“I’ll say he does. He’s a great eater, likes his food, and eats plenty of it.”
“Where do you suppose he’ll eat lunch today?”
Drake took a notebook from his pocket, opened it, and thumbed through the pages. “Here we are,” he said. “Complete data on the guy... H’mmmmm... Let me see where he eats... Here it is. Most of the time at the Home Kitchen Cafe down on East Ranchester. It’s only a couple of blocks from where he was running the business.”
“What does he look like?”
Drake read a description from the book. “Around forty, an even six feet, hundred and sixty pounds, gray eyes, long, straight nose, thin features, red hair, thin lips, always wears double-breasted suits.”
“Why should a bird who likes his grub eat at a dump on East Ranchester?” Mason asked.
“Because it’s a swell place to eat, Perry. My operatives looked it up. It’s run by a French couple. Serle kids one of the waitresses quite a bit, and she seems to like him.”
“Got her name?” Mason asked.
Drake turned over the page, ran his forefinger down the notes, and said, “Sure... Here it is... Hazel Stickland.”
“Does she figure in it?” Mason asked.
“I don’t think so. I told my men to collect everything they could on the bird, and they went to town.”
Mason said, “Think I’ll drop in there for lunch.”
“You might land him that way,” Drake said, “but it wouldn’t fool him any.”
“I’m not so certain I care about fooling him, Paul. He... ”
The door from the outer office opened, and Della Street came breezing in. “Hi, Paul,” she said, by way of greeting. “How’s the sleep?”
Drake groaned. “Not worth mentioning, and I’m headed back to put my nose to the grindstone... So long.”
When he had gone, Mason said to Della Street, “What did the handwriting expert say?”
“He’ll try and get us a preliminary report just as soon as possible. It’s not a report that he’d swear to, but it’ll be something you can bank on just the same. What was in the envelope, Chief, and why did you rush it over to the expert?”
Mason said, “An omelet that I can’t unscramble. Photostatic copies of hotel registers back in October of 1907, the Regina Hotel at Dawson, the Golden North Hotel at Skagway, a hotel at White Horse, and one in Seattle.”
“What do they show?”
“The signatures of Bill Hogarty.”
“What else?” she asked.
“There was a letter written by Leeds to John Milicant, dated thirty days ago, stating that he had never heard of Mr. B. C. Hogar, and that if Mr. Hogar presumed to give him a reference, it was an indication that Hogar would stand investigation. There was an old yellowed newspaper clipping from a Dawson paper telling about the finding of a body in the Tanana district. The body showed evidence of violence. The clipping doesn’t state specifically what was found. It goes on to say that the body had been tentatively identified as that of an Alden Leeds who had been in partnership with a Bill Hogarty and was reputed to have struck it rich, that Hogarty had left the Klondike district in the fall of 1907 after coming upstream from the Tanana district. He had been traced as far as Seattle where he had married a girl who had been employed in the ‘M and N Dance Hall’ at Dawson. At this late date — the article was dated 1912 — the police had been unable to find any further trace of either party.”
Della Street frowned. “What does that add up to, Chief?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said. “There were a lot of other things, photographs, location notices, things which had evidently been collected with the greatest care.”
“And who’s B. C. Hogar?” she asked.
Mason smiled and said, “He might be Bill Hogarty under another name.”
“Then the first initial would be ‘W,’” she said. “Bill is a nickname for William.”
Mason nodded. “And, on the other hand,” he went on, “it might be that someone who suspected rather strongly that Alden Leeds was in reality Bill Hogarty, wanted him to sign the name, ‘Bill Hogarty,’ for the purpose of checking handwriting, but naturally he was afraid to let the cat out of the bag, so he wrote a letter asking information about a B. C. Hogar, and Leeds, without suspecting what was in the wind, answered the letter in such a way that he wrote the name not only once but twice.”
The telephone rang. Mason looked at his wrist watch and said, “I’ll bet Stive has a golf engagement this afternoon and broke his neck to get an opinion in just before twelve.”
He lifted the receiver, said, “Hello,” and Gertrude Lade, at the switchboard, asked, “Do you want to talk with Mr. Stive, the handwriting expert?”
“Put him on,” Mason said.
A moment later, Milton Stive said, “Hello, Mason. I can’t give you a lot of reasons backing up my conclusion as yet, but the letter dated last month was written by the same person who signed the hotel registers ‘Bill Hogarty.’”
“You’re certain?” Mason asked.
“A good handwriting expert offers only his opinion,” Stive said, “but in this instance it’s virtually a mathematical certainty. There are, of course, certain allowances to be made for the lapse of time. There has evidently been an interval of thirty-two years in the signatures. A man’s handwriting naturally changes, particularly when the thirty-two years’ lapse carries over the period of greatest physical efficiency. We naturally would expect to find the curves more angular, the style a little more cramped, but, making proper allowances for that, the similarity between the capital ‘B’ in the ‘Bill’ and a comparison of the word ‘Hogar’ and ‘Hogarty’ remove any possible doubt. I have photographed one of the Hogarty signatures, and have photographed the name ‘Hogar,’ on an exactly identical scale. I have then superimposed the two photographs, and there is more than a similarity. There is a virtual identity.”
Mason shot Della Street a swift wink. “When can you give me a complete written opinion, Stive?” he asked.
Stive cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “not before Monday evening at the earliest. It would require a great deal of work. In addition to that, it would be necessary to make certain photographs and...”
Mason interrupted with a laugh. “Oh, go ahead and shoot your golf, you big bluff, and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Mason hung up the receiver, said to Della Street, “I’m going out and try to locate Serle, Della. I think he’ll eat at the Home Kitchen Cafe. Stick around the office, keep in touch with developments, and eat after I get back.”
“Okay, Chief. How about the outer office?”
“Close it up,” Mason said. “Give Phyllis Leeds a ring after a while just to let her know we’re on the job. Don’t tell her anything that she couldn’t read in the newspapers. Ask her if she knew John Milicant had a crippled foot, and see if she knows how it happened.”
Chapter 9
Perry Mason, sitting at the corner table in the Home Kitchen Cafe, surveyed the restaurant in shrewd appraisal.
A sign announced that the restaurant opened at seven o’clock A.M. and closed at seven-thirty P.M. Placards, placed on the wall, listed a series of tempting breakfast combinations. Particular inducements were made to secure regular patronage.
There was a lunch counter running half the length of the restaurant on one side. At the front end of this was a well-stocked cigar counter and a large cash register presided over by a genial, fat man whose lips were held in a good-natured grin of easy affability. His bald head shone like a freshly peeled onion in the light reflected from the plate-glass window at the front of the restaurant. His eyes were quick, and keen as those of a hawk.