Erle Gardner: The Case of the Rolling Bones

Leeds had a fortune in gold which he dared not leave. Nor did he dare to leave the country without reporting the shooting. He was trapped. So he took the name of Hogarty and left the country. He married the girl under the name of Hogarty.

But Hogarty had not been killed, despite what the others had thought. He had lain desperately ill in the cabin of an Indian. He had shown great determination in journeying to civilization, seeking revenge. Twice on that trip, he had been near the point of death. When finally he had reached civilization, his foot had become frostbitten, and it had been necessary to remove several of the toes on his right foot.

He had carried on his quest for vengeance. In the meantime, Alden Leeds and his wife had separated. Hogarty finally found the woman, but, because she was legally married and not divorced, he had entered into her life, posing as her brother. Then they had found Leeds.

Emily Milicant had realized she was still in love with him. Hogarty, posing as Emily’s brother, wanted blackmail. Leeds, finding himself in this position, had tried his best to work out some fair settlement with Hogarty. His relatives, recognizing the quick, romantic attachment which had sprung up between Leeds and Emily Milicant, and naturally misinterpreting it, had sought to thwart a marriage by having Leeds declared incompetent.

In the meantime, the implacable Hogarty, under the name of Conway, had built up a lottery business which he had sold to Serle. A disgruntled customer had tipped off the police, thinking to get revenge on Conway, in place of which, the trap had closed on Serle, and Serle, in turn, had made demands on Hogarty. When Hogarty laughed at those demands, Serle planned to get his money back from Hogarty. Not being able to do it, save by resorting to murder, he had planned a deliberate crime which, under ordinary circumstances, he could have committed so as to give himself a perfect alibi. It was the ingenuity of Mason’s spectacular courtroom tactics which had punctured that alibi.

Della Street entered Mason’s office as he was finishing with the paper. “Alden Leeds, his wife, Phyllis Leeds, and Ned Barkler are in the office, Chief,” she said. “The police have just released them.”

“Tell Gertie to send them in,” Mason said.

Mason smiled genially as they crowded about him, shaking hands, showering congratulations. When the first excitement had died away, and Mason was able to get his callers seated, Leeds said, “Mason, I want you to do everything possible to protect Emily. The authorities have been working on that old murder case. The understanding, by which she was released and under which I was released, was that if Alaska wanted us, we would still be held to answer on that old charge.”

Mason grinned. “Don’t you see?” he said. “There isn’t any old charge. They can’t charge either of you with the murder of Bill Hogarty because Bill Hogarty was killed on the seventh of this month by Guy T. Serle. Here’s a press dispatch which says so.”

Leeds knitted his frosty eyebrows for a moment in thought, then glanced up at Mason with a smile. “I see,” he said. “You apparently managed to kill two birds with one stone.”

Mason grinned. “I didn’t kill ’em,” he said. “I resurrected ’em so I could give my clients clean bills of health.”

Alden Leeds whipped a checkbook from his pocket. “I have only one way of expressing my gratitude,” he said.

Mason nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “And while you’re about it, don’t forget that it might be well to make some arrangement for Marcia Whittaker. After all, you know, Leeds, you can’t take it with you.”

Leeds, shaking ink down to the point of his fountain pen, said, “When you see the amount of this check, Mason, you’ll realize I’m not trying to.”

Mason took the loaded dice from his pocket, rolled them casually across the top of the desk, and watched the figures five and seven show up with amazing regularity.

Ned Barkler gave a dry chuckle. Mason looked up inquiringly.

“Seeing you rolling those bones,” the prospector said, “makes me think of something.”

“What?”

“Bill Hogarty,” he said. “Probably you’re wondering why I made a dash to San Francisco — It goes back to something nobody ever inquired about — How I happened to meet Alden Leeds in the first place. It was over a pair of crooked dice.”

Alden Leeds blotted the check he had just written, started totaling figures on the stub and said, “Go ahead and tell him, Ned.”

“You see,” Barkler said, “I knew Hogarty... Met him in Seattle. Got in a crap game when I was a little high, and lost two thousand bucks. Next morning I found out that the dice were crooked. A bartender tipped me off. It took me a while to make a stake to get up to the Klondike, and then I found Hogarty and Leeds were down the Yukon a ways. I took after ’em, found Hogarty, stuck a gun in his belly and made him pay me off in gold dust.

“Well, when I saw this stuff in the paper about Hogarty and the frostbitten foot, damn me if I didn’t get your play right from the start. Emily told me she was going to Yuma and would register in some hotel as Mrs. Beems; that she’d call for messages at the telegraph office.

“Well, you know, I’ve got a couple of toes off on account of frostbite — taken off in Dawson City. I figured maybe Emily could fly up there, locate the doctor’s records, and claim that Hogarty had also gone under the alias of Barkler. I figured that wouldn’t hurt your case any.”

He chuckled again. “It would have been a swell game if we could have worked it. Emily got my wire and flew up to San Francisco. Just as we were hatching out the details, in comes the law... Heh heh heh... I was so darned afraid they’d find out about my frostbitten foot that I slept with my shoes on all the time they had me in the cooler... Heh heh heh.”

Mason surveyed him with thought-slitted eyes.

“You could,” he said, “state to the newspaper reporters that you knew Hogarty, that he was always a great man to go under an alias, that in addition to Conway and Milicant, he had the crust at one time to go under your name for more than a year.”

Barkler puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. “I getcha,” he said. “Shortly after that, I take it, I’d sorta disappear, and then those Dawson hospital records would crop up.”

Mason said, “When the police walk into a trap by means of wire tapping and listening in on confidential conversations, I always like to give them good measure, crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s.”

Barkler stamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe with an energetic forefinger. “That detective agency of yours got a man in Dawson they can trust?” he asked.

Mason slowly shook his head. “Not for anything like that.”

Barkler grinned across at Alden Leeds. “Well, pard,” he said, “I’ll be shaking hands now. There’s a boat leaves Seattle for Skagway tomorrow afternoon. — And old Ned Barkler would hate to have it said that a lawyer guy had to take a hammer to drive an idea into his head.

“Well, I sort of owe Hogarty one for the trick he played on me with those galloping dominoes. He certainly could handle the bones, that boy, but, hell, he never could have rolled bones all the way from the Yukon down to Southern California like you done. — I’ve heard of guys killing two birds with one stone, but when one corpse squares two murders — That’s what I call a natural! Heh heh heh.”