Serle said, “I can’t help you much there. I had my own problems to worry about. Some of it was dope on the horses. Some of it wasn’t. I remember he told somebody that things had been all settled up, and there wasn’t going to be any trouble. He said, ‘Why don’t you come on down, and let me talk it over with you?’ And then he said, ‘Well, I could run up for just a minute. I don’t want to be away more than a minute or two, but I can run up if you want.’ And then he said, ‘Well, that’s all right then. You come down, but don’t do it before ten o’clock. I’m going to be busy until after ten o’clock.’ ”

  “Anything else?” Mason asked.

  “There were lots of calls. I can’t remember all of them. One of them was from his girl. She seemed to be all steamed up about something, and he was trying to smooth her over with a lot of yes-yes stuff. Hell, Mason, I can’t remember all that junk. If I’d known he was going to get bumped off, I’d have listened, but all I wanted was to find out where I stood.”

  “Go on from there,” Mason said.

  “That’s about all there is to it,” Serle told him. “I left there right after we’d eaten, went down to a poolroom I knew, and hung around there until ten o’clock, then I called Louie, and he said everything was okay, that he’d stick around and wait for me to call from the station, jump in a cab, come down, and put up the bail, and that would be all there was to it.”

  “Did you call the police immediately after that?” Mason asked.

  “No, I didn’t. I wanted a little time to go over what I was going to tell the law. I played a game of pool and figured things out. I can think better while I’m knocking the ball around.”

  “What time did you call Louie?” Mason asked.

  “Right around ten o’clock.”

  “As late as ten-thirty?” Mason asked, casually.

  “Hell, no, it was ten o’clock. Christ, he told me to call at ten, and I called at ten. When a guy’s going to put up the cash to spring you on a felony rap, you don’t let half an hour slip through your fingers.”

  Mason said coldly, “Serle, you’re lying. You called him around ten-thirty. You didn’t remember the exact time. The first time you told your story, you admitted it. But after you’d talked with Homicide and seen they wanted to fix the call before Leeds had left, you decided to oblige them. You figured you could square your rap if you were obliging.”

  Serle said doggedly, “It was ten o’clock when I called. . . . They say Leeds is a multimillionaire.”

  “So I hear,” Mason said.

  “Maybe this is going to be kind of important to him,” Serle suggested. “He might want to do something for me.”

  Mason met his eyes in cold, steady appraisal.

  The waitress approached, said hurriedly to Mason, “You’re Perry Mason?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a call for you from your office. They said it’s very important, to get you at once.”

  Mason gestured toward Serle with a sweep of his hand. “Give him the check,” he said, “with my compliments.”

  He strode to the telephone booth. Della Street was on the line. “Listen, Chief,” she said, breathlessly. “Drake’s located Alden Leeds.”

  “Where?”

  “Seattle. Emily Milicant’s with him. Drake’s Seattle correspondent is keeping him under surveillance. Your plane leaves in thirty minutes. Think you can make it? I’ve got your reservation. I’ll wire you all the details care of the Portland airport.”

  Mason said, “I’ll make it. Take this in shorthand.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Milicant’s apartment was on the sixth floor. Check everyone who had apartments above him. Serle let something slip about a conversation Milicant had over the phone. It may have been with someone above him in the same apartment house. Tell Drake a waitress named Hazel Stickland of the Home Kitchen Cafe took a runout powder. Have him check on that waiter who took the food up to Milicant’s apartment. We’re taking this waiter’s story too much for granted. Find out if he knows this waitress. Have Drake try to find Hazel. Serle’s sold us out to the D.A., lock, stock, and barrel. He fixes that conversation at ten o’clock. He knows he’s lying, but he figures he can square his own pinch that way. Alden Leeds probably telephoned police the tip-off that got Serle’s place raided. Milicant knew that when Leeds called, Leeds probably left another twenty grand with Milicant when he paid that last visit. Milicant must have been killed almost immediately after that. . . . Give all that dope to Paul Drake. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said. “Happy landings, Chief.”

  Mason hung up and sprinted out of the restaurant.

  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 of 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? It’s 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 decided 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.