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:OUR OFFICE TELEPHONE LINE AND MY APARTMENT LINE HAVE BEEN TAPPED STOP YOUR CONVERSATION WITH MILTON STIVE OVERHEARD DISTRICT ATTORNEY SERVED SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM DEMANDING ALL PAPERS STOP MY CONVERSATION WITH YOU ABOUT GOING SEATTLE PLANE RESERVATIONS AND LOCATION OF ALDEN LEEDS ALSO APPARENTLY OVERHEARD

  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.