Erle Gardner: The Case of the Rolling Bones

“What trouble could he make,” she asked, and then added significantly, “for me?”

“Lots,” Mason said.

“Leeds didn’t give that check to me ,” she said hotly. “I only cashed it.”

“You have the cash,” Mason said.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’re marrying it, then.”

She glared at him, said nothing.

Mason, studying the expression in her eyes, said, “Why won’t Conway marry you?”

She flushed hotly. “Say, who cut you in on this deal?”

“I did,” Mason said.

“All right. Since you want to mess around in my private affairs, why doesn’t he marry me?”

Mason studied the end of his cigarette. “Do you think he ever intended to?”

“Of course, he intended to. He’d promised it all along, and then his family...” She broke off abruptly.

Mason said, “Well, if you ask me, I don’t think his family have any right to put on airs. You’re just as good as they are.”

“Say,” she said abruptly, her eyes narrowing, “how do you know all this?”

Mason said, “Oh, I get around.”

“Who are you?”

“The name’s Mason.”

“Who’s the guy with you?”

“His name’s Drake.”

“Well, what’s your racket?”

“Believe it or not,” Mason said, “we don’t have any. I thought I’d let you know about that check. Of course, Phyllis knows all about it.”

“Oh, she does, does she?”

“And Emily,” Mason observed.

For a split second, all trace of color left the girl’s face. Her eyes darkened with apprehension. “Emily knows about it!”

“Yes, Emily Hodgkins,” Mason went on.

Marcia Whittaker conveyed the cigarette to her lips, sucked in a deep drag, exhaled, tapped ashes from the end of the cigarette into the ash tray, and said, “Emily Hodgkins?”

“Yes, an assistant employed by Phyllis Leeds.”

“Oh!”

“You don’t know her?”

“I don’t know any of them.”

Mason said, “Your boy friend might be about twenty thousand bucks ahead if a guardian wasn’t appointed.”

She looked down at her Chinese slippers for several seconds, then raised her eyes to Mason, and said frankly, “Okay, I get you.”

“It’ll be too bad if your boy friend has a leaky face,” Mason said.

“I get you. I get you,” she said impatiently, “You don’t need to embroider the edges.”

Mason, getting to his feet, said, “Nice place you have here. Going to make a cozy little home.”

Sudden tears sprang to her eyes. “For Christ’s sake, don’t rub it in! I’ve tuned in on your program. You haven’t given your commercial yet, and I suppose you’re not going to. Now that you’re finished, why not get the hell off the air?”

“Thanks,” Mason said. “I will.”

She followed them as far as the head of the stairs. Her mouth corners were twitching. Tears were trickling down her cheeks, but she stood slim, straight, and defiant, watching the two men through the outer door.

As they walked across the street to the car, Mason said, “Judging from the way that banker talked, and your comments about her record in the apartment house, I thought we’d find a red light burning over the door.”

“Remember,” Drake said, “I was only taking the evidence of the people who had the apartment next door and the landlady who ran the joint.”

“All right,” Mason said, “suppose they were right? This kid’s young. Conway wanted to use her in that check business. The way he sold her was by promising to marry her when he made the stake.”

“Think he strung her along for the check business?” Drake asked, easing the car into gear.

“Of course, he did,” Mason said.

“How about his family?”

Mason said, “There may be something there.”

“Why all the agony over just cashing a check?” Drake asked. “That doesn’t amount to so much.”

“That,” Mason said, “is our most significant clue. It amounted to a hell of a lot in this case.”

Phyllis Leeds and John Milicant were waiting in Mason’s reception room when the lawyer returned to his office.

John Milicant, a baldish, black-haired, stocky man in the fifties, walked with an almost imperceptible limp — a slight favoring of his right foot. He shook hands, sat down, crossed well-creased, gray trousers, consulted his wrist watch and said, “Phyllis said you wanted to find out something about Alden Leeds. I’d appreciate it very much if you could rush things. I have an appointment I’m stalling off.”

Mason said, “You understand there’s going to be a family row?”

Milicant nodded. “Of course, Alden is right as a rivet. He’s a little peculiar at times, just a little eccentric. He’s no more crazy than I am.”

“You’ve had an opportunity to observe him during the last few weeks?” Mason asked.

“During the last month mostly,” Milicant said. “I drop in once in a while.”

Phyllis interposed. “Uncle Alden gets a great kick out of John. John’s about the only one who can give him a good fight over the chess board.”

Milicant said, “I don’t know whether he and Sis are going to hit it off or not. I don’t care. It’s up to them. I hope Sis has enough gumption to have it understood she’ll never touch a cent of his money. She doesn’t need it.”

“You mean you’d like to have him leave it to the relatives?” Mason asked.

Milicant said, “If I were in his shoes, Phyllis would get everything.”

“Have you shot any craps with him lately?”

“Yes. Sunday, I believe it was.”

“High stakes?” Mason asked.

“A two-bit limit. But if you made a pass, you could let it ride and keep on building up.”

“Would you consider it was being too personal if I asked you how much he won?”

Milicant said, “He didn’t win. I won somewhere around a hundred dollars, enough to get a suit of clothes. But he seemed to get a great kick out of losing.”

“I think it was because he was getting entertainment,” Phyllis Leeds said. “You know, John, you keep up a running fire of comment.”

Milicant laughed. “Well, I was always trained to talk to the dice. You can’t expect them to do anything for you if you don’t tell ’em.”

Mason said, “Just a moment. I want to find out about some papers. If you can wait just a moment, Mr. Milicant, I won’t detain you over five minutes.”

Milicant was again regarding his wrist watch as Mason strode across the office, entered the law library, and then detoured through the corridor door to Paul Drake’s office.

Mason nodded to Drake’s secretary, raised his eyebrows in silent interrogation, and pointed toward Drake’s private office. She nodded, and Mason went on in to find the detective sitting in his little cubicle, his feet on the desk, reading a paper.

Mason said, “Paul, I’m damned if I know whether this is just a hunch or whether I’m naturally getting suspicious of my fellow men. John Milicant is in my office. He’s around fifty-five, about five foot ten in height, fairly stocky, wears good clothes, bald on top, and has a slight limp.”

Drake frowned, and said, “What are you getting at, Perry?”

“Read that description again — the one that you have of L. C. Conway.”

“I get you,” Drake said. He pulled out his notebook, glanced through the description and said, “It fits. Of course, Perry, it would fit a lot of men.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but it’s worth a play. Milicant will leave my office in about two minutes. Do you have an operative you can put on his tail?”

“I’ll have a man on him when he leaves,” Drake promised.

Mason returned to his own office, said, “I wanted to look up a matter. I won’t need to keep you any longer, Mr. Milicant.”