The Count of 9

by Earl Stanley Gardner

I said, “You don’t even know what trouble is—yet.”

  He said sneeringly, “I suppose you’re going to make trouble for me?”

  “Not me,” I told him, “somebody else.”

  “Who?” he asked, noticing Eva Ennis out of the corner of his eye and getting his chin up and his chest stuck way out.

  “The police,” I told him.

  It took a minute for that to dawn on him. Then his chest began to go down like a tire with a slow leak. “What the hell have the police got to do with it?”

  “Quite a few things,” I said. “They’re looking for you now.”

  “For what?”

  “They want to interrogate you.”

  “What the hell do they want to interrogate me about?”

  I said, “Did you know that a blowgun and a small jade idol had been stolen from Crockett’s house the night of the shindig?”

  “Of course I knew it.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “You knew a blowgun was missing?”

  “Of course I did, I tell you. There’s no secret about that. Crockett was yelling his head off about it. Yesterday afternoon he told me that he’d hired you and your partner to get the stuff back, and wanted to know why you were hanging around my place, and did I know—”

  “I got the stuff back,” I interrupted.

  “So what? Why tell me about it?”

  “I thought you might be interested.”

  “I’m not. I’m not interested in anything about you, or what you do, just so you don’t ever stick your nose in my place again.”

  “The police are going to ask you some questions.”

  “Let them. I’ll answer them.”

  “And the police are going to want to know what you were doing in Phyllis Crockett’s studio apartment.”

  He was still talking big, but his chest was getting smaller by the minute. “What do you mean, Phyllis Crockett’s studio apartment?”

  “You have a key to it, I believe.”

  He didn’t say anything to that.

  “And you were in there sometime yesterday?”

  “I don’t have to account to you for what I do.”

  “That’s entirely correct,” I told him. “ You don’t and I’m not asking. I’m simply telling you that the police are going to be asking, and you will have to account to them.”

  “I had business in that apartment.”

  “Sure, sure,” I said, “and you had a key to it and it was from that apartment that Dean Crockett was murdered.”

  He stepped back a couple of paces and his eyes became big. “Was what?”

  “Murdered.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “And,” I said, “shortly before his murder, you had an interview with him in which you took hold of the lapel of his coat and he put his palm against your chest and pushed you halfway across the office and told you he was getting fed up with your familiarity both with himself and his wife.…The police are going to be very much interested in what you did after that time, because it was shortly after that that Crockett was murdered.… Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

  I left him standing there and walked over to my private office. As I opened the door, I glanced back at him and saw that he was looking at me with an expression of worried concern stamped all over his face.

  Eva Ennis was watching him but there was no longer the rapt admiration in her eyes that a doe gives to a buck who is winning a battle.

  I stood with my hand on the doorknob, the door half-open, watching to see what would happen.

  Eva turned away from Palmer and walked directly back to the filing case and began working on the files.

  I went in, said hello to Elsie Brand, walked on back to my desk and seated myself.

  Elsie said, “Bertha has been screaming her head off.”

  “Let her scream. The phone will ring pretty quick. The receptionist will tell you a Lionel Palmer wants to see me. Have her tell him to sit down and wait.”

  “The psychological approach?”

  “That’s right. I want him to cool his heels for a while.”

  “What about Bertha?”

  I glanced at my watch and said, “Okay, give Bertha a ring.”

  “She wanted you to come in as soon as you arrived.”

  “Give her a ring.”

  Elsie gave Bertha a ring and nodded to me. I picked up my desk phone, said, “Hello, Bertha. I’m back.”

  “Back?” Bertha screamed at me. “Where the hell do you go these days? I come up to the office and try to find you, and no one knows where you are. You haven’t even been in. You act like a corporation president on a vacation. This is a working organization. We’ve got business to do.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Come in here and I’ll tell you.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have a man waiting in the office.”

  “Let him wait,” Bertha said.

  “That’s what I intend to do,” I told her, and hung up.

  As soon as I hung up the phone, the receptionist called. “Mr. Lionel Palmer wants to see you.”

  “Tell him to wait. I’m busy.”

  I settled back in the swivel chair, put my feet on the desk and blew smoke at the ceiling. Within about five seconds the door burst open as though it was being taken off its hinges, and Bertha Cool came barging in.

  “You listen to me!” she yelled, her face choleric with indignation. “We’ve got a job to do, and nobody knows what the hell you’re doing. Somebody’s got to prepare a report. I promised Crockett we’d give him daily reports.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “What have you done about returning that blowgun and the jade idol?”

  “I have the jade idol,” I said, opening a drawer in the desk, taking the idol out and putting it on the blotter.

  “What about the blowgun?”

  “The police have that now.”

  “Well,” Bertha said, “it’s about time you— The police?”

  “The police.”

  “What the hell are the police doing?”

  “Your friend, Frank Sellers, was interested in the blowgun the last I saw of it.”

  “Frank Sellers? He’s with Homicide.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What the hell was he doing when he saw you?” Bertha asked.

  “Investigating a homicide.”

  “What homicide?”

  “Your client,” I said.

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Dean Crockett.”

  “You mean that he’s been…that he’s dead?”

  “Dead as a doornail.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “What was he killed with?”

  “There,” I said, “is where we were a little too efficient, Bertha. Someone killed him with the blowgun that we recovered. At least, that’s the way things look at the moment and that’s what Frank Sellers thinks.”

  Bertha kept blinking her eyes at me as though she was biting the information off in chunks with her eyelids so as to help her brain digest it.

  “When was he killed?” Bertha asked.

  “Sometime last night. The body wasn’t found until this morning.”

  “What angle are you working on?” Bertha Cool asked.

  “The murder.”

  “Who for?”

  “The widow.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s probably going to be accused of it.”

  “Did she do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does Sellers think?”

  “He hasn’t said.”

  She said, “Look here, Donald Lam, if Frank Sellers gets the idea that Mrs. Crockett killed her husband, and you stick your neck out trying to save Mrs. Crockett, it’s going to make trouble.”

  “For whom?”

  “For
you. For the agency.”

  “Everybody makes trouble for me.”

  “I don’t like it,” Bertha said.

  “Mrs. Crockett,” I told her, “doesn’t like it either.”

  “What about dough?”

  “I haven’t asked her.”

  “Well, you ask her,” Bertha said. “Get her in here. I’ll ask her. That’s the trouble with you, Donald Lam. You’re one of these easygoing, good-natured guys that believes everyone.…I’ve told you a thousand times that whenever you take on any sort of a job you’re to get a retainer, get some money in advance. They may take this woman and throw her in the can. Then they may convict her of murder and she can’t inherit a cent. Then we’ll be holding the bag.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Therefore, we shouldn’t let her get convicted of her husband’s murder.”

  “ Always get dough in advance,” Bertha said, “then you don’t care what happens.”

  “How much did you get out of Dean Crockett?”

  Bertha tried to be dignified. “With a man of that caliber you can’t— What the hell are you trying to do, you little bastard? Are you trying to bait me?”

  “I was just wondering,” I said. “You said always get dough in advance.”

  “Well, that’s a different situation.”

  “Why is it different?”

  “He’s a millionaire. He’s good for anything he orders.”

  “He isn’t good for anything now.”

  Bertha sucked in a deep breath, started to say something, then turned and stormed out of the office.

  I waited another five minutes, then told Elsie Brand to advise the receptionist that Lionel Palmer could come in now.

  He looked a lot different by the time he got into the office. He’d lost all of his belligerent, aggressive superiority.

  “Look, Lam,” he said, “I want to know exactly what it is the police have got on me. Just what—”

  He broke off and his eyes grew big as he saw the jade Buddha sitting in the middle of the blotter on my desk. “What…what’s that?”

  “The missing jade Buddha,” I said casually.

  “You…you recovered it?”

  “It didn’t walk in here under its own power.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Oh, I recovered it.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Where?”

  “From the person who had it.”

  “Look here, Lam, I have a reason for asking. I want to know who had that Buddha.”

  “You did,” I said, and lit another cigarette.

  He started to jump up out of his chair with a big show of indignation, then thought better of it and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you and the jade Buddha.”

  “You didn’t recover it from me.”

  “I recovered it from one of your cameras. It was wrapped in cotton and put in your Speed Graphic—the one with the wideangle lens.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “It’s a debatable point,” I said. “Bertha Cool, my partner, agrees with you at times, so I’m not going to argue against a majority opinion.…Nevertheless, that’s where I recovered the jade Buddha.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t have to. Frank Sellers will.”

  “Who’s Frank Sellers?”

  “The tough cop on Homicide who is going to be giving you a working over.”

  “Does he know it?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you recovered…that you said you recovered this Buddha in the back of one of my cameras?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re going to tell him?”

  “Sure.”

  Palmer began to squirm around in his seat. “Look here, Lam,” he said, “you’re a pretty damn good fellow.”

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s no reason why you and I shouldn’t get along.”

  “None whatever.”

  “How do you suppose that jade Buddha got inside of my camera?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s not my business to know. That’s up to Sellers. That’s what the taxpayers pay him for. He’ll find out.”

  “You…you think he will?”

  “I know damn well he will.”

  Palmer got nervous again and started hitching his chair up close to mine. He lowered his voice, looked through the half-open door to Elsie Brand’s office, where she was sitting checking some papers and pretending not to listen.

  “Now, look, Donald, we can do business.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “I’ll tell you what I think happened.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “But I’ll want you to protect my confidence.”

  I said, “I’m working for a client. I protect nobody on anything except my client. My client’s the one I protect, and the only one I protect.”

  “But you could…you could…you have to protect your sources of information.”

  I stretched my fists back up over my head, yawned, and said, “I don’t need any sources of information. I can get all I need. What did Sylvia Hadley say when she came up to your studio and found the jade idol gone?”

  “Sylvia!” he exclaimed.

  I nodded.

  “It…it couldn’t have been Sylvia.”

  “What makes you think it couldn’t?”

  “Why, she…she—”

  “She was up to your studio yesterday afternoon, wasn’t she?”

  “She dropped in briefly before she went up to Mrs. Crockett’s to pose as a model.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But she’s all right. She’s on the up-and-up.”

  “Make an excuse to be left alone in your outer room there? The one where you keep your cameras?”

  “She was alone there. She didn’t need to make any excuse. I was in the darkroom doing some work. She was in there with me for a while and then the fumes of the acid fixing bath bothered her a little so she went outside and waited for me out there.”

  “And after she looked in the camera and found the jade idol was gone, did you notice a change in her manner?”

  He looked at me as though I’d socked him in the solar plexus.

  “Well,” I said, getting up and stretching, “I’ve got to leave now. Come in any time.”

  I walked across through Elsie Brand’s office and opened the door.

  Lionel Palmer walked out like a man in a daze. His sports jacket seemed two sizes too big for him.

  Eva Ennis watched him go. There was a puzzled expression on her face.

  I started back to the office, and Eva Ennis brought over some papers from the files. “These are the papers that you asked for the other day, Mr. Lam. You wanted the affidavits in the Smith case.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, taking the papers.

  She looked at me with seductive eyes.

  “What did you do to him?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  She nodded her head toward the door. “Lionel Palmer.”

  I assumed surprise. “Nothing. Why?”

  “He seemed so…so deflated.”

  “Did he? I didn’t notice.”

  “He was waiting for you to come in. He said he was going to…well, he made threats.”

  “Did he?”

  “He was going to mop up the office floor with you.”

  “Is that so? How long have you been working here, Eva?”

  “Just around two months.”

  “When you’ve been here longer,” I said, “you’ll learn to take those things in your stride. Mopping up the office floor with me doesn’t entitle a guy to anything—least of all a pleasant look from the filing clerk.…What did Palmer want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. What did he want?”

  “Oh,” she said self-consciously, “he wanted…well, he wanted… he wanted—period. Do I have to express it any plainer than that
?”

  “A lot plainer,” I told her. “I’m not talking about your body. I’m talking about our files.”

  “Why,” she said in surprise, “he didn’t want anything out of the files.”

  “I thought he did, the way he was standing around by you over there at that filing drawer.”

  “Why, no, he was just…well, you know, talking…making a play.”

  She waited a minute, then giggled and said, “A preliminary.”

  “I thought he was interested in the files.”

  “Oh, he was just making conversation on that.”

  “What kind of conversation?”

  “A build-up.”

  “Do you remember just what he said?”

  “Oh, he asked me about the filing system and asked me about how long I’d been here, and how a system could be arranged in an office of this size so that one girl could find things after another girl had quit, and—”

  “And he asked you to show him a filing drawer?”

  She shifted her position seductively and said, “He wanted to get me over there in the corner.”

  “For what?”

  “Be your age,” she said archly.

  “Did he have restless hands?”

  “ All men have restless hands.”

  “And did he ask you to show him the filing drawer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he open the drawer or did you?”

  “He did.”

  “And was it the drawer that had the C files in it?”

  She frowned thoughtfully and said, “Why…I guess it was. I didn’t really notice.”

  “Have you made a file on Dean Crockett?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Just Mrs. Cool’s notes about guarding the place and preventing theft of curios.”

  “If he comes back,” I said, “keep him away from the filing cabinet.”

  “Oh, he isn’t coming back,” she said.

  “You can’t tell,” I told her.

  “Mr. Lam,” she said impulsively, “I think you’re just wonderful!”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re so…so utterly fearless.”

  “I’m not fearless,” I told her, “I’m just resigned.”

  The door of my private office opened, and Elsie Brand came out. I saw her look around for me and for a moment she didn’t spot me.

  Eva Ennis was standing very close to me. She was looking up in my eyes with an expression of extreme feminine approval. She was about to say something when Elsie spotted me.