Crows Can't Count

by A. A. Fair

  Maranilla climbed up the stairs to the rickety porch. With grave, Old-World courtesy he proffered Bertha Cool a cigarette and said, “May I sit down?”

  Bertha glared and nodded.

  The chauffeur came up and we all went inside.

  Maranilla said to me, “So you are interested in mining properties?”

  I said I was.

  The chauffeur suddenly began to talk in smooth, rapid-fire English. “The information we have,” he said, “is that you are a private detective, that you are in partnership with this Bertha Cool, who came in on the early plane and immediately chartered the car to take her here.”

  I didn’t say anything and Bertha couldn’t. Her face held an expression of incredulous surprise.

  “Moreover,” the chauffeur went on, “you, Mr. Lam, when you were on the plane, and before you left the States, showed an interest in emeralds. We are,” he added dryly, “interested in your interest.”

  Bertha looked at me and her expression made it plain she didn’t want any part of the conversational lead.

  I decided that a little politeness wouldn’t be out of place.

  I bowed and said questioningly, “I have the honor of addressing?”

  “Ramon Jurado,” he said.

  “And your title?”

  “I have none.”

  Maranilla made explanations. “He is not of the police,” he said. “He is above them.”

  Jurado looked at me with dull, stolid eyes in which there was not the slightest glint of intelligence and said, “I represent the government. Things which pertain to emeralds interest me.”

  “I think I am beginning to see.”

  Jurado turned to Bertha. “Mrs. Cool, what brings you here?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  He smiled. “That will be fortunate for you. May I offer my congratulations?”

  “What’s fortunate?” Bertha asked.

  “If what you are doing here is none of my business,” Jurado said.

  Bertha clamped her lips shut.

  Jurado said, “Perhaps it will be well if we talk with the others.”

  Maranilla called out something in Spanish and immediately we heard the pound of steps outside. The door burst open and the guards brought Hockley and Sharples into the little office.

  “Sit down, gentlemen,” Maranilla said.

  Maranilla was the boss now. Jurado was back in his position as chauffeur.

  “Which one of you is responsible for Mrs. Cool being here?” Maranilla asked, gesturing toward Bertha.

  Sharples looked at Hockley, then at me, then at Bertha Cool.

  “I’ve never seen her before.”

  Hockley merely shrugged his shoulders.

  Maranilla scowled. “Come, come, gentlemen. This complicates matters. May I suggest that neither of you is in a position to be other than co-operative?”

  Hockley said, “I don’t know what you have on this other guy but you have nothing on me.”

  Sharples looked at me and moistened his lips, his eyes pleading.

  Maranilla said, “You were with this man Sharples. You are an accomplice.”

  “Bunk! I haven’t any love for the old codger,” Hockley said. “Lam, over there, can tell you the facts. I wanted to get some dough out of the old boy.”

  “Ah, yes,” Maranilla said with a smile. “Mr. Lam doubtless can give us the facts. You will vouch for Mr. Sharples and Mr. Lam will vouch for you, and Sharples can then, in turn, vouch for Mr. Lam.”

  “Oh, nuts,” Hockley said. “Why don’t you be your age?”

  Sharples started to talk Spanish. Maranilla interrupted him sharply. “Speak in English, if you please.”

  Sharples said, “I don’t know what the trouble is but I can tell you one thing—if you fellows found any contraband in my baggage, it has been planted there.”

  Maranilla looked for a moment at Jurado and seemed to read a signal in the quiet, steady eyes. He said to me, “Of late we have known there was something peculiar about this mine. We have also known other things. The emerald market is not normal. There are stones on the market which have come from Colombia, yet which have never been officially cleared through Colombia.”

  He evidently saw my questions by the expression on my face, for he said, “In Colombia it is a crime for anyone except certain licensed persons to have uncut emeralds in his possession. The cutting of emeralds is licensed by the government. I cannot tell you all you wish to know, but this much I can state. There are certain peculiarities in the cutting of emeralds, processed under government supervision, that enable us to tell when unauthorized stones are on the market.

  “Now, Señor Sharples has made many journeys to the mine. Until lately he has been considered above suspicion. But yesterday night he was apprehended and his baggage searched. Shall I show you what we found?”

  Sharples moistened his lips with his tongue. “I tell you I know nothing about those things.”

  Maranilla picked up his huge alligator-skin briefcase, opened it, and took out a chamois pouch. He undid the pouch and I heard Bertha’s hissing intake of breath as her avaricious interest pulled her forward in her chair.

  It seemed that the chamois pouch had been transferred into a pool of deep green, cool and compelling, drawing the eyes into its depths with hypnotic force.

  “They aren’t mine,” Sharples said. “I have never seen them before. I know nothing about them.”

  “Of course,” Maranilla went on, almost apologetically it seemed, “we are not entirely inexperienced in such matters. For some time this mine has been under investigation and my secret agents have found a shaft and a drift far up on the side of the hill. Rock has been removed from that shaft and cunningly concealed. What lies within that drift surprises our geologists. It is, perhaps, one of the richest emerald properties we have yet discovered.”

  “I know nothing about them,” Sharples said. And then added, “Is that shaft and drift on this property?”

  “On this property and it has been worked for probably three or four years,” Maranilla said.

  Sharples turned toward the mine manager, who was looking at us with bored indifference.

  “No Spanish,” Maranilla warned.

  Sharples seemed to wilt.

  “Now then,” Maranilla went on, “our agents are instructed to investigate. In the States they find a crow who seems to be interested in emeralds, a dead man, a pendant from which emeralds have been stripped, and a private detective who seeks to learn much about emeralds. It is most perplexing.

  “There is a Señor Jarratt who is kept under the eye of my agents. His activities are most interesting. Señor Lam seems also to be interested in this Jarratt. Do you, by any chance, know the Señor Jarratt, Señor Sharples?”

  “No,” Sharples blurted.

  “It is a pity,” Maranilla said. “He is a man of brains.” He turned to the guard. “Remove these two,” he said in English, and then barked an order in Spanish.

  Hockley blurted, “Listen, I’m not in on this. I came down here because I thought this whole trust business was fishy. I sneaked into the country and—”

  “We will discuss your case later,” Maranilla interrupted. He nodded to the guards, who marched the prisoners out of the office.

  Maranilla turned to me. “I will have to ask your pardon, Señor Lam, and you too, Señora Cool, but this mine manager does not speak English. It is now necessary that we learn certain things. Therefore I will have to exclude you from the conversation by speaking in Spanish.”

  Bertha sat there like a bump on a log, keeping a hundred percent out of it.

  I said, “Go ahead. As far as I’m concerned, I think I know the answer now.”

  Maranilla’s eyes glinted in a smile. Then he turned to Murindo and asked a short, sharp question in Spanish.

  Murindo shrugged his shoulders, made a gesture with the hand which held his cigarette, and shook his head.

  Maranilla’s tone was sharper now, the words a rapid
staccato of accusation.

  Murindo’s eyes were those of a trapped animal, but his reply was still a shake of the head.

  Maranilla started talking. He spoke for two minutes. Under the steady insistence of that driving Spanish, Murindo lost his composure. The cigarette fell unheeded to the floor. He lowered his eyes, then when it came his turn to talk, he raised them and blurted a few words. Then, having broken the ice, he talked for perhaps five minutes. His voice, at first sullen, became more expressive as he talked. He warmed up to his subject and made gestures. Maranilla asked perhaps a dozen questions. Murindo answered each of those questions as soon as it had been asked.

  Maranilla turned to me. “It is unfortunate,” he said, that you do not understand our language. The situation simplifies itself. This man Murindo has confessed. Some three years ago an exploratory shaft entered a rock formation which it was hoped would contain ore. They found emeralds.

  “Murindo was the only one who knew that emeralds had been found. This man who is now dead, Señor Cameron, appeared on the scene shortly afterward and an arrangement was made by which ostensibly the shaft was abandoned. Actually, work progressed on it under Murindo and one other trusted worker. The emeralds were delivered mostly to Cameron, once or twice to Sharples.

  “And now, Señor Lam of the firm of Cool and Lam, if you have been retained by this man Sharples, you could be in a most delicate position. It is unfortunate. However, it is necessary that you clarify your connection with this matter. It will be well to talk with unreserved frankness and in detail.”

  Bertha said, “This man Sharples was trying to get a bodyguard all the time—”

  “I think I’d better tell about it,” I said, “since I had the personal contact.”

  Bertha said, “Well, as far as we were concerned, we didn’t know—”

  I said, “I think we’d better tell the police the entire story, Bertha.”

  She looked as though she could have pushed a knife into my heart, but she kept quiet.

  I said to Maranilla, “It is, perhaps, a long story. I shall make it brief. But the question is, Where shall I begin?”

  “At the beginning,” Maranilla said definitely. “At the very beginning.”

  I said, “Sharples came to us and asked us to find out why a certain emerald pendant had been left for sale at an exclusive jewelry shop. He told me the pendant was the property of Shirley Bruce, that she had inherited it from Cora Hendricks.

  “I made an investigation and learned the pendant had been left for sale by Robert Cameron. I became convinced there was something fishy about the whole business. I reported to Sharples. Sharples suggested we go to call on Cameron. When we got there, Cameron was dead. He had been murdered. Apparently he had been murdered just after he had finished a telephone conversation, or perhaps while he was still talking on the telephone.”

  I saw that both Maranilla and Jurado were following me closely. Jurado’s eyes didn’t have any flicker of expression, but I noticed that his head was cocked just a little forward. Maranilla’s kindly, twinkling eyes were as insistent as the headlights of an approaching automobile in a fog. “Go ahead,” he said.

  I said, “I was with Sharples when the body was discovered. We entered Cameron’s house together. Afterward we went to call on Shirley Bruce Shirley told us she had given the pendant to Cameron some time ago.

  “I looked up the instrument of trust There’s nearly two hundred thousand dollars involved—perhaps more. On the death of both trustees, the property goes to the beneficiaries, share and share alike. While they live they can give any or all of the trust to either one of the beneficiaries. In other words, they don’t have to make an equal distribution.”

  “And you think that perhaps Cameron’s death is merely preliminary to the death of Señor Sharples?” Maranilla asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that Sharples seemed to think he was in great danger and wanted to hire a bodyguard. And then he did a queer thing. He picked me as his bodyguard.”

  “Why is that strange?” Maranilla asked.

  I said, “I’d make a pretty poor bodyguard.”

  “It is quite apparent that you have brains, Señor Lam.”

  “A bodyguard needs more than brains.”

  “Sharples offered to pay you well?” Maranilla asked.

  “I’ll say he did,” Bertha blurted “He offered three times what the job was worth.”

  Maranilla motioned her to silence with a courteous but firm gesture. “My mind is in the thought processes of Señor Lam,” he said, “if I may say so without being rude, Señora. Later I will ask you questions.”

  I said, “Quite apparently Shirley Bruce was a little child when Cora Hendricks died—a mere baby. The records show that all of the estate, every penny of it, went to the trustees. That included all the money, all the personal property, all the real property, every single thing of value in the estate. Under those circumstances, if the pendant had belonged to Cora Hendricks and Shirley Bruce got it, the question is, How did she get it, and when did she get it?”

  Maranilla was positively beaming now. “Go on, go on,” he said impatiently.

  I said, “Sharples was careful to have me with him when we went to Cameron’s house. He may or may not have known what he was going to discover when he entered that little office. But he was very careful to have me with him when he went to call on Shirley Bruce. And he certainly knew what she was going to say.”

  “Go on,” Maranilla said.

  I said, “There were several things that were peculiar about the death of Cameron. There was the .22 automatic lying on the table. One shot had been fired. The police believe the murderer wanted to make it appear that Cameron had fired a shot before he had been stabbed. This might lay the foundation for a plea of self-defense. Or it might have misled the police by making it look as if the murderer had been wounded. After investigation, the police thought the murderer had tried to shoot at a small hole under the eaves in order to have the bullet unaccounted for. Actually, the bullet chipped a piece off the edge of the wood—just enough for the police to tell where the bullet struck.”

  Maranilla looked over at Jurado and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Jurado didn’t so much as blink.

  I said to Maranilla, “When the police took a paraffin test of Cameron’s hands, they didn’t find any powder marks. Apparently he hadn’t fired the gun. Therefore they believed the murderer must have fired it. A test of the barrel showed the gun had been fired shortly before Cameron met his death.”

  “Good!” Maranilla exclaimed almost under his breath. “How nice it is to have at one’s disposal laboratory technicians, chemists, physicians who specialize in necropsy. But go on, Señor Lam—by all means, go on.”

  I said, “There were no emeralds in the pendant when Cameron’s body was found. The pendant was found nearby. The stones had been removed from the setting. The police found two of them on the table and six of them in the crow’s nest. That’s eight. Five emeralds were found trapped in the drainpipe leading from the washstand.”

  Maranilla extended his hands in front of him, placed the tips of his fingers together. “It is a pleasure,” he said thoughtfully.

  I said, “The job which Sharples had for me to do was too simple. I thought almost from the start that the whole thing had been deliberately engineered. If that pendant had belonged to Shirley Bruce and Sharples had learned it was for sale, he would have gone directly to Shirley Bruce. If Shirley Bruce had been in a jam and wanted money, she’d have gone to Harry Sharples. If she had wanted to sell an emerald pendant simply because she was tired of it, she wouldn’t have gone to Cameron. She’d have gone to Sharples. The whole thing just didn’t fit into a logical pattern.”

  Maranilla said softly, “There were reasons which caused us to investigate a certain Peter Jarratt. Our investigators became interested in Shirley Bruce. They reported that you discovered them and eluded them. Thereafter they returned to take up the trail of P
eter Jarratt and in so doing crossed your own trail. You have an explanation, perhaps?”

  I said, “Jarratt called me up. He told me that a Phyllis Fabens had owned this pendant. I went to Phyllis Fabens. She had owned a similar pendant but it had been set with garnets and a ruby. At first I thought it was a plant.”

  “A plant?” Jurado interrupted.

  “Something which had deliberately been manipulated,” Maranilla explained.

  “Oh,” Jurado said.

  “Go on,” Maranilla told me.

  I said, “But after I went to see Jarratt, I had a different idea. I had an idea that Jarratt was buying pieces of antique jewelry containing garnets and cheap stones. He turned these over to Cameron. The stones were removed from their settings and emeralds were substituted. Then the antique jewelry was offered here and there for sale, probably on a nation-wide pattern. It would have been a most interesting way of disposing of emeralds without upsetting the market—if one had the emeralds.”

  “Ah,” Maranilla said, and rubbed his hands together.

  Jurado said tonelessly, “It would have been more convincing had Señor Lam’s announcement been made before our discovery.”

  “Of course, of course,” Maranilla said quickly. “But I think perhaps Señor Lam has still more explanation which he wishes to make.”

  I said, “I will show my good faith by telling you something no one else knows.”

  “It would be of assistance,” Maranilla conceded courteously.

  I said, “This pet crow that lived with Cameron had another cage, at another home. I went to that other cage. In it I found five emeralds.”

  Maranilla frowned and glanced at Jurado. Jurado’s face was as expressionless as wood—a heavy face, with stolid, sullen features.

  Maranilla said to me, “Perhaps you have an explanation, Señor Lam?”

  I said, “I have only a theory, not an explanation.”

  “We shall be greatly interested.”

  Bertha said angrily, “What the hell’s the use of spilling your guts to these people, Donald?”

  Maranilla said suavely, “He talks his way out of trouble, perhaps, Señora. And you yourself—did you not come here at the request of Señor Sharples? You are in Colombia now, Señora. And there are laws regarding the mining and the possession of emeralds.”