Honest Money

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Sure,” said the officer, with elaborate sarcasm. “Go right ahead and look at it all you want to. Read it and weep.”

  He took a folded paper from his pocket, passed it to Ken Corning with exaggerated courtesy.

  Corning looked at the search warrant, which was duly issued and in regular form. One of the men had gone to the closet, and was bending over, sending the beam of a flashlight to the dark interior. Suddenly he called: “Okey, chief, here it is.”

  The woman started to cry.

  “I didn’t mean anything,” she said. “Just some stuff that I kept there to take when I wasn’t feeling good. I never sold any and I never gave any away. I’m a poor widow woman, with a little boy to support, and …”

  The man in charge grinned at Ken Corning, then turned his eyes to the woman, and interrupted her wailing excuses.

  “Get your coat on, sister,” he said. “We’ve got a car waiting outside.”

  Ken Corning pulled his overcoat up around his neck.

  “I’ll be seeing you boys later,” he said, and pushed his way out into the windy night.

  It was two hours later when Ken Corning arrived at the jail with a writ of habeas corpus and a fifteen thousand dollar bail bond, issued by a company that knew him and accepted his guarantee. Ella Ambrose was delivered into his custody.

  She climbed into the car, sat at his side, and said to him: “Did you get me out?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did they dismiss the charge?”

  “No, I had to get a writ of habeas corpus and get you out on bail.”

  “Thanks,” she remarked, after a moment.

  “I want you to go to my office and make a statement,” he told her.

  “Sure,” she told him, with ready loquaciousness. “But I’ve got to get back and find out about my boy. Maybe he came back and went to bed, or maybe he stayed over at his friend’s house.”

  “All right,” Corning told her. “I’ll take you home first if you want.”

  “I wish you would.”

  He pushed the car into speed.

  “Then you can come back to the office with me, and give me a statement,” he said.

  “Yes,” she remarked in a colorless tone of mechanical acquiescence.

  “About this Cadillac car,” said Corning. “Do you suppose …”

  “Of course,” she said, “I couldn’t be sure it was a Cadillac.”

  “Could you see what the men were carrying?”

  “No, I couldn’t really swear that they carried anything. I saw a car stop, and then the men got out.”

  “But you’re certain they carried something over and put it in Sam Driver’s automobile, is that right?”

  “No, I’m not certain of it, I think they did.”

  “What makes you think they did? Didn’t you see them?”

  “No, I can’t swear that I saw them. That is, I saw them moving around, and then, after I read about the case in the papers, I got to thinking that that’s what they might have done. ”

  “Two men?” asked Corning.

  “Yes, there were two men.”

  “In evening clothes?”

  “Well, they probably had on evening clothes. I can’t be certain about that.”

  “I see,” Corning told her, and lapsed into silence. He drove her to her house, held the door open for her.

  “You’re going to wait for me to go back and make a statement?” she asked.

  “No,” he said gravely, “I don’t think I’ll need a statement.”

  “Thanks a lot,” she said, “for what you did in getting me out.”

  “Not at all,” he told her.

  When she had vanished into the shadows about the cheap houses, which clustered together in the lot like freight cars in a railroad yard, Corning savagely snapped his car into gear, and drove furiously, until he came to an all-night drug-store where there was a telephone.

  He put through two calls.

  The first was to his office, telling Helen Vail to get a taxicab and go home. The second was to the office of the company that had written the bail bond at his request.

  “On that Ella Ambrose bail on habeas corpus,” he told the bonding company, “I’ve lost interest in the case. I wish you’d pick up the defendant and get a release of the bail bond.”

  The voice at the other end of the line chuckled.

  “Sorry, old man,” it said, “but there’s been a note come through, that the case is to be dismissed and the complaint withdrawn.”

  “I see,” said Ken Corning, and hung up the receiver.

  Joe Vare, private detective, sat in Ken Corning’s office, and looked across at the lawyer.

  “I don’t get you,” he said.

  “It’s simple,” Corning told him, “Go to the Cadillac agency, get the list of new car deliveries, check the people carefully, find out if one of them might be the sort to have had some connection either with Sam Driver or with Harry Green.”

  Vare twisted a half-smoked cigar thoughtfully, rolling it with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Driver and Green were bums?” he said.

  “You might call them that.”

  “Think they’d have friends who drove new Cadillacs?”

  Corning leaned forward.

  “Get this, Vare,” he said. “This is a murder case, and the Cadillac car is a lead. In a murder case I run down all leads, no matter how shaky they look.” Vare got to his feet and grinned at the attorney.

  “Okey,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  As the detective left the office, Helen Vail slipped through the door, closed it behind her, and said softly: “There’s a Mrs. Brown out there, who wants to see you about the Driver case.”

  “All right,” said Corning, “let’s take a look at her.”

  Helen Vail held the door open and nodded. A woman of approximately thirty or thirty-one years of age, mockshly attired, came into the office, and regarded the attorney from wide, brown eyes. She wore a brown, tight-fitting hat, brown dress, brown shoes and stockings. Her clothes gave the appearance of well-tailored wealth.

  “Sit down,” said Corning, as Helen Vail gently closed the door.

  The woman dropped into a chair.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Brown?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I think I can do something for you.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  She opened her purse and took out a roll of currency, which she held in her gloved fingers.

  “I’m going to be frank with you,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Corning, “go ahead.”

  “You’re representing a man by the name of Sam Driver, who is accused of murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want Mr. Driver to know that I came to you.”

  “Does he know you, Mrs. Brown?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You see, I used to know Sam Driver in the old days—that was a long time ago. Our roads separated. We went different ways. He went his way and I went mine. He went down and I went up.”

  “All right,” he said. “Go on.”

  “The District Attorney hasn’t got much of a case against Driver. It’s largely circumstantial evidence. You’ve beaten the prosecution once or twice in some spectacular cases. They’re afraid of you. If you’ll have Driver think up some good story about a fight and a killing in self-defense, the District Attorney will let Driver plead guilty to manslaughter. But if the man stands trial, he’s going to be railroaded.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I don’t know. I know there are powerful influences at work against him, that’s all.”

  “Where do you get your information?” asked Corning, watching her closely.

  “About what?”

  “About the District Attorney’s office, for instance, and the powerful influences.”

  She shook her head, and the brown eyes softened into a twinkle as she regarded him.

  “You have your professional secret
s,” she said. “I have mine. I’m just telling you.”

  “Well, then,” he said, “tell me some more.”

  She looked down at the tips of her gloved fingers, suddenly raised her eyes, and, with an expression of utter candor on her face, said: “If he doesn’t plead guilty, they’re going to give him the death penalty.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “For lots of reasons. There’s politics mixed up in it, and you know what politics are in York City.”

  “Yes,” he told her, “I know. But why should politics be mixed up in the killing of a hobo?”

  “That’s something else again,” she replied. “You’re frightfully inquisitive for a lawyer.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?”

  “Take this money. Use it as an additional fee. I don’t suppose you got much from Sam Driver. Go ahead and work out a good story with him. It’s got to be a good story with a self-defense angle to it—something that the District Attorney’s office can give to the newspapers to keep the people from making a very strong protest when they accept a plea of manslaughter.”

  “Who handles the publicity?” asked Corning, still watching her narrowly.

  “You fix up the story,” she said. “Your client will spill it to a newspaper reporter or the District Attorney.”

  “Suppose he makes a statement that constitutes an admission to the killing, and then you’re wrong about what the District Attorney is going to do?” Corning asked.

  “I’m not wrong,”

  “That’s what you say. I can’t risk my client’s life on the strength of your unsupported word.”

  She bit her lip for a moment.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, slowly.

  She looked down at the tip of her brown shoe for a few moments, then straightened and pushed the money across the desk towards Ken Corning.

  “I think I can figure out a way so it will be all right,” she said. Ken Corning regarded the roll of bills.

  “I can’t take money from you,” he said, “to do what you think is best for my client. I’ve got to do what I think is best.”

  “I understand that. But I know you wouldn’t take the money from me, unless you were going to play fair.”

  Ken Corning reached out and took the money.

  “Just a moment,” he said, moving towards the outer office, “and I’ll get you a receipt.”

  Ken Corning pushed his way through the door, closed it behind him, and nodded to his secretary;

  “Helen,” he said, in low, swift tones, “put on your hat, go down on the elevator and stand in the lobby of the building. When this woman comes out, tail her. See where she goes. Let me know as soon as you find out.”

  She slid back her chair from the desk, and was reaching for her hat as Corning turned back towards the private office. He had a blank receipt form in his hand.

  “You’ll have to give me your full name, in order to get a receipt,” he said to the woman who called herself Mrs. Brown.

  “I don’t want a receipt,” she said.

  Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders.

  The woman got to her feet, smoothed down her skirt, and smiled at him,

  “I think we understand each other,” she said.

  “I’m not certain that I understand you,” he told her.

  “Oh, well,” she said brightly, “I think I understand you— perfectly.”

  She was very trim and straight as she marched from the office, closing the door gently after her.

  Several minutes passed, and Corning heard the door of the outer office open and close. He remembered that Helen Vail was out, and got to his feet, walked across his private office, and opened the door.

  A tall, well-groomed man, with cold eyes and a smiling mouth, said: “You’re Ken Corning?”

  Corning nodded.

  “I’m Jerry Bigelow,” said the man, and shook hands.

  As he saw there was no look of recognition on Corning’s face, he added: “The man who runs the column entitled ‘Inside Stuff’ in The Courier.”

  Corning ushered him into the inner office, and the man sat down in a huge leather chair, crossed his knees, and tapped a cigarette on a polished thumbnail.

  “I’ve got orders to mention your name in my column,” he said.

  “All right,” said Corning with a grin. “Are you going to pan me, or give me a boost?”

  “That’s up to you,” said the columnist.

  Corning raised his eyebrows.

  “You know,” said Bigelow, “I like to give the inside facts a little bit before the public gets them. I like to give it a touch of spice, and give the impression of being very much in the know ”

  Corning nodded once more, silently, warily, his eyes half slit-ted as they watched the man who had called on him.

  “Now,” Bigelow said, still smiling with his lips, but his cold eyes fastened on the smoke which curled upward from his cigarette, “there’s been some talk going around town about you. They say that you have busted a lot of precedents, fought the political ring that’s supposed to be running York City, and are making a lot of money.”

  Ken Corning said nothing.

  “I just thought,” remarked Bigelow, “that if I should write up a little sketch for my column that you had whipped the big boys into line, and they were going to give you a break from now on, it might do you some good.”

  “What are you getting at?” Corning asked.

  “Well,” Bigelow said, “you’re representing a bum and a panhandler who’s got a murder rap on him, Sam Driver. The prosecution has got a dead open-and-shut case on him, but there’s been a rumor going around that you’ve got the D. A.’s office a little jumpy because you’ve managed to get some acquittals in cases they thought were dead open-and-shut.”

  “Well?” asked Corning.

  “Well,” said Bigelow, “there’s talk that the District Attorney doesn’t know exactly what to do in this Driver case. He’s got some circumstantial evidence, but it doesn’t show very much. If Driver should come out and change his story, and admit that he did the killing, but claim that it was done in self-defense, because he found out that Green had been mixed up in some pretty shady stuff that Driver didn’t approve of, there’s a pretty good chance the District Attorney would figure he didn’t have enough evidence to go on with a murder case, and he might let Driver get a plea of manslaughter.”

  “What makes you think the D. A. would let Driver make a manslaughter plea?” asked Corning.

  “Just a little inside stuff,” Bigelow told him. “Of course I keep my ear pretty close to the ground.”

  “Okey,” said Corning. “Then suppose I don’t have Denver put up a self-defense story, and take the rap for manslaughter. Then what’s going to happen?”

  The smile left Bigelow’s lips, his cold eyes fastened directly on Ken Corning.

  “I’ve got orders,” he said, “to mention your name. If you did something that was pretty clever, I could write it up and give out the dope that you had been taken in on the inside. If you passed up a chance to make a clever play, and did something dumb, I’d probably have to write that you weren’t such big-time stuff after all; that you’d let a fast one slip through your fingers because you couldn’t use the old bean.”

  Corning got slowly to his feet.

  “All right,” he said, “I guess you’ve said all you were supposed to say, haven’t you?”

  Bigelow pinched out the end of his cigarette, dropped it into an ashtray, regarded Corning thoughtfully, and then said slowly: “Yes, I guess I have.”

  He started to walk from the office, but turned at the door.

  “Let me know, will you?” he said. “Because I’m anxious to get your name in my column.”

  “Don’t worry,” Corning told him, “I’ll let you know.”

  The telephone was ringing when Corning closed the door of his inner office, behind Bigelow’s departing figure. He scooped the receiver to his ear, and heard Helen Vail’s voice
.

  “Listen, chief,” she said. “I followed her to a private automobile—a coupé. I picked up a taxi and tailed her. She got away, but I got the license number of the automobile before she gave me the slip.”

  “Did she know she was being followed?” asked Ken Corning.

  “I don’t think so, chief, It was just a bum break in the traffic.”

  “All right,” said Corning, “what about the license number?”

  “I telephoned in to the police registration department,” Helen Vail said, “and got a friend of mine on the line. I didn’t tell him, of course, what I wanted to know for. He gave me the registration.”

  “All right,” said Ken Corning, “what was it?”

  “The car,” said Helen Vail, “is registered in the name of Stella Bixel. She’s the widow of the man who was killed by the burglar in the country cabin last fall. You may remember the case …”

  “Okey,” said Ken Corning, crisply, “that’s good work, Helen. Come on back to the office.”

  Corning looked across his desk, into the speculative eyes of Edward Millwright, the expert on handwriting, fingerprints and questioned documents, whom he had asked to come in to see him.

  “Can you,” he asked, “get access to the police files, or to the Bureau of Criminal Identification records?”

  The handwriting expert squinted his eyes thoughtfully.

  “I have done so,” he said, “on cases where I was working with the police, and once or twice on cases where I had uncovered some evidence which the police thought would be of value.”

  “Could you get somebody else to look up some information for you and pass it out?”

  “I might.”

  “All right,” said Corning, “here’s another question. I understand that recently they’re taking fingerprints of bodies that go through the morgue.”

  The expert nodded.

  “I am representing,” said Ken Corning, “a man named Sam Driver, who is accused of the murder of Harry Green, a gambler, panhandler, and general bum. I don’t think anyone ever claimed the body of Green. I think it was finally buried, after an autopsy, at county expense. The body went through the morgue, and I think fingerprints were taken.”