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“Grow up,” I said bitterly. “Your son went to considerable expense to try to establish an alibi. It was an alibi that
was as flimsy as tissue paper. It wouldn’t stand up. I knew it wouldn’t stand up. He should have known it wouldn’t stand up. I tried to find out why he wanted to establish that alibi and then give him some measure of decent protection rather than to rely on a fabrication which was all but self-evident.

“As a result, I’ve had five hundred dollars of our compensation taken from us. The police are searching for me as a blackmailer. My license as a detective may be revoked. My partner has become so frightened she’s dissolved the partnership and instructed the bank to honor no more checks on the partnership account signed by me.

“That’s what comes of my trying to give your boy something worthwhile instead of merely taking his money and calling it a day.

“Now, does that answer your question?”

John Carver Billings nodded his head in slow acquiescence. “Thank you, Mr. Lam, that answers my question.”

I said, “You folks have wasted three or four days of time and probably several thousand dollars in cash. You’ve tried to extricate yourselves by methods that have backfired and left you in hot water. Now suppose we talk turkey?”

“What do
you
know about Bishop?” Billings asked.

“Not very much. I know most of what I know from reading the papers.”

“There was nothing in the papers about us.”

“Not in the papers,” I said, “but you went to a lot of trouble to establish an alibi for last Tuesday night. The police know it. I know it. The question is, why? At first I thought the answer was a hit-and-run. Now I think it has to be more serious than that.

“There weren’t any murders committed Tuesday night that the police
knew
about, so I started looking around to see if there might not have been one committed the police
didn’t
know about.”

“And you found?”

“I found George Bishop.”

“You mean you’ve found him, you’ve found—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Don’t get me wrong. I unearthed the Bishop case. I went to see Mrs. Bishop about it.”

“What did
she
say?”

“I questioned her as to whether there was a young lover in the picture, and whether she had deliberately planned her husband’s murder. I felt that might have been where your son entered the picture. He couldn’t afford scandal and he wanted the woman.”

“What did she say?” the elder Billings asked.

“Just about what you’d expect.”

“Perhaps what I’d expect and what you’d expect are two different things.”

“Make it this way, then. Just about the answer that
I
expected.”

“That doesn’t mean a great deal to me,” he said.

“And it didn’t to me.”

He paused to look me over pretty carefully, then said, “So now you’re going to be cagey, eh?”

I said, “Try putting yourself in my position.”

He thought that over.

“Let me question your son about Mrs. Bishop and see what he says.”

“You’re away off on the wrong track, Lam,” he said.

At the moment, silence was my best weapon, so I sat silent.

Billings cleared his throat. “What I’m going to tell you, Lam, must be held in the
strictest
confidence.”

I merely took a drag at the cigarette.

“This entire situation has become exceedingly embarrassing to me, personally,” John Carver Billings said.

“That,” I told him, “is a masterpiece of understatement. Exactly what happened Tuesday night?”

“I have no firsthand knowledge of that. I got the information from my son.”

“What information?”

“We have a yacht,” he said, “a rather pretentious, sixtyfive- foot cabin cruiser. We call it the
Billingboy
and it is moored at one of the exclusive yacht clubs here in the bay.”

“Go on.”

“Tuesday, my son persuaded Sylvia Tucker, a young woman who has been a passing fancy — an attractive manicurist — to ring up the place where she works and say she had a headache and couldn’t come to work. Then she went out in the boat with my son.

“They were together all day Tuesday until about four o’clock in the afternoon when they returned from their outing, and my son took her to her apartment.

“Then my boy had a few drinks and left her there. He knew that I didn’t approve either of Sylvia or of the idea of trips of this sort, and I think he rather dreaded meeting me.

“So he stopped in several places for drinks with which to nerve himself; then argued himself into believing that he could cover things up so I need never know he had used the yacht.

“With that in mind he went down to the yacht planning on changing his clothes and fixing things so it would seem he had spent the biggest part of the day working on the boat.

“Now, in order to definitely understand what followed, Mr. Lam, it’s going to be necessary to explain something of the nature of the yacht club.”

“Go ahead and explain it.”

“The club is so situated that we could very easily be plagued with sightseers and, of course, we don’t want to have the general public climbing around over boats. They do not understand, or do not appreciate, the care that
should be given a boat. Nails in the heels of shoes, for instance, would work irreparable injury upon the highly varnished decks of an expensive yacht.”

I said, “You’re trying to tell me that the yacht club is carefully closed off so that the public is excluded?”

“Exactly.”

“What else?”

“There is a high fence running on the land side, a fence topped with barbed wire, and so arranged that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to climb over the fence. The top three strands of barbed wire are on posts at an angle to the meshed wire so that they make an overhang. No one could climb the fence and get in over the top.”

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

“There is but one gate. There is always a watchman on duty to check the persons who come in and the persons who go out. That is intended both as a safeguard and so the caretaker will know who is actually present at the club at any particular time in case telephone calls should be received.”

“In other words, whenever you go into the yacht club the attendant marks down the fact that you are there?”

“The time of arrival and the time of departure in a book which is kept for that purpose, just as one registers in an office building after hours.”

“Isn’t that rather embarrassing at times?”

“Perhaps with a club that had more of a rowdy membership it might be, but this is a very conservative club. Members who are inclined to throw wild parties on their yachts find it expedient to join some other club which has more lax standards.”

“All right, go ahead. What happened?”

“Now, to get back to this Tuesday evening. My son went down to the yacht, planning to arrange things so I would think he had been working on it all day, and therefore
when he found that the watchman at the gate was engrossed for the moment in a telephone conversation, with his back turned, it seemed like a providential opportunity, so my son slipped on through the gate. There is an electric connection so an electric buzzer sounds whenever one starts down the ramp to the mooring-float. For some reason this was not working at the moment. My son went down to the yacht. No one saw him. No one knows he was there. No one can ever prove he was there. You must at all times remember that, Mr. Lam.”

“All right, then what?”

“When my son boarded the yacht, unlocked the door, and entered the main cabin he found — well, he found himself in a very grave predicament.”

“What sort of predicament?”

“The body of George Tustin Bishop was lying on the floor. He had been shot, and apparently the killing had taken place within an hour or so of the time my son boarded the yacht.”

I digested that information. The sweating started again. My palms were once more moist. I was in it now, all right. A nice murder, and I was tied up with the Billings boy, fake alibi and all.

“My son reached a decision,” Billings went on. “It was not a commendable decision, but, nevertheless, having reached it, it was irrevocable and we must deal with it as an accepted fact.”

My silence showed him how I felt about that.

“In order to understand the circumstances,” Billings went on, hastily, apologetically, “you must realize that my son felt that I might have been involved in the matter.”

“In what way?”

“There had been some trouble with Bishop.”

“What was the nature of that trouble?”

“It was a financial matter.”

“You owed him money?”

“Good heavens, no, Mr. Lam. I owe money to no man.”

“What was the nature of the trouble, then?”

“Bishop was a promoter, a mining promoter.”

“He owed you money?”

“Yes, but that was not the issue; that is, he owed the bank money. Not individually, but as a majority stockholder of the Skyhook Mining and Development Syndicate.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m afraid all of the details would take too much time.”

“Go ahead. Tell me. We have time now. Later on, we may not have it.”

“Well, it’s a long story.”

“Give me the highlights.”

“Bishop was a peculiar character. He was a very heavy individual depositor in the bank of which I am president. In addition to that he had huge interests in various mining development companies, the nature of which we do not clearly understand. In fact, as we begin to investigate his mining activities, they become more and more mysterious.”

“What about the money he owed you?”

“Well, as I mentioned, he has perhaps a dozen various companies in which he holds apparently the controlling interest, but where stock is offered to the public.”

“With the permission of the corporation commission?”

“Oh, of course. He gets permission to sell the stock. They are listed as highly speculative stocks and there are ample safeguards to see that the promoters do not make the money at the expense of the public. However, now that the bank has started an investigation we find that there is a certain peculiar overall pattern in connection with these corporations.”

“What?”

“They are formed; money is borrowed at the bank for development. A certain amount of development work is done, and then the mine has a tendency to become inactive and—”

“What about the loans?”

“The loans are paid off promptly when they become due.”

“What about the stockholders?”

“That is the peculiar thing, Mr. Lam. It is something I cannot understand.”

“Go ahead.”

“A certain amount of stock is sold to the public; not a great amount. Most of that stock is held in escrow. Then apparently — and you understand I didn’t know this until the last forty-eight hours when our investigators reported — the stock is bought up by someone who pays the stockholders just about what they paid for the stock.”

“Suppose the stockholders don’t want to sell?”

“The stock that is not sold back—”

“Wait a minute, you say ‘back.’ What do you mean by that?”

“We have every reason to believe that the person who buys the stock is the representative of George Tustin Bishop.”

“All right. What about the people who don’t want to sell?”

“They’re permitted to hold their stock for another six months or a year, and then an offer is resumed. Eventually they either sell the stock or it becomes valueless. The mine languishes with no further development work being done.”

“Now, what,” I asked, “would be the idea of making a wash transaction of that sort? There must be considerable overhead.”

“There is. Not only are there legal expenses, but there
is the selling commission. There is, however, no great drive to sell the stock. A prospectus is put out and the stock is sold in every instance entirely by mail. After a small percentage has been sold, selling activities are discontinued. Then the corporation goes through a quiescent period, after which the stock is bought back.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“All right, tell me about this Skyhook Mining and Development Syndicate.”

“Now, there we have a very peculiar situation. The organization of that corporation apparently followed the usual pattern. Permission was given to sell the stock at par value, allowing a fifteen-percent commission for the salesmen, but with the understanding that all of the balance of the money must go into the treasury of the corporation, and that there could be no disbursements until certain prerequisites in the nature of development work had been done.”

“How was the money secured for the development work?”

“The understanding of the corporation commission was that the sales of the stock would be handled by a syndicate, and that the fifteen percent, together with contributions made in the form of a loan by the organizers, would go toward the initial development.”

“So that the stockholders would be getting a free ride?”

“If you want to put it that way, yes.”

“And that was done?”

“That was done. The corporation was permitted to endorse a note, which was signed by George Tustin Bishop, with the understanding that every penny of the proceeds would go into the treasury of the corporation.”

“How much was the note?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then a peculiar thing happened. Something about the name appealed to the investing public. I understand the solicitation was by mail, but the public reacted very favorably. The records indicate that some fifty percent of the treasury stock was sold to the public under the conditions laid down by the commissioner of corporations.”

“That was a departure from the usual pattern of the Bishop corporations?”

“Yes, sir. Very much so.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then,” Billings said, “Bishop flatly refused to meet the note. He drew out every cent of money he had in our bank and stated he had no funds with which to meet that note, and that we would necessarily call upon the corporation as an endorser to make good the amount of the loan.”

“What had happened to the money in the treasury of the corporation?”