Ray Fleck said bitterly, "It is blackmail then. Damn you, Irby, I'm tempted—"
"To spend six months in jail—and lose your job, your friends, and probably your wife if she's worth anything to you? Just to save a lousy grand?"
Irby leaned forward to reach into his left hip pocket and brought out a pair of handcuffs. "I tried to give you a break," he said, "but if you'd rather go to jail, let's get it over with."
Ray said miserably, "You win. But—how long will I have to raise it? It may take me—"
"We'll worry about that later. For tonight, if you want to walk out of here free, two painless steps are all you got to do. First, write a check for a thousand dollars made out to Miss Dolly Mason, date it today." He held up a hand to stop Ray's protest. "Don't tell me you haven't got a thousand in your account. I'll concede that, or you wouldn't be broke. I'll tell my client when to cash it. Let me worry about that."
Ray said sullenly, "I've got a dollar and some cents in the account, just enough to hold it open. All right. But I've got to get my wallet out of my hip pocket to get a check." Irby nodded, and he took out his wallet and took from it one of several blank checks he kept folded in one of the compartments. Irby offered him a pen, but he shook his head and took his own from his inside coat pocket, and wrote the check.
"Don't put the pen away," Irby told him. "One more step." He read the check carefully and put it into his own wallet. Then he took from his coat pocket a folded sheet of blank paper. He unfolded it and put it in front of Ray Fleck. "Now a confession. Put the date down and I'll dictate the rest."
"Confession! My God, you've got the check. Why do you want a confession too?"
"Think, Fleck. We might have to prove what that check was given for. Maybe you haven't thought of this yet, but you will: If I let you walk out of here free what's to prevent you from ditching the stolen property down the nearest sewer right away—and then, first thing tomorrow morning, stopping payment on the check? And if she tried to make trouble your story—you'd think of it—would be you'd given her the check on a drunken generous impulse and had reconsidered, especially when you sobered up and realized you didn't have money in the bank to cover it. Be embarrassing for you to have to tell a story like that, but how could Dolly disprove it?"
Ray Fleck understood and nodded miserably; his mind had been playing around with some such idea, although he hadn't worked out the details yet. He wrote down the date. And what Irby dictated to him after that. It wasn't long, but it sewed him up completely and left no loopholes. It even accounted for the fact that restitution was being made by check instead of return of the jewelry by stating that he had already disposed of several items of the stolen property. It didn't incriminate Dolly in any way by implying that he had ever been intimate with her.