The Case of the Rolling Bones

Chapter 10

It was drizzling when Mason entered the Seattle Hotel. “You have a J. E. Smith here?” he asked.

The clerk verified the registration, and said, “Yes. Three-nineteen. Shall I give him a ring?”

Mason said slowly, “No, I’ll call him after I’ve freshened up a bit. I had to leave in a hurry. Any place around here where I can get some clean clothes?”

“The middle of the next block,” the clerk said. “They’ll be open for an hour yet. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Everything will be closed.”

Mason nodded. “I want two rooms,” he said, “one for myself, one for Mrs. George L. Manchester of New York. I’ll pay for both rooms in advance. Give me the key to the room you select for Mrs. Manchester. I’ll look it over, see if it’s okay, and leave the key at the desk when I come down.”

Mason took a billfold from his pocket and slid a twenty-dollar bill across the desk to the clerk, then signed his name and that of Mrs. George Manchester on the registration card the clerk handed him.

The bellboy took Mason to his room. The Manchester room was three doors away and on the other side of the corridor. When the bellboy had left, Mason took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door of 319.

Emily Milicant’s voice asked sharply, “Who is it?”

“Express package,” Mason said gruffly.

There was a moment of silence, then the rustle of motion, and the door opened a cautious inch.

Mason pushed it open. Emily Milicant fell back in dismay. A white-haired, thin man with cold, gimlet eyes, seated in an overstuffed chair by the radiator, frowned at Mason. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Emily Milicant answered the question. “Perry Mason, the lawyer.”

The man in the chair said, “Lock the door.”

As Emily Milicant locked the door, Leeds asked, “How’d you find us?”

“Easy,” Mason said. “Too easy. If I found you, the police can find you.”

Emily Milicant, speaking rapidly, said, “Alden was simply terrified by that sanitarium. He was afraid he was going to be railroaded into an insane asylum. So he decided to run away.”

Mason, seating himself on the bed, calmly appropriated pillows with which to bolster his back. He lit a cigarette, and said conversationally to Alden Leeds, “When did you last see John Milicant?”

Leeds said, “It’s been about a week, I guess.”

“Try again,” Mason said.

Leeds stared at Mason, his cold, gray eyes, under frosty eyebrows, boring steadily into the lawyer’s. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Mason said, “You called on John Milicant at ten-five last night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You called on him where he’d had an apartment under the name of L. C. Conway,” Mason said.

Emily Milicant started to say something, then stopped suddenly.

Mason went on casually, “Don’t tell me that you don’t know John Milicant was murdered last night sometime between ten and ten-forty-five.”

Emily Milicant came to her feet, her eyes staring. “John!” she cried, and then, after a moment, “Murdered!”

Alden Leeds started to get to his feet, dropped back in the chair, and said sharply, “He’s lying, Emily, trying to get something out of you. Don’t fall for it.”

Mason fished in his inside pocket, took out a clipping, hastily torn from an early edition of the afternoon paper. He passed it across to Emily Milicant who read a few lines and crossed over to kneel beside Alden Leeds’ chair. Together they read the newspaper account

Mason said to Leeds, “You may or may not know that I’ve been employed to represent you by Phyllis.”

“He knows,” Emily Milicant said quickly. “Oh, Mr. Mason, this is awful... not that I didn’t expect it would happen some day. I’ve told him time and time again that he must quit associating with...”

“Forget all that stuff,” Mason interrupted roughly. “I don’t know how much time we have. Not much, I’m afraid. Milicant was your brother. Under the name of Conway, he’d been blackmailing Alden Leeds. You, Leeds, went up to John Milicant’s apartment last night. You were there at just about the time the murder must have been committed. The apartment was searched. It looks as though you’re the one who did the searching. Now, never mind lies, tears, or sentiment. Shoot fast and shoot clean.”

Leeds said, “I left there at nine-forty-five.”

“Guess again,” Mason said. “Private detectives were keeping the place under surveillance. You were clocked in at five minutes past ten and out at ten-sixteen.”

Emily Milicant, wiping tears from her eyes, said, quietly, “That’s right, Alden, it was ten-twenty-five when he called me and told me that you’d just left.”

Mason’s eyes bored steadily into hers. “He called you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“On the telephone?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Where?”

“At my... at a number I’d given him where he could call me.”

“Not at your apartment?” Mason asked.

“No.”

Alden Leeds said slowly, “Until yesterday afternoon, I had no idea L. C. Conway and John Milicant were one and the same. I thought John Milicant was acting as my friend. He told me that he knew Conway, that Conway was a crook, but that he could handle him.

“I gave John Milicant a check for twenty thousand. The check was payable to Conway, and endorsed so Conway would accept it. John said Conway wouldn’t go to the bank himself.”

Emily Milicant said confidently, “And then last night, John gave you back the money, didn’t he, Alden?”

“Gave me back the money!” Leeds said in surprise. “I should say not. Last night, he wanted more money.”

“Wanted more money!” Emily exclaimed. “Why, he promised me that he was going to return the money to you.”

Alden Leeds said dryly, “He gave me an ultimatum last night, told me I had to have another twenty thousand within twenty-four hours. I gave him fifteen more in cash.”

Emily Milicant sat staring at him with wide, surprised eyes. “Why, he called me last night, just after you’d left, and told me everything had been fixed up, and that he’d returned all but two thousand dollars to you.”

Leeds said nothing.

“Look here,” Mason interrupted, “if you’re absolutely certain your brother telephoned you at ten-twenty-five, it puts Alden Leeds in the clear.”

“Of course, he did.”

“You’re certain it was your brother?”

“Of course. I guess I know my own brother’s voice.”

Mason said thoughtfully, “And how about your watch? Was it right?”

“It was right to the second,” she said. “Alden and I were taking the midnight plane.”

Mason said, “If that’s the truth, Alden Leeds is in the clear.”

“Of course, it’s the truth. Why should I lie?”

“To help Alden Leeds, of course,” Mason said. “Surely you don’t expect the district attorney’s going to quit cold simply on your say-so.”

“Look here, Mr. Mason, I think Marcia was going to see John. I think she was... was planning on spending the night with him.”

“Who’s Marcia?” Alden Leeds asked.

“A girl John was going to marry,” Emily Milicant said. “I opposed the match, not because I thought she wasn’t good enough for John, but because I knew John wasn’t good enough for her. I knew it was a passing infatuation with John, and that he’d break her heart. I couldn’t tell Marcia all I knew about John, so I had to pretend that I was opposing the match because I was prejudiced against her. Why, John would have broken her heart inside two months. He’d have dragged her down and down and down. That’s what he’s done to all of his women.”

“He’s dead,” Mason pointed out.

“I don’t care whether he’s dead or not,” she blazed indignantly. “John Milicant was a mental defective. He couldn’t differentiate between right and wrong, and he didn’t even try.”

“Ever been in prison?” Mason asked.

“Of course, he’s been in prison. He served five years in the penitentiary at Waupun, Wisconsin. That was years ago.”

“Then they’ll have his fingerprint record,” Mason said.

She shook her head. “He became a trusty in the prison office and was shrewd enough to get hold of his own fingerprints and substitute them,” she said. “He got ten convicts to each donate a fingerprint. That confused his record so nothing could be done about it. It was before the days of a central fingerprint filing system...”

Mason frowned thoughtfully. “Before he’d lost his toes?” he asked.

“He lost his toes at Waupun,” she said “Blood poisoning set in from an infected blister. They had to amputate four toes on his right foot.”

Mason, studying her thoughtfully, said, “He was really your brother?”

“Of course, he was my brother.”

“You’re certain you hadn’t assumed the relationship for the purpose of — traveling together?”

She flushed. “Certainly not,” she snapped.

Mason turned to Alden Leeds. “Okay,” he said, “Conway and John Milicant were one and the same. He was blackmailing you. What was the hold he had on you?”

“We won’t go into that,” Leeds said.

“I think we will,” Mason told him. “What’s going to happen when the police find those papers in Conway’s apartment?”

“What papers?”

Mason said, “I’m not going to show my hand until you’ve shown yours. I have enough to know whether you’re telling me the truth. Suppose you start.”

Leeds said, “I have no further statement to make.”

Mason said, “Suppose I make one then. You’re not Alden Leeds. You’re really Bill Hogarty, who assumed Leeds’ identity back in 1907.”

Emily Milicant said, “Go ahead and tell him, Alden. Can’t you see? Its the only way.”

“We haven’t got all night, you know,” Mason prodded.

Leeds tamped tobacco down in his pipe. “I’ll tell him about me, and leave you out of it, Emily,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” Emily Milicant retorted. “Tell him the whole thing.”

He shook his head.

“All right. I’ll tell him about me,” she said. She turned to Perry Mason. “I was a dance hall girl,” she went on. “I went up into the Klondike as a dancer for the ‘M and N.’ That was before the days of taxi dancers as we know them nowadays. Dance hall girls were all kinds, straight and crooked. I was filled with the spirit of adventure, and wanted to go places and do things. Well, I went places, and I did things, and I’m not ashamed of anything I ever did.

“They told me when I left Seattle, I could work in the dance hall and be straight. I could, but I couldn’t make any money at it. I’m no angel, but I never in my life gave myself to a man just for money. I was nineteen when I went up to the Klondike in 1906. That makes me fifty-two years old now. Now then, Alden, you go on from there.”

Alden Leeds said, “I went into the Yukon in 1906. I picked up a partner by the name of Hogarty. We went up in the Tanana district, and made a pretty good strike. Hogarty had got acquainted with Emily coming in on the boat. He fell for her hard, and kept writing to her.

“Emily went into the dance hall, and didn’t like it. She decided to quit and buy an interest in a claim. Bill wrote her to come on up, and he thought he could get my consent to selling her a third interest in our claim.

“She came up. I’ll never forget how Emily looked when I first saw her in our cabin. I looked at her, and fell head over heels in love with her.

“We’d been working hard. Our nerves were raw. I cussed Bill for bringing a good girl into the rough mining country. Bill told me to mind my own business. One word led to another, and, after two days, we weren’t speaking. Emily tried to patch things up. The more she tried, the worse things got.

“It wasn’t real cold yet, although there was frost in the air, and it was commencing to get dark. You know, it’s light all night up there during the summer. Bill and I had moved out, and let Emily have the cabin. We slept out back, on balsam boughs — sleeping together for warmth, and neither one of us speaking. We woke up one morning, and found Emily gone. She’d left a note, saying that she saw it wouldn’t work out, and she was on her way, that we weren’t to try to follow.

“That didn’t keep us from trying to follow. It didn’t do us any good. We couldn’t locate her. We came back to the claim, and went back to mining. Bill wanted to tear my throat out, and I wanted to tear his out. Then, one day we struck it rich. We stood and stared at each other over the big pile of gold, and Bill said, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Emily would have had a share in this.’ I called him a fighting name, and we mixed all over the place. Neither of us won. I was older and more solid. He was younger and faster. When we couldn’t fight any more, we went into the cabin and put cold water on our faces. Then we went out and grubbed out more gold. We had an awful pile of it.

“That night Bill decide to kill me. I read it in his eyes. He figured that with me dead, he could take all of the gold and go get Emily. He’d sensed by that time that she cared more for me than she did for him.

“We had a revolver and a rifle. I stuck the rifle down my pants leg and smuggled it out of the cabin when I went out to get wood. I left it where it would be handy. I was watching Bill like a hawk.

“About eight o’clock that night, it happened. He’d been drinking pretty heavy, and, all of a sudden, he straightened up and threw the whiskey bottle to one side. I read murder in his eyes. I think he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t talk. He twisted his lips, and that was all. I was headed for the door by the time he’d raised the gun. Remember, I’d been waiting for just that play.

“Bill was fast. He shot twice, and missed both times. I ran around the cabin, and he after me. I had enough of a head start to keep the cabin between me and him. I grabbed the rifle, and shot.

“There I was, with a dead partner, out in the middle of the north country, a claim that was lousy with gold, and winter coming on. I knew it was a pocket. I knew it might play out tomorrow or next day or the next week, or, maybe, next season. But it was a pocket. If I left the claim to go and report to the authorities, and some prospector came along, he’d clean out the gold.

“I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time. I dragged Bill out a ways from the cabin, dug a hole, and buried him. It was exactly what he’d have done with me. I went back and stayed with that pocket. It petered out in about ten days. I had a fortune in gold. It took me five trips, lugging all I could carry, to get it down to the boat.

“Well, there I was. The river was due to start freezing almost any time. I had a big load of gold, and quite a few people knew my partner was Bill Hogarty. I couldn’t explain Bill’s absence without getting into a lot of trouble. I didn’t dare to lie about it, and I didn’t dare to tell the truth.

“I started back up the river. It was slow going. The river finally froze on me. I got Indians and dog sleds. I was traveling hard and fast, and I went under the name of Bill Hogarty. I told people we’d struck it rich, and that Leeds, my partner, was staying in to watch the claim, that I was going out to get supplies, and bank the gold. I stayed away from people we knew. I did but little talking, and I traveled fast.

“You see, the way I figured it, by traveling as Bill Hogarty, I could leave a record that Bill had left the country and got as far as Seattle. Then in Seattle, I’d take my own name, and talk with people I knew. Then if the law found the body, they wouldn’t identify it as Hogarty because the records would show Hogarty had gone out and reached Seattle, where he’d disappeared. They couldn’t identify it as Leeds because Leeds would be alive and well. It was the best I could do. I figured that, with any sort of luck, it would be a year or two before they found the body. I got out to Seattle, still going under the name of Hogarty. I found Emily. She’d felt the same way about me I’d felt about her. We were married.

“We lived here in Seattle that winter. We were both of us high-strung and temperamental. We had one hell of a fight in the spring. Emily walked out on me. I know now, she intended to come back, but Emily was as high-strung as a good trotting horse. I left Seattle and went back to my real identity of Alden Leeds.”

Leeds stopped talking for a moment, and held a match to his pipe. “Remember,” he went on, slowly, “things were different in those days. The country was young, and the men in it were young. Even the old men were younger than most of the young men are now.

“Nowadays, we’re suffering from hardening of the economic arteries. The country is old. Our outlook is old. People have quit trying. You could comb through this whole damn city today and not get a half a dozen men with the guts to take what the Yukon dished out in those days. I don’t mind getting old and dying. I hate to see the whole damned country dying along with me. There ain’t any youth to take our place. Just a bunch of whining little snivelers who want the government to support ’em.”

In the silence which followed, knuckles pounded on the door of the room.

Mason said, “What is it?”

A bellboy’s voice answered, “A telegram for Mr. Mason. He isn’t in his room. I thought he might be here. He told the clerk he’d call on Mr. Smith.”

“Shove it under the door,” Mason said, “and I’ll push a dollar bill back. I’m Mason.”

A moment later, a blue envelope slid under the door. Mason slid a dollar bill through the crack.

“Okay,” Mason said. “I’ll let you know if there’s an answer.”

He ripped open the telegram envelope and read a message sent by Della Street:

Mason folded the message, and pushed it down into his coat pocket. He turned back to face the two in the room.

“All right,” he said quietly, “we’re going to have company. You two do exactly as I say. Miss Milicant, here’s a key to a room in the hotel. You’re registered in that room as Mrs. George L. Manchester. Go to that room. Lock yourself in. Stay there until after the police think you’ve slipped through their fingers, and have quit watching the place. Then get out, keep under cover, and write me at my office where you are and what name you’re using.

“Leeds, I could help you escape. I don’t think it’s wise. When you’re arrested, waive extradition, but don’t be in a hurry to do it. Tell the police that you’re in love with Emily Milicant, that you hope she does you the honor of marrying you, that you had no idea the man you knew as John Milicant was going under the name of Louie Conway until yesterday afternoon. Admit that you called on him, claim that you don’t know what time it was; that you had a business matter to discuss; that you left him alive and well; that you won’t discuss anything else until after you’ve talked with Emily. Don’t tell the police what you were talking about, what the check was for, or how you found out Conway and Milicant were one and the same.

“Now then, after you left the sanitarium, you wrote out another twenty thousand dollar check also payable to Conway, but endorsed so as to make it payable to bearer. The description of the woman who cashed that check makes me think it was Emily Milicant. How about it?”

They exchanged glances. “It was I,” Emily admitted.

“What’s the idea?”

“Alden wanted to have plenty of cash to do what he wanted to do. He knew he couldn’t draw twenty thousand in cash without making it look as though he were running away. He figured that if he made that second check to Conway and had me cash it, he could get the twenty thousand, and no one would figure he was checking out. It sounded like a good idea at the time.”

“It looks like hell now,” Mason said. “Twenty grand is too much cash for a pleasure trip. It looks as though you were running away and didn’t intend to come back.”

“I know it,” she admitted.

Leeds said, “Look here, Mason, I can’t be arrested. I’ve got to get back to the Tanana country.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you see? To square up that old killing.”

“You mean John Milicant was blackmailing you over that?”

“Yes.”

“Just what did you expect to do?” Mason asked.

“I expected to go back and clear the thing up.”

“How did you expect to square it?” Mason asked.

“I thought I could tell the truth. I thought Emily could back me up.”

Mason said, “Don’t be foolish. Emily can’t back you up. Her story would furnish motivation — that’s all. After all this time, the facts are obscured. John had the evidence against you. He gave it to Marcia Whittaker to keep. She gave it to me. I told her you’d stand back of her as long as she kept her mouth shut.”

“You have that evidence?” Leeds asked eagerly.

“How about Marcia Whittaker?” Mason asked, avoiding the subject. “Did I do right?”

“Good Heavens, yes! I’d do anything in the world to get that evidence.”

Mason turned to Emily Milicant.

“How about you?” he asked. “Would you do anything in the world to get Alden out of that old charge?”

She nodded.

Mason frowned thoughtfully. “All right,” he said. “Do exactly as I told you, no more and no less. If the police should catch you, refuse to make any statement, refuse to identify the body as that of your brother, refuse to admit you ever had a brother, and refuse to talk about anything until you’ve seen me. Can you do that?”

“How,” she asked, “would that help matters any?”

Mason said, “I haven’t time to make explanations. Will you do what I say?”

“Yes.”

“If you do exactly that,” Mason said, “both of you, I can help you. If you don’t follow my instructions, one or both of you is quite apt to get a first degree murder rap pinned on you.”

“Your instructions,” Leeds said dubiously, “are simple enough, but I don’t see how they can help matters. Even if you have all of those papers, there’s going to be an investigation. The police will want to know what Conway had on me, why I paid the twenty thousand.”

“Don’t tell them,” Mason said.

“And if I don’t tell them, they’ll claim I murdered him in order to free myself of a blackmailer.”

“Not if I say that he telephoned me after you left,” Emily Milicant said.

Leeds stared steadily at her. “You know damn well he didn’t telephone you,” he said.

Mason said, “Shut up. Now listen to me. Emily, have you any other relatives?”

“No, just the two of us.”

Mason said, “John’s life must have been a closed book back of a certain date. It must have been, for him to have covered up that felony conviction.”

“It was,” she said.

Mason said, “Get down to the room where you’re Mrs. Manchester. Don’t waste any time. After I leave, don’t sit here and talk. Don’t get sentimental. Don’t get excited. Do exactly as I have told you. Remember that the man who killed two birds with one stone had only to throw the rock. We have one bird, and we have to account for two stones.”

He strode out of the room, took the elevator to the lobby. The drizzle had become a cold, steady rain. As Mason stood in the doorway, waiting for a taxicab, a police car rounded a corner and skidded into the curb. Four officers in uniform jumped out. Two plain-clothes men, who had been standing near the door, converged on the group of officers.

Mason’s taxicab took him to the telegraph office where he sent Della Street a message, saying simply:

He signed the wire, paid for it, returned to his taxi, and said, “Take me to a newspaper office. I want to put an ad in the personal column.”

At the newspaper office, Mason, with moisture glistening on his suit and dripping from the brim of his hat, wrote an ad for the personals.

Mason shoved the ad across the counter. “Here,” he said, “is a fifty-dollar bill. Keep this ad running until the money’s used up or until I tell you to stop. Run it in display type, or double-space it, or whatever is necessary to attract attention.”

“Yes, sir,” the girl said, looking at his wet clothes. “It must be raining outside.”

Mason shivered, passed one of his cards across the counter. “Any replies you receive,” he said, “are to be sent at once by airmail to this address. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good night,” Mason said, and strode out into the cold rain. “If I can’t buy an overcoat,” he told the cab driver, “perhaps I can find an airplane that will carry me far enough south to get into a different climate.”

The cab driver looked at him in amazement.

“In other words,” Mason said, “the airport, and make it snappy.”

At the airport, Mason found that the next regular passenger plane left Seattle at ten-thirty-five the next morning. The taxicab took him to one of the city’s better hotels where he again registered and explained to the clerk that he had no baggage.

In his room, Mason enjoyed the luxury of a hot bath and a night’s sleep. In the morning, he called Della Street on the long distance telephone.

“Get my message?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Mason said, “Listen, Della. Here are the developments. I located Alden Leeds up here. I’ve found out quite a bit of family history. John Milicant was Leeds’ former partner. He went by the name of Bill Hogarty. He and Leeds went into the Klondike in 1906. They struck it rich. Hogarty and Leeds had a falling out over a dance hall girl. The dance hall girl was Emily Milicant. Hogarty married Emily Milicant in Seattle in 1907.”

“Then he wasn’t Emily Milicant’s brother?”

“Not a bit of it,” Mason said

“But why did she say he was?”

“It’s a long story,” Mason said. “I think we can identify the body absolutely as that of Hogarty because of his frostbitten foot. But we want to keep the district attorney from finding out what we’re doing.”

Della Street said, “Is there anything you want me to do at this end, Chief?”

Mason said, “Yes. Explain to Phyllis Leeds that everything is okay, and that I’ll be back in the office Monday morning. Tell her I’ve seen her uncle; that he’s all right and wants to be remembered to her.”

“Where,” Della Street asked, “is her uncle now?”

Mason said, “The last I saw of him he was at his hotel.”

“Are you in the same hotel?”

“No. I registered again in a second hotel because I didn’t want Leeds to be interrupting me with a lot of questions. I was tired and wanted to sleep. See you tomorrow, Della. ‘By.”

Mason hung up, went down to the lobby, paid his bill, and caught the plane south. It was still raining.

In San Francisco, Mason bought a newspaper. He found what he wanted on the second page. While he was flying to Los Angeles, he read the newspaper account with twinkling eyes:

Della Street and Paul Drake were waiting for Mason at the airport.

“Hello, gang,” Mason said. “How about eats?”

“Swell,” Della Street said. “There’s a fine restaurant right here in the main administration building.”

Mason said, “And we won’t discuss any business until after we’ve finished with the food.”

On the way to the restaurant, Drake said, “Seen the papers about Leeds, Perry?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where,” Drake asked, “did you get that dope about the frostbitten foot?”

Mason said firmly, “We eat now and talk later.”

Drake said, “I always like to eat with a client who’s on an expense account.”

Mason grinned. “Go as far as you like.”

“I take it then,” Drake said, “Leeds was appreciative — and generous.”

“And I’ll discuss that over the coffee and cigarettes,” Mason said.

When they had finished the meal and were huddled over cups of black coffee, Mason lit a cigarette and said to Paul Drake, “Okay, Paul, let’s have it.”

Drake said, “Following your tip-off, Della had me check on the tenants above the sixth floor in that apartment house. We drew blanks until we looked up the occupant of 881. She’s Inez Colton — has a secretarial job in a hardware store. She’s been seen two or three times with a young man who drove a red convertible. Jason Carrel has a red convertible. Descriptions on the cars check absolutely. What’s more, Inez Colton took a powder right after the murder. We can’t locate her anywhere. She simply walked out and disappeared. She told a friend she was going on a week-end trip.”

Mason said, “Jason Carrel, eh? It sounds as though we’ve struck pay dirt, Paul.”

“Struck it,” Drake said, “but can’t do anything with it. We’ve got men covering Jason Carrel. He may lead us to her, but I think he’s too wise.

“The officers slapped a subpoena duces tecum on your handwriting expert. That meant either that Della had been shadowed when she went to him, or that the telephone line was tapped. I did a little investigating and found out your telephone line to the office and hers at her apartment were tapped.”

“How about this waitress at the Home Kitchen Café?” Mason asked.

“I don’t think there’s anything to that,” Drake said. “She left before the murder was committed. Evidently, it’s just a coincidence.”

“What time did she leave?”

“Around nine o’clock. Someone saw her leaving her room. She was carrying two heavy suitcases. I tried to cover taxicabs, but can’t find anything as yet. Her room rent was paid up. She had wages coming. Oscar Baker is the waiter at the Blue and White Restaurant who took the dinner up. He’s positive on the time element. He doesn’t know Hazel Stickland, the waitress at the Home Kitchen Café — says he doesn’t, and I’m inclined to believe him, but I’m checking back on him. He’s just a punk kid who’s drifted around, flunky in a lumber camp, waiter, dishwasher — plays what money he can get on the horses — a colorless chap who’s never found himself because there isn’t anything to find. I’ve planted an operative who’s become friendly with him, posing as a waiter out of a job. Baker says he’ll try and get him on at the Blue and White as soon as there’s a vacancy.”

Mason said, “You can’t tell about kids these days, Paul. A lot of the most puzzling crimes and the most vicious crimes are committed by persons under twenty-five.”

“I know,” Drake said, “and, of course, there’s a possible motivation. John Milicant was quite a ladies’ man. He played the races. Hazel played the races, and Oscar Baker played them. But that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people play the ponies these days.

“I find that Oscar Baker has been winning money crap shooting lately and losing it on ponies. From the way he’s been winning with craps, I wouldn’t doubt that he had some of the merchandise of the Conway Appliance Company.”

“Check on that?” Mason asked.

“Hell,” Drake said, “he’s too wise. My operative got in a crap game with him, and won three dollars. If Baker had any crooked dice from Conway, he was wise enough to ditch them as soon as he read about the murder.

“Serle has sold us outright. Naturally, you’d have to expect that. I think that he talked with Conway at ten-thirty, but he’s fixed the time at ten o’clock now. Of course, there wasn’t any bribery or anything like that, but, as one of the main witnesses for the prosecution, the D.A. wouldn’t want him to come into court as a crook. So they’re covering him with a thick coat of whitewash; and, of course, Serle was smart enough to figure that all out. He didn’t have to be awfully smart to do that.

“Incidentally, while we’re checking up on things, don’t overlook this prospector friend of Leeds — Ned Barkler.”

“What about him?” Mason asked.

“He’s a card,” Drake said, “talks occasionally about the old days in the Yukon country, never mentions any of his own adventures, becomes interested in stories of frontier brawls, and shooting scrapes. For the most part, he wears disreputable clothes, but occasionally he spruces himself up and steps out. He looks the girls over with an appraising eye, and makes passes at the pretty ones when he thinks he can get away with it — cashiers in restaurants, girls at cigar counter, manicurists, and janes like that.”

“Successful?” Mason asked.

“Hell, Perry,” the detective protested. “Give me a chance. I haven’t even located him yet. He’s a colorful profane old coot who’s as salty as a piece of smoked salmon. But where the devil he came from before he contacted Leeds, is more than I can find out. He appeared a couple of years ago, right in the middle of the picture. And now that he’s left, he’s walked right out of the middle of the picture. Somehow, Perry, I have an idea there’s one man we’ll never find until he wants us to find him.”

Mason said, “I want Inez Colton, Paul, and I want her badly.”

“How much time can I have?” Drake asked.

“None at all,” Mason said. “I’m going to rush that preliminary hearing through just as fast as I can.”

“Why not stall along until I can turn up something on the Colton woman?”

Mason shook his head. “Don’t forget the D.A. has served a subpoena duces tecum on my handwriting expert. I want to mix this case up so much and rush it through so fast that he’ll be one jump behind us all the way along the line. When he sees those papers, I don’t want him to have time enough to figure out what they mean.”

“It’ll take work and luck,” Drake said. “I’ll furnish the work. You’ll have to pray for luck. What’s all this about Milicant being Hogarty, Perry, and how did you find out about that frostbitten foot?”

Mason smiled at Della Street. “A little bird told me,” he said.