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
“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
