The Casebook of Sidney Zoom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “On the other hand, had that murderer been intent upon removing evidence, he would have undoubtedly taken the automatic from the room with him. If Crandall killed that man, it would have been utterly incredible that he would have gone to the bother of taking the shell from the room, yet leaving the weapon which Could have been traced to him.”

  Sidney Zoom regarded the investigator questioningly.

  “What’s your theory?” asked Frink.

  Zoom lowered his tone, as though giving a sacred confidence.

  “That the murderer didn’t kill Strome in his office at all. That the murderer came down here, opened this window and waited. That the stage was set in Strome’s office. That the publicity car came by here, setting off bombs. That the murderer rested an automatic on the sill of the window, and fired through the open window of Strome’s office, killing Strome.”

  Frink scowled meditatively.

  “Why this office?”

  “Because the door was locked. The murderer had to lie in wait with a drawn gun. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to be observed by some person who might chance to come up in the building. So he took pains to see that the door behind him was closed and locked. Then it would have been only natural for him to have locked the door behind him when he left.”

  Frink walked to the window, stared.

  “Then this would be the finger-print of the murderer?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you think the window in Strome’s office was open?”

  “Because the papers were scattered all over the floor. It has been the theory of the prosecution that the murderer, making a hasty search for some paper, threw the papers on the desk all over the floor. More natural, the window had been left open, a sudden wind blew the papers over the floor, and the window was subsequently closed before the arrival of the police.”

  “Then the window would have been closed... Good Heavens, man! Do you know what your charges imply? They mean that Carl Purcell must have been an accessory!”

  Chapter VIII

  The Finger-print on the Window

  Sidney Zoom nodded, casually.

  “Of course. That’s self-evident, even if we can’t prove who it was that did the actual killing. You’ll remember that Strome mentioned the threatening letter he had received was the second threat he had received from Crandall. Yet, when they came to search for the first threat, it couldn’t be found. What undoubtedly happened was that Purcell, seeing the original threat wasn’t dated, simply took it from the files, put it in an envelope, and remailed it to the county attorney.

  “The same thing’s true of the gun. It was purchased before Crandall was sent to prison. He’d hardly have had that gun with him all the time he was in prison. It’s natural to suppose, therefore, that the gun had been taken from him by the authorities at the time of his first arrest. Since his crime wasn’t one of violence, the gun naturally wasn’t introduced in evidence. The authorities probably even forgot that they had such a gun. But Purcell could have taken it, secreted it, and planted it for evidence.

  “Purcell isn’t a gunman. Therefore, he forgot that he should have planted an empty shell to make the murder appear convincing.”

  Frink whistled.

  “Man alive, but you go after big game when you start. What possible motive would Purcell have had to kill Strome?”

  Sidney Zoom smiled.

  “The motive of greed and of gain. Charges were about to be placed against Sam Gilvert, the banker. The file in that case disappeared. Purcell was a deputy. Now he is the county attorney. He inherited the office, so to speak.”

  Frink shook his head.

  “No. Your motive isn’t strong enough to get you anywhere. You insinuate that Gilvert paid Purcell to sneak the papers out of the file, that Purcell got that money, and that he was afraid of discovery, so he wanted to cover up that theft. Then you insinuate that he wanted to get the job of his superior officer, and so he murdered him. That’s far-fetched. It isn’t a strong enough motive.”

  “There’s logic in that,” Zoom said. “Yet we know that the crime couldn’t have been committed the way Purcell claims. We know that, if it wasn’t committed in that manner, then Purcell must be trying to conceal the manner in which it actually was committed.

  “But we can let Purcell go for the minute. We’re on the trail of the real killer down here. I think this fingerprint will give us sufficient evidence. Somewhere around here, in the litter of rubbish around the room, may be the empty shell from the gun that really killed Strome.

  “That must have been an automatic of the same calibre as the one in the office, the one that was found there. The distance isn’t over thirty yards or so in a direct line. A good shot could have hit a mark the size of a man’s body at that distance. In fact, he could have even picked the exact spot on the body that he intended to hit.”

  The chief investigator for the county attorney’s office put the automatic he held back in its shoulder holster.

  “Guy,” he said, “you win. We’ll find out more as we go along, but you sure have got the case doped out so it sounds reasonable to me. I’m going to cooperate with you and give you all the assistance I can.

  “But this is a small county. We’re messing around with some pretty big men when we start after Purcell and Sam Gilvert. We’ve got to be absolutely certain that we’re going to make a case before we even breathe a word about it.”

  “Naturally,” Zoom observed, “we will not go running into court and shooting off our faces. We’ll collect the evidence. In time, if we can, to save Crandall from conviction, we’ll announce that evidence. If we haven’t built up a case, we’ll let him be convicted, and then get a pardon from the governor.”

  Frink drummed upon the back of the chair with the fingers of his right hand. His eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Listen,” he said, “we’ve got to get those finger-prints photographed. That’s the first thing. Then we’ll have to pull the whole window out and take it down to the vault where we can keep it for the jury to look at.”

  Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “You got a camera?” asked Frink, “one that’ll take finger-prints?”

  Zoom shook his head ruefully.

  “I’m sorry. I certainly should have had one, but I was careless and neglected to include it with my filings when I came down here.”

  “Okay,” said Frink, “it doesn’t make any difference. You go and get mine. I’ll stay here and watch the prints so I can testify afterwards that nothing happened to ’em, see? My office is on the lower floor of the courthouse. You’ll find a blond kid at the desk. She’ll give you the camera. Tell her that I sent you, and that I said to keep quiet about it afterwards. I don’t want a whole lot of talk around town about this thing before we crack it.”

  Zoom allowed himself to be dominated by the positive personality of the other. “Come, Rip,” he said to the dog, and left the room.

  But he did not descend the stairs. Instead, he waited in the corridor, motioning the dog to silence. For a good ten seconds he stood so, and then he returned to the door, gently turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

  Frink was standing by the window, his face grave with concern. His right hand was extended. He was staring at the whorls of the fingertips with a magnifying glass. Then, from time to time, he would check these with the finger-print on the glass.

  Sidney Zoom betrayed his presence by a low laugh. It was a mirthless laugh of hollow mockery, and there was challenge in it.

  Frink whirled.

  It took him one swift instant to take in the situation. Then his hand flicked to the holster where he kept his weapon.

  Sidney Zoom spoke casually.

  “Take him, Rip.”

  The dog had waited patiently for that moment. Twice when he would have defended his master against this man, he had been restrained by a command. Now the dog went across the room, belly to the floor, like a tawny streak. And then he was in the air.

  Frink fired, once, an
d he might as well have taken a snapshot at a streak of lightning. The dog’s teeth closed on the wrist of the gun arm. The dog’s weight hurled itself in that peculiar twisting motion which is taught to police dogs, as a part of their training, on the continent. Frink screamed with pain. The gun thudded to the floor.

  Sidney Zoom rushed in and grabbed the left arm.

  “All right, Rip,” he said.

  The dog dropped to the floor. Sidney Zoom’s right hand snatched the handcuffs from the investigator’s hip pocket. With a swift dexterity, he flipped the handcuff over the left wrist.

  “The other hand,” he rasped.

  The investigator flung his weight against Sidney Zoom in a lunging attack, halted as a deep-throated, ominous growl came from the dog on the floor.

  “You can either give me that wrist, or the dog will get it for me,” said Sidney Zoom.

  The investigator’s face was sallow. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He extended his wrist, with the prints of the dog’s fangs still imbedded in the skin, through which red drops welled slowly.

  Sidney Zoom clicked the handcuff.

  “Of course,” he said, “you were too shrewd in such matters to leave finger-prints. But I thought I could raise a sufficient doubt in your own mind to get you to betray yourself.”

  The handcuffed man muttered an exclamation.

  “Slick, eh? All right, try and convict me. Try and get the evidence that’ll show that I did anything. You can’t prove a damned thing. A jury will acquit me within ten seconds of the time the case is put up to them.”

  Sidney Zoom’s tone was ominous.

  “Man-made law,” he said, “is a thing of makeshifts, of injustices, of technicalities that make a mockery of justice. But there is a higher court. Laugh if you wish, but the time will come when you will realize that the way of the oppressor is hard. You have sought to blame murder upon the innocent. And I tell you that there is a price you will have to pay — a frightful price.”

  Frink laughed, yet the laugh was nervous. There had been something solemnly prophetic in the voice of Sidney Zoom, a something that was as the tolling of a bell.

  “Bah!” he said, “you talk like some ranting reformer...”

  Sidney Zoom took handkerchiefs from the man’s pocket and thrust them into his mouth, fashioned an effective gag. He took some fine, strong cord from his own pocket, and trussed Frink’s legs. Then he motioned to the dog, and left the room, leaving behind him a man who could move neither hand nor foot, who could not even speak.

  Chapter IX

  A Confession

  He descended the stairs, went at once to a telephone, got Gilvert’s bank on the wire, and demanded that Sam Gilvert be put on the telephone. He told the clerk who answered that he was the assistant of Bill Dunbar, the lawyer who was defending James Crandall, and he told the banker the same thing, when he had that individual on the wire.

  “Exactly where were you,” asked Sidney Zoom, “when Frank Strome was murdered?”

  “Why... why... what... er... isn’t this a bit unusual and irregular and all of that?” asked the banker.

  “Certainly,” said Sidney Zoom, “but the answer to that question is very important to you.”

  “Well,” said the banker, “when I heard of the death of Frank Strome, I was standing, talking to—”

  “Not where you were when you heard of his death, but where you were when he actually died, at the time of the killing,” interrupted Sidney Zoom.

  “Oh, my goodness,” exclaimed the banker, “you’re asking for something entirely different now. I don’t know. I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t even know exactly what time it was they decided that he had died.”

  “Thank you,” said Sidney Zoom. “Now Mr. Frink, Mr. Purcell and myself want you to come down to the row of vacant office buildings just across the street and down a half a block from the county attorney’s office.”

  “I can’t get away,” snorted the banker.

  “You’ll have to get away. You wouldn’t want to be subpoenaed as a witness would you, and have to wait around in the court?”

  “What would I be a witness to?”

  “Something you wouldn’t want to testify to. But if you come down here right away you probably won’t have to give your testimony in public.”

  The banker cleared his throat.

  “I’ll come,” he said.

  Sidney Zoom slipped out to the street and waited. It took the banker less than ten minutes to arrive. He looked perturbed, and his eyes darted about as though seeking out some tangible menace.

  Reluctantly, he crossed the street to the stairs, and started up those stairs. Zoom emerged from his place of concealment, started up after the banker.

  Gilvert had reached the upper landing when some subtle warning caused him to whirl. He saw the gaunt form of Sidney Zoom, the police dog at his side.

  “You!” said the banker.

  “Yes,” remarked Sidney Zoom. “I came here to protect you.”

  “From what?” snarled the banker.

  “From being made the goat and convicted of the murder of Frank Strome,” said Sidney Zoom, speaking casually, as though being framed for murders might have been a mere matter of everyday occurence.

  The banker stared, speechless.

  “If you’ll step this way,” said Sidney Zoom, “I’ll show you exactly what I mean.”

  He indicated the closed door, unlocked it, waved his hand in a gesture that indicated the bound, gagged body on the floor.

  “George Frink,” he said, “the murderer of Frank Strome.”

  The banker stared. He grasped his left hand with his right hand, twisted the fingers, then started cracking his bony knuckles. One by one, he cracked the knuckles of his right hand. His lips writhed as though he wanted to speak, but no sound emerged from the parched throat.

  “You see,” said Sidney Zoom, indicating the window with its finger-print treated with chrome, the two prints on the sill, outlined in the dust, “how simple it was, Frink came down here, waited. He’s a good shot with an automatic. Purcell managed to raise Strome’s window. The publicity car of the unemployment drive started shooting its bombs. Frink watched for his chance and shot.

  “It wasn’t at all necessary to wait for the explosion of a bomb. This building is deserted. A shot from here wouldn’t be heard.

  “As a matter of fact, it would have been hard for a murderer to have synchronized a shot with a bomb explosion. And, in any event, he’d have had to sit with gun ready, waiting. Which shows how absurd it was to think Crandall could have committed the crime. Strome would never have sat at his desk while Crandall stood there, gun ready, waiting for the bomb explosion to cover the sound of his shot.”

  The banker blinked his eyes.

  “What does Frink say?” he asked.

  Sidney Zoom bowed.

  “That’s where you come into the picture. Frink confesses, but he blames you for being the leading spirit. Of course, Frink had to confess, what with his finger-print on the window, and the exploded shell from his automatic found here on the floor.”

  Frink, bound and gagged, made little convulsive motions with his body and bound limbs. Inarticulate sounds gurgled in his throat.

  “Blames me!” screamed the banker, “He blames me?”

  Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “He said that you suggested it to Purcell. You’d managed to steal those files, and were afraid of discovery—”

  “Liar,” yelled the banker, “a black-hearted, deliberate liar. That’s what he is!”

  Sidney Zoom raised his eyebrows.

  “Indeed?” he muttered politely.

  “Yes, damn it, indeed!” shrilled the banker. “They can’t put that over, not on me. I got that file from Purcell, all right. I knew he was worried about Strome calling him on it. It seemed there’d been two or three other files that Purcell had taken from the office, and Strome was all worked up about that. He threatened an investigation.

  “So Strome t
hreatened to make a scandal over it. He’d given Purcell notice to quit. Purcell came to me the night before the murder. He wanted the papers back. I’d destroyed them. He was all worked up and afraid that he was going to be disbarred.

  “I was worried myself. Then when I heard that some ex-convict had murdered Strome, I thought it had just been a break for Purcell. I never put the two together at all.

  “I knew Purcell was very much afraid. If Strome had found out the papers in my file were missing, after the bootlegging files had been missing, he’d have had Purcell arrested. I’m sorry now that I didn’t stand right up and face the music. The papers related to an irregularity. I could have squared it. Purcell sold me the file. I paid his price.”

  Zoom nodded.

  “And they were going to frame the murder on you,” he said.

  The banker’s face was the color of putty.

  “My God! Murder!”

  Zoom handed him his notebook and a fountain pen.

  “Write out your statement and sign it,” he said.

  The banker seized the fountain pen, laid the notebook against the wall, started to write. Frink, on the floor, made significant motions, rolled his eyes, tried to attract attention.

  Sidney Zoom spoke to his dog.

  “Watch him, Rip. Make him stay quiet.”

  The dog walked stiffly to the prostrate form, stood over him, lips curling back, teeth glistening. Frink moved his head. The dog growled, snapped toward the man’s throat. The teeth clicked as the jaws snapped together a scant half inch from the tender flesh, a canine warning which even the hardiest must have heeded.

  Gilvert finished the confession, signed it with a flourish. “Now,” he said, “I feel better. That cursed thing’s been weighing on my mind for a long time.”

  Chapter X

  Angel or Devil

  Sidney Zoom pocketed the notebook with its signed statement. He indicated the bound and gagged man on the floor.

  “He can’t blame you now. I’m going to get you in the clear. He’ll try to shift the entire blame to Purcell next. These rats are always looking for some one to make the goat. When they get cornered, they squeal.