“You discussed the matter with him?”
“After we saw in the paper what had happened, I discussed the matter of his double-cross with him.”
“What do you mean by double-cross?”
“About his trying to get three thousand instead of fifteen hundred and holding out the fifteen hundred.”
“And what did he say with reference to that?”
“He swore he hadn’t made the change in the letter, that someone had double-crossed him and he accused me of doing it so I could get an extra fifteen hundred.”
“All right, then what happened?”
“Well, after we found out we’d picked up the wrong coffee can, Gilly called Rosena and told her that she hadn’t followed instructions and she accused him of being a nosy newspaper reporter and hung up. So then he called the mother and she said to meet her down at the float at the Blue Sky Yacht Club and she’d take him out in the yacht and pay the money there and then put him ashore and in that way they could both be sure that nobody was watching, that she thought some private detectives were in on the deal and she wanted privacy just as much as anybody.”
“And what time was he to meet her?”
“Seven o’clock on the float at the Blue Sky Yacht Club.”
“Do you know whether he did meet her or not?”
“I’m just telling you what I know from what I heard on the telephone and from what Gilly told me. All I know for sure is that Gilly took off for the Blue Sky Yacht Club and that was the last I ever saw of him.”
“Cross-examine,” Hastings said.
“How did he take off for the Blue Sky Yacht Club?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know. The last I saw of him was when he was eating dinner in his room. That was about six-thirty. He always went for canned pork and beans in a big way, and my last talk with him was when he was sitting there gulping down canned pork and beans. He said he’d have to leave a little before seven, and that before midnight we’d have our three thousand dollars.”
“Then what?”
“Then I went out on some business of my own. After that I went back to the Ajax-Delsey. I also had a room there. I waited and waited for Gilly to come back. When he hadn’t come in by midnight, I figured he’d collected the three grand and had taken a powder so he wouldn’t have to split with me.”
“You knew that Gilly had posed as a friend of Irwin Fordyce?”
“Certainly.”
“And under the guise of friendship had got Fordyce to confide in him?”
“Of course.”
“And then had deliberately used that information for the purposes of blackmail?”
“Sure,” Kelsey said. “I’m no angel. I’m not trying to pose as an angel, and Gilly was in every bit as deep as I was.”
“And you had a plan to double-cross Gilly? You planned to force Eve Amory to sign a paper saying the three thousand found in the coffee can was hers, that the whole idea was a scheme for personal publicity for her and that she wanted the police to turn the money back to her, and then you were going to force her to turn it over to you on another blackmailing scheme?”
“That’s right. You caught me at it. Gilly was planning on double-crossing me, so I was taking out a little insurance. Gilly wasn’t really a partner of mine. He was inexperienced in the blackmail racket so he turned to me to handle the deal. Then he figured on double-crossing me and leaving me holding the sack, so I just decided to take out a little insurance, that’s all.”
“And you have gone to the district attorney with all this information and used it to gain immunity from prosecution for the blackmail, haven’t you?”
“What would you have done?” Kelsey asked.
“I’m asking you the question. Have you done that?”
“Yes.”
“And the district attorney gave you money for a haircut, a new suit of clothes and new shoes, so you’d make a good impression in court?”
“Not the district attorney.”
“The sheriff?”
“Yes.”
“And you have received the promise of immunity from the district attorney?”
“Provided I told the truth on the witness stand.”
“And what was his definition of the truth?”
“Well, it had to be a story that there wouldn’t be any holes in.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “if you told a story that would stand up on cross-examination, that was supposed to be the truth. Is that right?”
“Well, something like that.”
“If I was able to trip you up on cross-examination and show that you were lying, then you wouldn’t have any immunity. Is that it?”
“Well, that’s about the size of it, I guess. Of course he didn’t express it quite that way, but I was supposed to be telling the truth. If I’m telling the truth, nobody can punch any holes in my story. I’m to tell a story that stands up and then they’ll make it easy on me.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “if your story is good enough to bring about a conviction of the defendant in this case, you won’t be prosecuted for blackmail. Is that it?”
“Well, now you’re putting your own interpretation on the thing,” Kelsey said, “That wasn’t exactly the way the DA put it up to me and that’s not the way I’m going to let you get our understanding into the record. The understanding was that if I told my story and there were no holes in it, and I was telling the truth so it stood up in court just the way I’d told it to the DA, I didn’t have to worry about getting prosecuted for blackmail.
“Now, I’ll be perfectly frank with you, Mr Mason. I’m no angel. I’ve had trouble and that’s why I couldn’t answer a question about what my occupation was. I’m not going to commit myself. There isn’t any promise of immunity on anything except this one blackmail job. I’m willing to answer all questions about that and I’m going to tell the truth about it, even if it puts me in the position of being something of a heel.
“But you have to remember that I was dealing with a man who really wasn’t a partner. He’d just propositioned me to help him put across a blackmail deal, and then he started double-crossing me right from the start. I didn’t intend to stand for that.”
Mason said, “On the night of the tenth when Gilly was killed, where were you?”
“Now there,” Kelsey said, grinning, “I’ve got a sweet alibi. I was putting the bite on Eve Amory right about the time the murder took place, and after that I drove down to my room and I stayed there all night. I was up until a little after midnight, waiting for Gilly to come in, and when he didn’t come in I just decided he’d given me the double-cross, but I didn’t care too much because I felt sure I was going to make Eve Amory see things my way.
“Everybody would be sore at her because she’d pulled a fast one to get publicity, but that was no skin off my nose. They’d have to turn over the three thousand bucks to her and I’d wind up with all the dough.”
“And what became of Irwin Victor Fordyce?” Mason asked.
“Search me. I don’t know anything about that deal. All I know is that he was out of stir and he was hot, and he evidently took it on the lam when he found out that Gilly had sold him out and was blackmailing the family. You can see it his way. He felt that sooner or later the blackmail deal would get into the hands of the police, they’d find out what it was all about, and since he was hotter than a three-dollar pistol he decided discretion was the better part of valour and he’d better take it on the lam.”
“What do you mean by saying he was hotter than a three-dollar pistol?” Mason asked.
“Just what I said. He had been fingered on a filling-station job and the police were looking for him. As soon as he saw that blackmail letter published in the newspaper, he knew that the fat was in the fire and he decided to get out of circulation.”