiting, too.

  “Maurine climbed into the car with Bishop. Channing slipped up behind. There were two guns. The one that killed Maurine was an automatic. We haven’t traced that yet. The gun that killed Bishop was one that Channing had thoughtfully slipped out of the cabin of the Billings yacht. And a bullet hole with bloody tissue around it was thoughtfully left by the murderer as a clue.”

  Sheldon broke in. “You mean Channing shot Bishop a second time on Billings’s yacht?”

  “Yes, so it would lodge in the paneling of the cabin. A bullet hole with bloody tissue around it would be pretty damning evidence.

  “In the meantime, Bishop had been trying to put a squeeze on Billings, not a money blackmail, but Bishop wanted a favor. It was a favor that Billings didn’t want to grant.”

  “What favor?” Sheldon asked.

  I said, “The pitcher that goes to the well too often gets broken. The salesman who keeps on ringing doorbells sooner or later is bound to get an order.”

  “I don’t get you,” Sheldon said.

  I said, “Bishop had been playing around with gold mines, shipping the dirt out and using it for ballast or dumping it in the bay. The last bunch of dirt he dumped on his lot in order to build up a terraced garden. It was pay dirt. It runs about three hundred dollars to the ton of freemilling ore. It isn’t rich enough so you can see the gold sticking out all over it, but the gold’s there. You break it up and pan out the gold and you really get a surprise.”

  Lieutenant Sheldon thought that over.

  I gave him a minute, then went on. “Bishop controlled the majority stock. Some of it had been sold to the public. Most of it was being held in escrow.

  “You see, the way Bishop operated, he needed a successive string of corporations. He’d get permission to sell stock by having it held in escrow for a year. Then the corporation would go to mining.

  “Before the year was out, a board of experts would appraise the mine as valueless and Bishop would send out this report, apparently unwillingly but under a directive of the corporation commission.

  “Naturally the suckers would draw back their escrow stock money and the promoter would be left with his stock — and then, There’d always be a mine by that name. No income tax man ever went any deeper than that. It was a natural. And if there’d ever been a stink, Bishop could have shown he’d reported every cent of income from The Green Door as coming from The Green Door. No one could ask for more than that. If the income tax people thought it was from the mine, Bishop couldn’t be blamed for their mistake.”

  “Okay, so then he struck pay dirt?”

  “Exactly. And it was in a mining company where the name happened to appeal to the public. That made the background of this particular company entirely different.

  “No mining experts could possibly report this mine as being ‘unprofitable.’

  “Bishop wanted to get all that stock back and he wanted it back at prices that came nowhere near reflecting the true value, so he asked Billings to have the bank file suit against the corporation on the note that Bishop had signed with the corporation. Billings smelled a rat. He wouldn’t do it. But Bishop had this hold on Billings. He used that lever to get what he wanted.

  “Channing knew the inside. When he decided to put Bishop out of the way, he wanted to be sure that the murder was pinned on Billings. If the police didn’t have any good clues, then Channing would be the most likely suspect.

  “Horace B. Catlin is a man I don’t know much about. He’s a member of the yacht club. I presume he’s in financial difficulties. Anyway, he got hanging around The Green Door and probably got in pretty deep. Channing didn’t report that to Bishop. He held out so he could use Catlin for his own purpose.

  “Tuesday evening Catlin discharged his obligation to Channing. He loaned Channing his yacht. Channing transferred Bishop’s body to Catlin’s yacht and moved Bishop’s automobile to a side road. An airplane took Maurine’s body down south, so it would appear to police that the torpedo who had tried to rub out Gabby Garvanza had shot Maurine so she couldn’t tell the police what she knew.

  “The idea was to have her buried where the body would be found — after a while.

  “But Bishop’s body was to be dumped right into Billings’s lap. That way police would never suspect Channing.

  “The yacht club keeps a close watch on people who come in through the gate and people who go out through the gate, but it doesn’t pay any attenion to the people who come in by yacht and the people who go out by yacht. They’re all members in good standing who have already cleared through the gate. That’s all there was to it. Channing brought Catlin’s yacht into the club, then, after it got dark, he picked the lock on Billings’s boat, put Bishop’s body aboard, and pulled what turned out to be the slickest stunt of all — he dropped the gun, with which Bishop had been killed, overboard, knowing that Billings would never think to look for the gun in case he found the body. But Channing knew that the police would send a diver down to look for the weapon the first thing they did.”

  “It’s a nice story,” Lieutenant Sheldon said.

  I said, “Channing must have planned to have the body ‘discovered’ a day or two later, but Billings beat him to it. Billings and his dad went down to the yacht club for something. They just happened to get aboard with no one seeing them because the electric signal had been jammed, and Danby, the watchman, had his back turned to them and was talking on the telephone when they came in.

  “When they found Bishop’s body they knew that they were up against it. They knew that once Bishop’s body was found there the scandal that he had used as a blackmail lever would come out, and they also knew they’d be accused of murder. So they tried to get rid of the evidence. They did a clumsy, bungling, amateurish job. They first had to get rid of the body. They managed to move it over to one of the adjoining yachts. In order to do that they had to smash the lock. They were afraid the watchman would notice the smashed lock, so they bought another lock. There was blood on the carpet. They took up the old carpet and put down new carpet. Everything they did put their heads that much farther into the noose.”

  Lieutenant Sheldon’s face was suddenly grim.

  “Okay, Donald, who hired you?”

  “John Carver Billings.”

  “The old man?”

  “The kid.”

  He said, “You son of a bitch,” with such concentrated venom in his voice that it made Bertha Cool’s epithets sound like love pats.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Trying to sell me a bill of goods like this,” he said. “You sleuthed out the Ludlow hit-and-run case so you could build up a credit, and then, after you had me sold, you came along with this cock-and-bull story.”

  I said, “Wait a minute, Lieutenant.”

  “Wait, hell! You’ve shot your wad, Donald. You tried to pull a fast one and I’m going to show you just what happens to slick bastards like you that try to—”

  “Now shut up,” I said, “and forget you’re a damn cop. You have the captain waiting in there, and by this time the captain has probably given the chief a buzz and told him to stand by because he thinks he’s got a solution of the Bishop murder coming up. Now do you want to use your head or lose it?”

  He winced at my reference to the captain and the chief. He was in one hell of a spot and he knew it.

  “Donald,” he said, with such an intensity of hatred his voice was actually so low as to be all but inaudible, “for a double cross like this I could break every bone in your body.”

  I said, “You’ve got one way of checking this story. You’ve got about twenty minutes left in which to do it. That’s to get Horace B. Catlin in here and—”

  Lieutenant Sheldon spun the dial on the phone. A couple of uniformed men were in the office before one would have thought it was possible to get a connection. He said, “Keep these guys where nobody can see them. I don’t give a damn who it is. Don’t let anybody see them. Don’t let them talk with anyone in the department. Don’t let them talk with any lawyers. Don’t let them talk with anyone outside the department. Don’t let them get to a telephone. Sew them up. Keep them right here.”

  Lieutenant Sheldon went out of the office like a jet plane taking off on a trial run.

  Billings opened his eyes and looked at me. Slowly he reached out and shook hands with me.

  He didn’t say a word.

  I said, “Don’t tell them what it was Bishop had on your son, and—”

  “Shut up,” one of the officers said. “The lieutenant said you weren’t to talk to anyone.”

  “Well, that didn’t mean we couldn’t talk with each other.”

  “That ain’t the way I understood it. Shut up.”

  Billings started to say something. One of the cops moved over.

  “You boys can get yourselves pretty badly hurt,” he said, “by sticking your necks out.”

  We sat there in silence.

  It was a long thirty minutes. I guessed I looked at my watch fifty times, but Billings just sat there motionless, wooden-faced.

  Then Lieutenant Sheldon came in. His face looked like the face of a ten-year-old kid on Christmas morning. I looked at it and let out a long-drawn sigh of relief.

  “Donald,” he said, “run over that line again so I can get the straight of it. The captain’s waiting and the chief is in his office. You two mugs get the hell out of here.”

  The uniformed men withdrew.

  I ran over it once more for Lieutenant Sheldon’s benefit.

  “How did you spot Catlin?”

  “I knew there must be some member of the yachting- club who was completely in the power of the man who was managing The Green Door. Such a man must be a plunger who had got in so deep he had to follow instructions.

  “I simply got the caretaker at the yacht club to keep a watch on The Green Door. When a member of the club went in, I figured he was my man.

  “I followed him in. When I realized he wasn’t playing at any of the tables but was undoubtedly closeted with the manager, I felt certain I had the answer I wanted.”

  “Have a cigar,” Lieutenant Sheldon said to me. “Have another one. Here, Billings, have a cigar. We’re awfully sorry we had to inconvenience you, sir, but you understand how it is. You fellows wait here. Don’t try to go out. There’ll be a guard in the corridor. Just sit here and don’t talk to anybody. Donald, you’re smart enough to keep your mouth shut. See that Billings keeps his shut. Don’t see any reporters. Don’t try to use the phone. We may be able to do something for you guys.”

  Lieutenant Sheldon spun the dial on the telephone and when he had an answer said, “I’m coming right up, Captain. Sorry to keep you waiting. There was one other angle I had to check on. I’ll be right in.”

  He dashed out of the office.

  I turned to Billings. “What was it Bishop had on your son?” I asked.

  He said, “Honestly, Lam, I didn’t know until a week ago. I prefer not to discuss it.”

  “You’d better tell me.”

  “I’ll be damned if I do.”

  I said, “Your son is a tall, rangy lad.”

  He nodded.

  “Play any basketball in college?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was on the college team?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “Bishop was a gambler who made book on college games.”

  The banker’s face suddenly twisted. He began to cry. It was something to watch, the spectacle of a hard man whose tear ducts had all dried up twisting his face into a contortion of grief.

  I got up and went to a window, turning my back. A few minutes later, when the sobbing had stopped, I went back and sat down.

  For a long while neither one of us said anything.

  After a while I said, “When you tell your story to Sheldon tell him your boy was mixed up in a scandal over a girl.”

  “That wouldn’t be a powerful enough motive,” Billings said. “I’ve been thinking of that.”

  “Tell him the girl died as the result of a criminal operation.”

  Billings thought that over for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. “Donald,” he said, “if you can get the police to adopt your story as the official version of what happened, you’re going to be very handsomely rewarded, very handsomely rewarded.”

  I’d been associating with Bertha long enough so I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “We would expect that, Mr. Billings. We don’t work for nothing, you know.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said.

  That covered all the conversation. There wasn’t anything more to be said.

  We sat there and waited and waited.

  After a couple of hours an officer came in with sandwiches and a pot of coffee. He said, “The lieutenant wanted me to tell you to make yourselves comfortable. He said not to do any talking.”

  We had the coffee and sandwiches. About an hour later Lieutenant Sheldon came in, closed the door, pulled up his chair, and sat clown close to Billings.

  “Mr. Billings,” he said, “you’re an important man in San Francisco, and we want you to know that the police recognize your importance. We try to give the important citizens a break whenever we can.”

  “Thank you,” Billings said.

  “Now, then, Bishop had something on your son. Would you mind telling us what it was?”

  “It was over a girl,” Billings said.

  Lieutenant Sheldon merely grinned.

  “The girl had an operation and died.”

  The grin came off Sheldon’s face. He thought that over for some little time.

  “All right, Mr. Billings,” he said, “I think we can keep the blackmail angle out of it if you’ll co-operate with us.”

  “If you’ll keep that angle out of it,” Billings said, “I’ll — I’ll do anything, anything in the world.”

  “All right,” Sheldon said. “There’s only one thing you need to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Protect us in our efforts to protect you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t do any talking. These newspaper men are pretty damned smart. They’ll cross-examine you if you ever give them the ghost of a chance. They’ll question you and then check up on the answers. They’ll get you cornered and—”

  “You don’t want me to give them anything, is that it?” Billings interrupted.

  “For your own good,” the lieutenant hastened to interpose. “Mind you, we’re trying to give you a break. There’s only one possible way we can keep this blackmail angle out of it.”

  “I’ll keep quiet,” Billings said.

  “You see,” Sheldon said, beaming, “if you co-operate with the police, they’ll co-operate with you.”

  I turned to Sheldon and said, “One thing you could do for me, Lieutenant.”