Lieutenant Sheldon and the captain gave the newspaper reporters a great story about how they had carefully worked the thing out by a process of elimination, that they’d made a surreptitious examination of Ludlow’s car without his having the least idea that he was an object of police suspicion, that he had been under investigation for some three or four days. That was the way the police worked, quietly, efficiently, but with deadly precision.
It was a beautiful story.
No one even introduced me to the newspaper reporters.
After the pictures had been taken, the captain and Lieutenant Sheldon drove me back to police headquarters.
Sheldon had his arm around my shoulders when we went in. We were buddies. I could have squared all the parking tickets in San Francisco.
We went into the captain’s office.
Sheldon said, “I haven’t had a chance to explain to you about Donald Lam, Captain.”
“He gave you a tip on that Ludlow case?” the captain asked.
Sheldon looked at him reproachfully. “Hell, no,” he said. “I did that on my own, but I’ve been looking for Lam for quite a while.”
“Why, Lieutenant?”
“I think he knows something about the Bishop murder.”
The captain whistled.
“Mind if I take him in and talk to him for a while in my office, Captain? Would you mind waiting a few minutes longer?”
“Hell, no. Don’t you want me along?”
“I think I can do better if Donald and I just sit down and talk things over, sort of palsy-walsy. I don’t mind telling you, Captain, I think I know what happened in that case. I think I can go out and put my finger on the murderer right now.”
“Well, who is it?”
Lieutenant Sheldon shook his head. “Donald Lam has a couple of facts that I think will clinch the matter, at least I think he has. Give me half an hour with him and then I’ll tell you the whole story, and I hope I’ll have proof.”
The captain said, “You come right to me with it, Lieutenant. Don’t talk to anyone else. Just talk to Lam and then come right in to me. You understand?”
Lieutenant Sheldon met his eyes. “Of course I understand, Captain.”
“You’re doing a damn fine job,” the captain went on. “That’s the kind of an officer I like to have. You think it’ll be about half an hour?”
“About half an hour.”
“The chief will be interested in this,” the captain said.
Sheldon nodded, got up and took my arm. “Come on, Donald,” he said. “I think you have some information that’ll help. You may not know it’ll help but I’ve got a pretty good theory as to what happened. If I can get a couple of angles from you I think I’ll be ready to sew the case up. Be seeing you, Captain.”
Chapter Nineteen
I said to Lieutenant Sheldon, “We’re going to have to get John Carver Billings in here.”
“The kid?”
“No, the old man.”
He said, “They’ve got a high-power attorney. He’s instructed them not to talk, and—”
“We’re going to have to get him in here.”
He looked at me and said, “You know, Donald, I’ve stuck my neck way, way out on this thing, and if I have to go back to the captain in half an hour and tell him ‘No soap’ — Well, that’s going to be tough on me, and it’s going to be awfully damn tough on you.”
I said, “You’ve got half an hour, Lieutenant. I’ve shown you what I could do so far. You’ve got a nice story breaking in the papers tomorrow.”
“That’s water under the bridge. What have we got for follow-up?”
“That,” I said, “depends upon how much confidence you have in me.”
He picked up a telephone, dialed one of the interoffice exchanges, and said, “Get John Carver Billings in here — the old man. That’s right. Hurry it up. I don’t give a damn what his lawyer said; get him in here, now, quick, fast! Wake him up!”
He hung up.
“I’d like to know something about your theory, Donald.”
I said, “Listen to what I have to say to Billings. Have a stenographer ready to take down a confession.”
He said, “Donald, if you could crack this — it would be something.”
“It’s something.”
“You mean it’s Billings?”
I said, “The homicide squad has already got the dope on Billings.”
“A confession from him would be a feather in my cap.”
I said, “To hell with a feather, Lieutenant. I’m going to get a whole war bonnet for you, stuck with feathers all up and down the line. Billings didn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
There was genuine affection in Lieutenant Sheldon’s eyes. “Have a cigar, Donald,” he said. “These are damned good cigars.”
Ten minutes later, John Carver Billings was brought into the office. His lips were clamped in a thin line of firm determination. His eyes looked as though someone had turned out the light, but he was sitting tight.
There was surprise on his face when he saw me sitting there, then he said to Lieutenant Sheldon, “I have been instructed by my attorney to answer no questions except in the presence of my attorney and on the instructions of my attorney.”
He sat down.
I said, “Mr. Billings, I think there’s a chance to clean this thing up.”
He looked at me and recited, “I have been instructed by my attorney to answer no questions except in the presence of my attorney and on the advice of my attorney.”
I said, “Don’t answer any questions.”
“I have been instructed not to talk about anything.”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “Listen.”
He shut his mouth and closed his eyes as though trying to withdraw his personality from everything in the office and everything in connection with it.
I said to Lieutenant Sheldon, “Here’s what happened, Lieutenant. George Tustin Bishop owned The Green Door. You probably won’t want to know anything about it officially, but unofficially you know what that is.”
Sheldon said, “I thought a man named Channing was—”
“Channing,” I said, “was Bishop’s accountant when he started in. He moved in and cut himself a piece of cake when he found out what was going on.
“Bishop posed as a mining man. He didn’t want to fail to report his income but he didn’t want to report it as coming from a gambling place. Therefore he worked a lot of dummy corporations and he developed mines, shipped ore to smelting companies, got checks from smelting companies, and all of that. If anybody had ever taken the trouble to investigate, the whole thing would have been turned up, but no one took the trouble to investigate because the books were all regular on their face. It just never occurred to anyone that a smelting company would be willing to pay gold-ore prices for common dirt. And there was always one mine named ‘The Green Door.’ž”
“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.