“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.”