I’m very much enjoying the company of Lester Leith, Erle Stanley Gardner’s gentleman scoundrel who, having extracted from criminals their ill-gotten gains, takes a small cut and passes the balance onto worthy causes.

‘A Thousand to One’ (1939) concerns a bribe of $25,000 being paid to a judge which, despite the courier who delivered the cash being kept under surveillance at all times after receiving the twenty-five $1,000 notes, had somehow turned into a mere $25 when the bribee received it…leading to the presumption that the courier has somehow swapped the notes out and profited by the eponymous ratio. The only problem? Two people were present when the money was counted, and both the man carrying the money and the premises to which he carried it were searched immediately the substitution was discovered…and no sign of the original bills can be found.

This is another borderline impossibility, then, continuing the trend from last week, with the key difference that no-one of any standing in the community has — to the best of my knowledge — come out and actively declared it one. Mindful of the degree of rigour that one must observe when making such classifications, I’m not going to call it an impossibility either, but we’re firmly in pulp territory where the rigours of plotting get a little looser and so if it warms your heart to call this a miracle problem or equivalent, well, I’m not going to take that away from you.

Leith is, of course, brought into affairs once more by his manservant, the police spy who goes by the name Scuttle. And, no doubt aware of the intentions of the police towards him, Leith again puts up a token objection before sallying forth into the mystery:

“I don’t want Sergeant Ackley to think this is another time when I’m outguessing the police, depriving a criminal of his ill-gotten gains, and passing the profits on to the unfortunate.”

An interesting wrinkle added this time is the relationship between Scuttle (or Beaver, to give him his real name) and Sergeant Ackley, with the two clearly at odds when it comes to seeking any credit with their superiors in the matter of Leith’s arrest.

“We want this man Leith behind bars. He’s outwitted you on a whole string of cases. He’s going to outwit you again unless you can give me a better idea of what happened.”

The undercover man sighed wearily. “I’m the one he’s outwitted,” he said sullenly.

“Yes, you,” Sergeant Ackley retorted. “Give me the facts, and I’ll put them together, work out a solution, and catch him red-handed, but you’re always overlooking something significant.”

Not, of course, that it matters who takes the blame, since Leith is out to run rings around the police no matter what, devising a plan which requires “a package of linen bandage, a five-yard spool of two-inch adhesive tape, a long string of imitation pearls, half a dozen rings with imitation diamonds, a pair of very dark smoked glasses — the darkest you can buy…a white wig, a false mustache — a cane, a crutch, and a…fluffy, white feather from the breast of a pure white goose” before apparently abandoning it altogether, getting tipsy with the dowager he had employed for the express purpose of solving the crime, and then being talked back into it by Scuttle. Something is, of course, coming, but even the canny reader won’t quite anticipate what.

Indeed, the way that Leith divines the truth feels incredibly clever, far more intelligent than any pulp story has the right to be, and makes up for the dodge which he has in place to avoid trouble with the police which feels…I dunno, oddly false, one of those occasions where you can feel Gardner putting a plot point in place precisely so he can set it off later. So many of ESG’s surprises sprang from organic actions that when you get a conceit like this I always find it a trifle underwhelming — see the legal loophole which saves Leith in ‘In Round Figures’ (1930) — but the reasoning involved in leading Leith to the loot is ingenious enough that I’ll let it slide this time.

This also gives Leith’s intelligence a chance to shine, such as when he points out that one of the men under suspicion for the theft must be in the clear because he’s too stupid to think around the necessary corners — he had “a dozen chances to pick flaws in my story” we’re told — and then Leith goes on to point out the various ways that anyone with a suspicious mind would have torn apart the yarn he was selling, all of which has been made freely available to the reader as we’ve tagged along on the ride.

In the final instance, the ruse by which Leith — spoilers? — outwits the police is another clever piece of legerdemain (and, rather like The Birlstone Gambit, I feel this particular trick should have a name of its very own…) and, crucially (since it’s not always the case with Gardner’s short fiction) makes sense of all the events which came previously, showing the great man’s plotting acumen working at full pitch. On current evidence, the stories in this collection are getting better as they go, and the rule of short story collections is that you always finish on a high…so, well, if this increase in quality continues this might turn out to be an unexpected must by collection for those of you with an interest in this style of writing.

Tune in next week to find out, and keep your fingers crossed in the meantime.