Erle Gardner - The Case of the Rolling Bones

“Almost two hours later, you went to his apartment, and killed him. You paused long enough to order a restaurant in the block to bring you up food that was exactly the same as that which Hogarty had consumed in the restaurant. When the waiter arrived with the food you were in Hogarty’s bedroom, apparently engaged in a spirited conversation with him... but Hogarty was already dead. You were pitching your voice to two different tones, and doing all the talking yourself. Isn’t that right?”

“It’s a lie!” Serle shouted, his voice was strained and hoarse.

Mason went on calmly and remorselessly. “You waited until the plates had arrived, and then scraped all of the contents of the plates into the garbage chutes.”

“I did not.”

“Then you left, intent upon building up an alibi. You were careful to see that the door was locked. You didn’t know Marcia Whittaker had a key to that apartment. You left there after the murder and went to the pool room where you knew you could find several of your cronies, and took occasion to tell them that you were going to call Hogarty at around ten-thirty.

“Then, to clinch matters, and make it appear that the decedent had been murdered right after that telephone conversation, you pretended to dial the number and talk with him on the telephone. You pretended to be engaged in a conversation about bail. And from the pool room you went directly to the police station, figuring that that would be the safest way for you to clinch your alibi.”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Serle said with dogged persistence.

Kittering, who had recovered his composure, said, “Your Honor, I object to this. This is an attempt to browbeat the witness. It...”

“Objection overruled,” Judge Knox said. “Proceed, Mr. Mason.”

“Better think again,” Mason said, “because I’m going to prove what I say, Serle.”

Serle clamped his lips tightly together, and said nothing, but the skin across the top of his forehead began to glisten as it slimed with cold perspiration.

“Now,” Mason went on calmly, “let’s go back to the night of the murder. You went to the Home Kitchen Café. Hazel Stickland waited on your table. She...”

“I didn’t eat there the night of the murder,” Serle blurted. “I ate with Hogarty in his apartment. I tell you, I never was at the Home Kitchen Café any time that night.”

Mason said, calmly, “You were there, Serle. You and Bill Hogarty. You may have arranged to get rid of the waitress, but you perhaps failed to notice that two girls were seated at the table next to you, and that Hogarty was surreptitiously trying a pickup.” — Mason whirled abruptly to face the audience. “Miss Gertrude Lade,” he called out. “Will you stand up please?”

Gertrude Lade stood up.

Mason, pointing a rigid forefinger, said, “Look at that young woman, Serle. I am going to ask you if you have ever seen her before — if, as a matter of fact, she wasn’t seated at the table next to you when you were eating dinner in the Home Kitchen Café on Friday, the seventh of this month?”

Gertrude Lade said, “That’s him all right.”

The deputy district attorney jumped to his feet, spouting objections. Mason held up his hand, and said, “No, no, Miss Lade, not a word from you! Please! Your time will come later, you and the young woman who was with you. I just wanted to ask Mr. Serle to identify you, that’s all. Sit down please.”

Gertrude Lade sat down.

Serle’s face had turned a pasty green.

At that moment, the door of the courtroom opened, and two deputies escorted Emily Milicant into the room.

Mason met her eyes in a stony stare, whirled suddenly to face Serle once more. “You still insist that you ate dinner in the company of Bill Hogarty in his apartment and not at the Home Kitchen Café?” Mason asked.

Serle hesitated a moment, then blurted, “We ate two dinners. Once there and once in the apartment. He was still hungry.”

Mason smiled. “And were you so hungry,” he asked, “that you ate up everything off the plate?”

“Yes.”

“You want this court to understand that you ate the jackets from the baked potatoes?”

“Yes,” Serle said. “I always eat them.”

“And,” Mason observed, “you also swallowed the bones from the chops, did you not?”

Serle’s eyes stared at Mason in speechless fear.

Mason said, “You’ll have to try and do better on your next murder, Serle. When you scraped the plates down the garbage chute, you made a fatal error in neglecting to remember that it is customary to leave bones on the plates.”

Mason smiled affably at Judge Knox, and said, “It is the contention of the defense that when Alden Leeds arrived at the apartment, Hogarty was dead. It is, I presume, true that Milicant was really Hogarty. He had been blackmailing this defendant, and it was only natural, although perhaps not legally proper, for the defendant to try and regain possession of papers which he knew were in possession of the dead man, papers which would make public the very disclosures he had sought to suppress. And so the defendant searched the apartment — which accounts for his fingerprints. He made a frantic effort to find those papers.”

“But,” Kittering countered, jumping to his feet, “those papers were papers which connected him with the attempted murder of Bill Hogarty, with the stealing of his property, and...”

“Oh, no,” Mason said with a smile. “ Those papers related to an entirely different matter. The defendant found them, thank you. They have been destroyed.”

And Mason sat down.

Serle yelled, “It’s a lie!”

Kittering said, “Your Honor, I object to...”

Mason whirled to face Kittering, “If you were a little more interested in finding the real criminal, and a little less in trying to convict an innocent man, merely because you have started to prosecute him, you’d be cooperating with me in this thing instead of opposing me... When the first check was given to Hogarty, the bank had to cash it, but, thinking it might be blackmail, they wrote down the numbers on the bills. Serle got those bills after the murder of Hogarty. I think you’ll find them in his possession right now.”

Judge Knox said, “This court is going to take a twenty-minute recess. We...”

He broke off as Serle, shouting, “I refuse to stand for this persecution,” streaked across the courtroom and through the door of the judge’s chambers.

Judge Knox shouted at the deputy sheriff, who had Leeds in charge, “Get him! Get him! Don’t sit there like a fool!”

The deputy sheriff sprinted into action.

Mason scratched a match on the sole of his shoe, and lit a cigarette.

Della Street squeezed his wrist enthusiastically. “Chief,” she said, “I could dance a jig on the judge’s bench.”

“Take it easy, “he told her. “Be nonchalant. Light a cigarette. Remember people are watching you. Act on the assumption that you can pull a rabbit out of the hat any time any place. How about a cigarette?”

“Give me the one you’re smoking, Chief,” she said. “I couldn’t light a cigarette to save my life. Why did you make that crack about Alden Leeds finding Hogarty dead, and then searching the apartment?”

“Because I wanted to explain his fingerprints,” Mason said, “and I wanted to give Emily Milicant a tip on the Hogarty angle. I...”

He broke off as Kittering came storming over to their table.

Kittering, his voice so indignant that he could hardly talk, sputtered, “What the devil do you mean... You’ll be disbarred for this.”

“For what?” Mason asked.

Kittering pointed an indignant finger at Gertrude Lade. “ That girl ” he stormed. “She was no more in the restaurant than I was! One of my investigators tells me she’s in your office, working at the switchboard.”