Chapter 11 chapter Ten

When Harold Bancroft went to see Mason the next morning, she looked very nervous, as if she might break down at any moment. "What's wrong, Bancroft?" Mason asked. "It's my wife," said Bancroft. "What's up with her?" "Mr. Mason, what I'm telling you now must not be leaked!" "Of course," Mason said. "I must strictly abide by professional ethics and keep my mouth shut." "You've said there are four ways to deal with blackmailers," Bancroft said. "Do you remember?" "certainly."

"One of the ways is to kill the gangster!" Bancro said. Mason narrowed his eyes. "You mean, your wife killed the gangster?" "yes." "when?" "last night." "Where?" "On board my yacht, the Ginasha." "Who else knows about this?" Mason asked. "Did you call the police?" "No, I'm afraid I'll make a big mistake." "You'd better explain what happened," Mason said. "The sooner the better." Bancroft said: "Last night my wife was busy with a charity sale, and then she asked me to go home and wait for her, saying that she had other things and would be home later. What happened was... Mason, You have to guarantee that the following words will not be leaked."

"Go on," Mason said. "You may not have much time left." "Jason Blair seems to have a younger brother, Charlton Blair, who everyone thinks is dead..." "I know all this." Mason interrupted him. "Then I'll make a long story short. Charlton lives at Ajay's Flats under the pseudonym Alvin Vidor Fordis, and he has a good friend, Weymar Kiley, who also lives there. It's not a very good place." Well, a lot of scumbags are hiding there, and they know the landlord isn't interested in their business. Jilly and Verdes were released from San Quentin at about the same time, and the two were inseparable from each other, and Verdes put the Ji Li regarded him as his best friend. Fodis saw all kinds of rumors about Jason Blair and Roseanne Andrews in the newspaper, and finally couldn't help telling Ji Li that he was an odd number in the Blair family, Everyone thought he was dead. Apparently Jilly decided to make a lot of money out of it, so he went to Roseanne, and then to my wife, Phyllis, and Phyllis paid for it."

"Go on," Mason said. "Later, the coffee can incident made big news, and Ji Li wanted to ask Roseanne to give her money again. The clever Roseanne pretended to mistake the gangster for a reporter, but refused him, so Ji Li decided to find Phyllis by himself. I don't understand this part. Phyllis thinks that since the gangsters are using Fody's tricks to blackmail, she should find out how much Fody's knows about this matter. So she asked Foddy Ji Li lived in Ai Jie's apartment, so he went to him and asked him if it was not enough to be a prodigal, but he would degenerate himself and engage in blackmail. Verdis was very surprised that Ji Li would do such a thing, and he vowed to kill Ji Li. After he calmed down a little, he told Phyllis that he would deal with it and asked her to ignore Ji Li's blackmail. Phyllis was panicked when she heard that, and she learned from Ji Li that the police had The robbery is looking for Fodis, and she is afraid that if Fodis and Ji Li get involved, it will add fuel to the flames, and the consequences will be even more dire. So she suggested that Fodis come with her to our yacht Jinnasha, She'll give him some money and he can stay on the boat for a week or two and no one will find it there. Of course Phyllis shouldn't be doing that, especially since she knows the police are looking for him."

"How does she know?" Mason asked. "Ji Li told her." "A blackmailer's words don't count at all," Mason said. "It's good to hear you say that. His words worry me a lot." "Back to Ji Li, what happened to him?" "Phyllis took Verdis to the yacht and told him to stay there. She rowed the boat back to the yacht club, and then drove to find some more reliable friends. These people often go to the casino to gamble, so most of them With cash. Phyllis took a check of 3,000 yuan and exchanged it into 50 yuan and 100 yuan in cash, and then returned to the ship to hand over the money to Fodis, but found that Where to go, but Ji Li is on board."

"Where's Verdys?" Mason asked. "Maybe murdered," Bancroft said. "Because Ji Li is the only one on board, and he looks fierce." "What happened next?" "Phyllis had a gun and three thousand dollars in her purse, and she started stalling for time. The situation was a bit complicated: when she boarded the boat, she saw a figure in the bow lifting the anchor, and she thought it was Verdes." "Isn't the boat at anchor?" "It wasn't there at the time, it was tied with an anchor because the mooring equipment was sent for repair."

"I see," Mason said. "Go on." "The man heard her come aboard, casually tied the mooring line to the bitt, and went into the main cabin. By this time the engine was running, so the boat was actually moving. Just as the fog lifted, a moment later The whole ship was shrouded in a thick fog." "Why does the boat move?" Mason asked. "Obviously he wanted to use the thick fog to cover up what happened on the boat. Ji Li must have planned long ago to slip away after landing the boat, so that Phyllis could be blamed for Verdis' disappearance."

"Go on," Mason said. "Ji Li blamed Phyllis for playing tricks on him, and Phyllis asked him what he had done to Verdys. The two argued for a while, and Ji Li said that he knew she had gone to get a sum of money, and he wanted that money. Fei Li Liz refused to give it, and Ji Li became fierce, saying that he would tie her up with a heavy object and throw her into the sea. At this time, Phyllis took out a gun from her purse and asked him to raise his hands." "And then?" Mason asked. "You know that's when the anchor isn't fully pulled up," Bancroft said. "I think there are about fifteen to twenty feet of anchor cable in the water. At this moment, the anchor suddenly hit something, maybe a piece of wood, a stone, etc. Phyllis couldn't stand still, and her fingers couldn't help The trigger was pulled. She fired at close range, and Jilly immediately collapsed."

"What will your wife do next?" "She panicked, ran to the side of the boat, and jumped down." "Where's the gun?" Mason asked. "She said that when she jumped off the boat, the gun and purse should still be in her hand, but after jumping into the water, she started swimming towards the shore, and lost the gun and purse on the way." "It was very foggy, could she see the shore?" "She could see a faint light, and the water was shallow a few feet away. She waded out and found that it happened to be very close to the dock where we usually refuel the yacht, and it was only a few hundred feet away from the yacht club's parking lot. So she ran out to the parking lot with her wet clothes on, jumped in the car and drove home."

"Leave the boat there?" "yes." "And there's a dead body on board, right?" "good." "How does she know he's dead?" "From the way he fell, she thought he must be dead, especially since she shot him directly in the chest at close range." "Is this person Ji Li?" "It's Ji Li." "Does she know what has become of Verdys?" "have no idea." Mason said: "Well, things are beginning to have an outline. Fordis told Ji Li the secret. Ji Li has a friend who is an expert in extortion. His name is Casey the Thieves... What happened to the yacht?"

"That's the point," Bancroft said. "As soon as it was dawn, I drove to the yacht, but I didn't expect the yacht to disappear!" "Missing?" Mason asked. Bancroft shook his head. "You know, the tide was low when it happened last night, and now it's coming up again. So the tide must have been high last night, and the boat floated into the harbor and ran aground somewhere." "When did your wife tell you these things?" "Last night around ten o'clock." "Why didn't you call me or call the police then?" "I'm afraid to call the police, and at the same time I feel like it's best to wait until the morning to get to you. I don't know how to get to you other than through Derek Detective Agency - worst of all, my wife gets hysterical, If she had called the police at that time, she would have collapsed. All the newspapers would have known about Verdys... It was not murder at all, it was self-defense. I decided to take the responsibility and the police would find me if they wanted to." "That's a good word, but it's not very smart. If she calls the police immediately, it's self-defense; but when the police find you, it's murder." "I had to make some kind of choice, I took some tranquilizers from home and gave it to my wife." "Don't you understand?" Mason said. "This extortion case will be exposed sooner or later, because it is a murder case!" "I know, so I will tell you the truth now and let you deal with it. But you have to understand that if Phyllis just speaks out, the blackmail case will leak out, and this is something we can't afford, so she Refusing to make any statement. To buy time, we can only do so." "It's really the only way to do it now," Mason said coldly. "Last night we could have had other methods, and now we have no choice. It was too late to call the police so late. Now we are in a dilemma. We can only try our best to find out the truth. First of all, we must find the yacht." "The fog on the harbor is still very thick." "Can get a helicopter," Mason said. "Hover in the air until the fog clears." Mason turned to Della. "Call our airport services, we're going to rent a four-seater helicopter now," Mason said, picking up his hat. "Bancro, let's go!" Before Mason could reach the door, the phone rang.Della looked at him suspiciously, and only picked up the phone after seeing him nod. "Gerdy, what's the matter?" She waved to Mason and said, "It's Eva Amory." Mason frowned and walked back to the phone. "I listen, take her over." A moment later I heard him say, "Hello, Eva? I'm Perry Mason, what's the matter?" "I'm afraid I'm going to get cold feet, Mr. Mason," she said. "What's the meaning?" "It means..." she said. "I'm going to sign a statement saying this whole thing is a publicity stunt, a good friend of mine put the money, we faked that blackmail letter, arranged for me to pick up the money while water skiing, it's all just a publicity stunt .” "Eva, you can't do this," Mason said. "You know that's not the case." "But if I don't sign it," he said. "You can't get rid of it." "Get rid of what?" "Get rid of...um, stress." "That way you can't get rid of anything," Mason said. "That's what they said." "Who are they?" "It's them anyway." "Did they take a statement for you to sign?" Mason asked. "yes." Mason said, "Eva, I want to ask you to do something. Come and talk to me in my office before you sign." "They restricted me to sign before two o'clock this afternoon." "Okay," Mason said. "You tell them that you will come to my office at two o'clock this afternoon, and you will sign it then." "I don't think they're going to your office." "Tell them they won't get the statement otherwise; tell them you'd love to sign it, but you'll have to get my permission first." "It won't work, they won't..." "Try it!" Mason said. "At least give it a try?" "Okay, I'll try." "you promise?" "I promise." "Okay." Mason said and hung up the phone. "These goddamn gangsters really have a way," Mason told Bancroft. "As long as a person is smart enough, ruthless enough, and knows enough, he can do whatever he wants. Let's go!"