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“It had been spent for development work. Now, then, Mr. Lam, I dislike very much to go into this because it is something that would ruin us if it became public.”

“What?”

“The bank made a very extensive investigation through certain channels which are open to a bank, which would not be open to the general public, and concerning which I do not want to make any statements.”

“All right, what was the result of the investigations?”

“Ore was being shipped from the Skyhook mine and sent in flat cars to the George T. Bishop Smelting Corporation.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then comes the incredible part of the whole thing,” Billings said. “The ore was being smashed up into fine particles and used to grade roads, for earth fills, and used as ballast.”

“Ore was shipped down out of the mountains, smashed up, and then transported by freight to wind up as mere crushed rock?”

“Exactly.”

I said, “There must be a mistake somewhere.”

“There is no mistake. We have found that the same procedure was followed in virtually every one of the mines where any development work was done. Ore was shipped down to the smelting and refining company, and by the smelting and refining company was converted into road ballast.”

“In other words, Bishop was a swindler.”

“I’m not making that as a flat accusation. Certainly there is something going on that is definitely far from the normal development of a business venture.”

“What would the smelting company pay for this ore which it converted into road ballast?”

“Various amounts,” Billings said, “until the mining corporation had received enough to repay the loan which it had made; then the mining company became inactive, there were no further shipments of ore, the loan was paid, and the company was virtually dissolved, with nearly all of the stockholders exercising the option which had been given them by the commissioner of corporations to withdraw the amount of money which had been put in for their stock and had been held in escrow for a period of a year.”

“You went to the commissioner of corporations, of course?”

“No, sir. I did not.”

“Why?”

“Because the bank was involved in the transaction to a certain extent. Perhaps we should have exercised a closer scrutiny over the affairs of these corporations, but because Mr. Bishop customarily kept a very large balance in our bank, and because his various accounts were quite active,
we took him at face value.”

“But when you found out — then what?”

“We asked for an explanation from Mr. Bishop.”

“Did you let him know what you had found out?”

“We found out a lot of this after — well, too late. But Bishop knew we were making the investigation.”

“You had found out
some
of this before Tuesday?”

“Yes. By last Tuesday we knew enough to put us very much on guard, to make us rather suspicious.”

“And you had asked Bishop to meet with you and explain matters?”

“Yes.”

“You had asked him to meet with you when?”

Billings coughed.

“When?”

“On Tuesday night.”

“Where?”

“At my house.”

“All right. Now let’s go back to the boat. Your son found Bishop’s body on the boat. What did he do?”

“He realized that fortuitously no one knew he was aboard the yacht.”

“What time was all this?”

“It was well after dark.”

“So what did he do?”

“He undressed. You see, we each of us have a stateroom on the yacht and each stateroom has a closet containing a lot of clothes. Therefore my son was able to divest himself of his entire wearing-apparel without creating any attention.”

“Then what?”

“Then he put on a pair of bathing trunks, put the key to the automobile in the pocket of his bathing trunks, locked up the yacht, slipped over the side, and swam out into the channel. Then, swimming quietly, he rounded the
premises of the yacht club and managed to gain one of the bathing beaches, where he came ashore, apparently a man who had merely been out for an evening swim. He walked boldly past the few people who were, for the most part, sitting in parked automobiles looking out over the water, and went to the place where he had left his car. He used the key to turn on the ignition. He came home, took a shower, dried out his wet bathing-suit, and put on his clothes.”

“Then what?”

“I had been out at a business conference and unfortunately he had to wait for me to come home.”

“Go on.”

“It was almost eleven o’clock when I arrived.”

“So what did you do?”

“My son told me what had happened. I warned him that he had made a very poor decision, that he should have notified the police immediately.”

“I presume then that you called the police?”

“Not the police. I decided to let the caretaker at the yacht club discover the body.”

“So what did you do?”

“I called the caretaker and asked him to go aboard my yacht and get a briefcase which was in the main cabin and send it to me by taxicab.”

“What happened?”

“I presumed, of course, that when he went to the main cabin he would find the body and report to the police.”

“He didn’t do so?”

“The body wasn’t there.”

“How do you know?”

“The night watchman sent me the briefcase by taxicab, just as I had instructed him. That caused me grave concern. I questioned my son very carefully to see if there was any chance he had been aboard another yacht, or if he had
imagined any of the things he had found. Then the next morning I personally went down and boarded the yacht and made an inspection.”

“What did you find?”

“There was no indication that there had ever been a body in the cabin of the yacht. No one was there. Things were just as I had left them.”

“How did the night watchman get aboard the yacht?”

“He has a key. It is not mandatory that owners leave extra keys in the safe at the yacht club, but the management prefers to have them do so. Then, in case of fire, or in case of any urgent necessity, the caretakers can get aboard the yachts and move them.”

“Then what happened?”

“My son was worried because we didn’t know just what
had
happened. He decided it would be a good plan for him to have an alibi for Tuesday night.”

“
You
had one?”

“Oh, yes. I was in conference with a business associate. One of the directors of the bank.”

“Give me his name and address.”

“Surely, Mr. Lam, you don’t doubt my—”

“I’m not doubting. I’m investigating. What’s his name and address?”

“Waldo W. Jefferson. He’s one of the directors of the bank. He has offices in the bank building.”

“How about guests that go aboard yachts?” I asked. “Are they registered?”

“No, just the owner registers, but the number of guests is noted. That is, the registration will show that the owner boarded the yacht, that he had two guests, three guests, four guests, or whatever the case might have been.”

I said, “All right, let’s go down to the yacht. You can register me as a guest.”

“But I have already gone through the yacht carefully,
Mr. Lam. There’s no evidence there that—”

“Perhaps no evidence that you can see, but if the body of a dead man was once aboard your yacht and the police have any reason to suspect that such was the case, you’re apt to find there’s a lot of evidence they’ll uncover which you never knew existed.”

An expression of smug satisfaction flitted across his face. “There is nothing, Mr. Lam.”

“Perhaps.”

“Just what do you expect to find, Mr. Lam? What do you want to look for?”

I said, “I once attended one of Frances G. Lee’s seminars on homicide investigation.”

“I dare say you have proper professional qualifications, Mr. Lam. I fail to see why we should discuss them at this time, however.”

I went on as though there had been no interruption. “They called for a volunteer to take off his coat and roll up his sleeves. They had a test tube of human blood. They put blood smears on his hands and arms.”

“There have been no blood smears on my hands or arms,” he said with dignity.

“And then,” I said, “they told him to go wash the blood off, to use soap and water, to scrub, to do everything he could to get rid of the bloodstains.”

“Well, it washed right off, didn’t it?”

“Sure.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“They went on with the class.”

“You mean they simply had him put the blood on and then wash it off?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t see your point, Lam.”

“Then the next day they asked him if he’d taken a bath, and he said he had. They asked him if he’d scrubbed his hands and arms particularly well — devoting an unusual amount of attention to them — and he admitted that he had, that he felt they might be going to play some trick on him so he’d made a good job of it.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Lam, what are you getting at?”

“The next day they did the same thing,” I said.

“He’d taken another bath?”

“Yes.”

“And scrubbed his hands and arms?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Lam, I don’t see what you’re getting at. You’re creating a divergence and—”

“And then,” I said, “they rolled up his sleeves, put on a reagent, and every place where the blood had touched his arms there was a dark-blue stain.”

John Carver Billings sat as perfectly quiet as a mouse on a pantry shelf when a door opens. I could see him digesting that information and he didn’t like it.

Abruptly he straightened in his chair, said in that calm, precise, close-clipped banker’s voice of his, “Very well, Mr. Lam, we will now go to the yacht.”

Floating palaces of teakwood and mahogany, glistening with varnish, dotted with polished brass, rocked quietly at their moorings, waiting patiently for the weekends when their owners would take them out for a few hours’ recreation on the waters of the bay, or, perhaps in the case of the more venturesome, out into the pounding whitecaps
beyond the heads and through to the long rollers of the surging ocean.

Some of them were so large they would require a crew to operate them; others were of a modern construction with controls so ingeniously arranged that one man could, in case of necessity, handle the boat.

It was as Billings had told me. The yacht club was virtually inaccessible to any but members. The high, steelmeshed fence was surmounted with an inclined barrier of heavy barbed wire, and at the gate there was a balanced platform. When we stepped on that a buzzer sounded, and the night gateman who was on duty gave Billings a respectful “Good evening, sir,” and handed him a book. Billings wrote his name, and, in a separate column next to the name, added the information,
One guest
. The watchman checked the time.

He wanted to say something else, but Billings cut him off with a curt “Some other time, Bob,” and piloted me down the long inclined ramp to the floats where we could hear the gentle lap of water and see the shimmering reflection of lights.

Our feet on the float gave back booming echoes from the water below. There was a grim, eerie atmosphere clinging to the place. Neither one of us said anything.

We came to a trim white hull surmounted by teakwood and brass. The upper cabin had square windows of heavy plate glass. There was a line of conventional round ports on the lower level.

“This is it,” Billings said. “Please keep on the mat and don’t step on the deck with those shoes. I’ll open up the cabin.”

We climbed aboard. Billings fitted a key to a padlock. A sliding panel opened up a companionway where rubber treads were bound with glistening brass. A light switch flooded a cabin into brilliance.

“It was here,” Billings said.

I soaked up the luxurious atmosphere of the cabin. It fairly reeked with money.

My feet moved over the carpet. I might have been walking on thick moss in a virgin forest. The color scheme of that cabin had been carefully carried out even to the last thread. Expensive draperies masked the interior of the cabin from the curious outer world. Chairs, books, a fine radio — every creature comfort that could possibly be packed into the confines of a yacht’s cabin.

“Where was the body?” I asked.

“As nearly as I can gather from what my son told me, it was lying here. You see, there isn’t the faintest stain in the carpet.” I got down on my hands and knees.

“You don’t need to do that,” he said. “There isn’t the faintest stain in the carpet.”

I kept crawling around. I saw that Billings was getting irritated.

“Not even the
faintest
stain in the carpet,” I agreed with him at length.

“You could have taken my word for that,” he said.

“There isn’t any stain in the carpet,” I went on, “because the carpet is brand new and has only recently been installed.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” he demanded. “This carpet has been here ever since—”

I shook my head and moved one of the chairs about an inch. The place where the legs of the chair had made an indentation in the deep carpet were plainly visible.

“The carpet,” I said, “has been here ever since the chair was placed there.”

“This is a very fine carpet. It returns to its original position very rapidly. You will find that—”

“I know,” I said, “but it’s impossible to completely elim-
inate the marks of the chairs. You’ll notice this same thing about every one of the chairs. What’s more, you’ll notice there’s a photograph of you sitting in the cabin, reading.” I indicated a framed photograph. “You can’t tell the color of the carpet from that picture, but you certainly can see the pattern. It isn’t this one.”

There was dismay on his face as he looked at the picture.

I walked around the cabin, looking in the dark corners, running my fingers around inaccessible places.

“You’ll notice right here, Mr. Billings, there’s a very faint smear here where something has been wiped with what evidently was a damp rag and — Wait a minute, what’s this?”

“What?”