“Are you acquainted — or were you acquainted — with the decedent, Willmer Gilly, during his lifetime?”
“I was.”
“Did you have any business arrangements with him?”
“I did.”
“Did you have any arrangements with him concerning a business transaction which was to culminate on the evening of the tenth?”
“Yes, sir. I did.”
“On the tenth of this month what was your occupation, Mr Kelsey? Now, that question is limited to the tenth of the month.”
“Well, I didn’t have any regular occupation.”
“How were you making your living?”
Kelsey took a deep breath, said, “I received donations from various people.”
“Come on, speak up,” Hastings said. “What was the nature of the occupation? What caused those donations?”
Kelsey shifted his position, crossed his legs and said, “Blackmail.”
“And did you have any arrangement with Willmer Gilly covering the blackmail of any member of the Bancroft family?”
“Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial,” Mason said.
“We propose to connect it up. We propose to show motive,” Hastings said. “This witness is a key witness in the case. He has turned State’s evidence as to this particular transaction. His testimony is going to be most important and most significant. I am willing to waive blackmail in order to clear up a murder.”
“I’ll overrule the objection,” Judge Hobart said. “The Court would like to get to the bottom of this. Go ahead.”
“Answer the question,” Hastings said.
Kelsey said, “Gilly came to me with a story.”
“What was the story?”
“Objected to as hearsay,” Mason said.
“I propose to show it is part of the res gestae,” Hastings said.
Judge Hobart frowned. “Does this story have to do with your business relations with Gilly?”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“I’m going to allow the testimony,” Judge Hobart said. “It may be I will strike it out after I hear it, but I am going to allow it subject to a motion to strike.”
Kelsey said, “Gilly had become very friendly with a man in the same rooming house where he was living.”
“What was the rooming house?”
“The Ajax-Delsey Apartments.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“Well, Gilly said that he had become very friendly with a man named Irwin Victor Fordyce; that Fordyce had a past and that he finally confided his story to Gilly; that Gilly was the only one that he had ever told; that he told Gilly the story because of friendship with Gilly and because he felt he could trust Gilly’s discretion.”
“Now, did you take action on that story — as a result of that story?”
“I did.”
“That action was directly responsible for the joint business association you had with Mr Gilly?”
“It was.”
“Generally, what was the story?”
“Objected to,” Mason said, “as hearsay. Incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.”
“Overruled. I’m going to hear it,” Judge Hastings said, “subject to a motion to strike.”
“Well,” Kelsey said, “it seems that Fordyce was an assumed name, that the man who went under the name of Fordyce was related to someone very high socially and if the true identity of Fordyce and his criminal record became known, the very high society wedding between Rosena Andrews, a member of the Bancroft family, and Jetson Blair, a member of the socially prominent Blair family, would never come off.”
“So what was done?”
“Without anything being said that would let Fordyce have any idea we were acting on the information, Gilly and I decided to use the information for our own benefit and turn it into money.”
“Now, what did you do with relation to that decision?”
“Well, I looked up the families a little bit and found the Bancroft family was lousy with money and the Blair family was stronger on social position than money. I felt that it would be easy to get some money out of the Bancroft family.”
“How much money?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars in one bite, a thousand in another.”
“That was all you intended to get?”
“Certainly not. We intended to test out the information that we had. We figured that fifteen hundred dollars and a second payment of a grand would be enough to make it worth while, but not too much to cause undue alarm on the part of Rosena Andrews. We felt that we’d just see how good the tip was. If she was willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars, and her mother another thousand, then we’d wait a week or so and put the bite on her for more and then keep crowding her until we found just what the limit was. At least that was the understanding Gilly and I had.”
“All right, what happened?”
“Well, we wrote a blackmail note and put it on the front seat of Rosena Andrews’ car. We didn’t want to send it through the mail. Gilly had a typewriter and was a good typist. I couldn’t run one of the things. So Gilly wrote the note. He showed me the note, however, and it met with my approval.”
“And what were the terms of the note?”
“That Rosena had to pay fifteen hundred dollars in accordance with instructions that we would give over the telephone unless she wanted to have the information made public that would disgrace the family.”
“That was intended in the nature of a trial balloon?” Hastings asked.
“That’s right. And then Gilly contacted the defendant and put the same story up to her and she decorated the mahogany with a thousand. Neither knew the other had been milked on a shakedown.”
“Go ahead. Then what happened?”
“Well, we kept watch until we were sure Rosena had got her note. She got in the automobile and saw the note on the front seat and picked it up, looked at it, read it a couple of times and then drove off.”
“Then what happened?”
“Well,” Kelsey said ruefully, “without my knowledge, after I had seen the note, Gilly apparently had crossed out the fifteen hundred dollars and put the bite on her for three thousand.”
“Without telling you?”
“Without telling me.”
“What was the object of that?” Hastings asked.
“He was trying to cut himself another fifteen hundred dollars. You see, according to the way we figured out our instructions, we’d take a boat out on the lake — the Bancrofts were staying at their summer house on the lake — and Gilly was quite a water diver — that is, a skin-diver... My idea was that we’d rent a boat, just like a couple of ordinary fishermen, and Gilly would have his skin-diving outfit in the boat. We’d put out and I’d go fishing. He would skin-dive and be at a certain place at a certain time and then we’d have Rosena Andrews drop the money overboard in this coffee can. Gilly would skin-dive under the coffee can, scoop it down under the water, then swim over to the shore line where he’d be undetected and I’d put the boat over in to the shore as though I were looking for fish there. Gilly would climb in and change his clothes and put the skin-diving outfit in the big hamper we had and we’d go on back and turn the boat in and drive away. That way, even if there’d been a squawk to police no one could catch us.”
“What happened?” Hastings asked.
“I guess by this time everybody knows what happened,” Kelsey said. “We told her to put the money in a coffee can — a red coffee can — and as luck would have it, it just happened there were two red coffee cans. One of them was just an empty can that someone had tossed overboard from a boat after using it for bait, and the other one was the can with the money. Well, it happened that a water-skier picked up the can with the money and turned it over to the police, and Gilly grabbed the empty can that had been used as a bait can.”