The Count of 9

by Earl Stanley Gardner

  Bertha said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Donald. Frank seems pretty well worked up about something.”

  “He’s always worked up about something,” I told her. “I’ll call him.”

  I hung up the telephone, nodded to Phyllis, said, “This is the police now,” and dialed headquarters.

  I asked for Homicide Department and got Frank Sellers on the line.

  Sellers said, “Where the hell are you, Donald?”

  “Up in the Crockett apartment conferring with my client.”

  “How long you been there?”

  “A little over an hour, I guess. Why?”

  “I want you.”

  “You’ve had me,” I said. “You told me to get lost. I’m lost.”

  “Now I’m going to find you again.”

  “I’m up here,” I said.

  “All right. I’m coming up,” Sellers said, “and tell that Crockett dame to fix it so I can get up in that elevator without a lot of red tape rigmarole, otherwise I’ll tear the place to pieces.…I think you’ve been pulling a fast one, Pint Size, and if you have, I’m personally going to take you to pieces so you’ll learn a lesson you’ll never forget.”

  I said indignantly, “You wouldn’t dare to make a threat like that if a couple of goons hadn’t already softened me up.”

  It sounded as though Sellers was strangling on the telephone. I hung up.

  Phyllis Crockett, who had heard the conversation, was watching me anxiously. “What is it, Donald?” she asked. “Are you in bad with the police?”

  “I’m always in bad with the police,” I told her. “It’s chronic. It’s constitutional. Frank Sellers is on his way up here. He may have somebody with him. He wants to come up without any trouble. Better telephone the desk and tell them to pass him on through and send somebody up with him so there won’t be any trouble with the elevator.”

  “Donald, do I have to see the police at all hours of the night this way?”

  “You do tonight,” I told her.

  “Donald, I’m going to put some hot witch hazel compresses on your face. I don’t care who’s coming up.”

  “Go ahead,” I told her. “It’s a good idea. Spread a lot of towels around as though you’d been working on my face for about an hour, and if you get an opportunity, be a little bit indignant with Frank Sellers that the police can’t give a citizen better protection than I’ve been receiving.”

  “Won’t that make him angry?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’ll make him sore as hell—at you. The more different things we can make him mad about, the less he can concentrate on any one of them.”

  “He’s mad at something now?”

  “Mad at something is right,” I said. “He’s really mad at me this time.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The police got there right on schedule. They were mad, plenty mad, and scared.

  “Well, well, well,” Giddings said as they walked in, “a nice scene of domesticity—do your clients always furnish you with first-aid services, Lam?”

  “This is an unexpected luxury,” I said.

  “All right, never mind the compresses and the repartee. Get up here. We want to talk with you.”

  Phyllis bent over me and removed the hot compress with the witch hazel pad underneath. I sat up on the davenport.

  “Now, look, Donald,” Frank Sellers said, “I’m friendly with your outfit. You’re a tricky little bastard, but I’ve been telling Thad Giddings here that you won’t double-cross a guy if he plays ball with you.”

  “Who’s double-crossed whom?” I asked.

  Giddings said, “Sylvia Hadley has talked.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I thought she would.”

  “Now then, the thing was just a hundred percent different from the way you told us you had it doped out, and by God, you knew it was. Mortimer Jasper wanted those two idols. She got one of them, and he paid her a thousand bucks. She was to get the other one. He was to give her a grand for that.”

  “Well, for Heaven’s sake,” I said, with the best air of innocence I could assume. “You mean that in place of Sylvia being the mastermind, it was Mortimer Jasper, and Sylvia was just a tool?”

  “That’s right,” Sellers said patiently. “Now then, we’re coming to something very, very interesting.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Jasper is raising hell. He says that you planted that idol in his wastebasket; that you had it stashed away out there on the porch someplace, and that when you came in, while we were all milling around, you managed to get over by the wastebasket and dropped it.

  “Now, come to think of it, I do remember you standing around over that wastebasket, and it seems to me that I remember hearing some kind of a rustle in the papers as though some object had been dropped into the papers in the wastebasket.

  “Jasper says that you recovered the idol that was stolen the other night, and that you switched that and made it appear that was the idol stolen three weeks ago, and that then you framed the whole thing on him. He’s getting a lawyer and threatening suit against us for false arrest, malicious persecution, frame-up, and all the rest of it.

  “The sonofabitch turns out to have a hell of a lot of political pull, and his lawyers work fast. Thad and I have been summoned to the chief’s office at nine in the morning. It looks like hell.”

  I said, “Well, of course, Jasper has to blame the thing on someone—it’s very fortunate for you gentlemen that you had me along, otherwise he’d have claimed you were the ones who framed him.”

  “Well, there’s one answer to it,” Sellers said, “and only one answer. Sylvia Hadley says that you recovered the idol she had concealed in Lionel Palmer’s camera.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute, and they both stood staring at me in accusing silence.

  “Now then,” Sellers went on, “we want that idol and we want it right now, Donald. Then we’ve got an answer to Mortimer Jasper. Then we can go ahead and get this case buttoned up. Otherwise he can claim you played us for suckers and we’re out on a limb.”

  “And if it turns out you’ve been doing skulduggery,” Giddings interposed, “I’m personally going to fix you so that all the compresses in the world will never get your face back into shape—and that’s a promise!”

  I sighed. “I don’t know why you take the word of some crook on a deal like that. I suppose if I hadn’t been along and Jasper had accused Giddings of planting that idol, you’d have stuck up for him, Sellers. But because he accuses me, you come running up here in the middle of the night.…Okay, let’s go get the idol.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In my apartment.”

  “Let’s go,” Sellers said.

  “I can get it first thing in the morning, and—”

  “I said let’s go,” Sellers told me.

  I got up and buttoned my shirt collar. “He said let’s go,” I said to Phyllis.

  “I heard him, Donald,” she said. “Do you feel all right to go?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “I’m in fine shape now.”

  “You’re going to have a black eye,” she said.

  “That’s nothing,” I told her. “I’m always getting black eyes— the thing that’s bothering me at the moment is I think I’ve got a broken rib. I probably should be taped up.”

  “You let me get a doctor for you, Donald, and—”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Sellers said. “Donald is going to give us that idol.”

  “Well, now, wait a minute,” I said. “I didn’t say I was going to give it to you. That idol is technically the property of Mrs. Crockett, and—”

  “That idol is evidence, and you know it,” Sellers interrupted. “You had no business hanging on to it.”

  “But,” I said, “it’s not stolen property.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I said, “Sylvia told me that Dean Crockett wanted her to take that.”

  “Yeah,” Giddings said. “S
he tried to hand us that line—that lasted for just about two minutes.”

  “Well, she told me that and I believed her.”

  “The hell you did,” Giddings said. “She made a deal with you. You were to believe her on that, and she wasn’t going to blab about this other evidence that—” He broke off.

  Sellers said, “Let’s not do any more talking, Thad. Let’s go get that idol.”

  Giddings glared at me, then said, “Okay, let’s go over to the guy’s apartment and get the idol. If it isn’t in our hands within ten minutes, we’ll work this guy over right.”

  The three of us went down in the elevator. Phyllis Crockett was watching me apprehensively.

  “I’m coming back,” I told her. “Don’t go to bed, and fix it so I can come up.”

  She came toward me. “Here’s a key to the anteroom, Donald.”

  “If he doesn’t produce that idol, he’s going to spend the night in a hospital,” Giddings said.

  “Come on, Pint Size,” Sellers remarked impatiently, grabbing my coat collar and hustling me into the elevator.

  We went down and transferred to the apartment house elevator at the twentieth floor. The squad car was waiting outside.

  The two officers didn’t say a word as they drove me to my apartment house.

  We went up to my apartment. I opened the door and stood to one side. “Step right in, gentlemen,” I said, and switched on the lights.

  They entered the place, then suddenly stopped.

  “What the hell!” Sellers said.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  They stood to one side so I could see the interior of the apartment.

  “Good heavens, somebody has wrecked the place!” I exclaimed.

  Sellers and Giddings exchanged glances.

  I hurried past them over to the desk and surveyed the jimmied lock with lugubrious resignation.

  “Well, it’s gone,” I said.

  Sellers shook his head. “This time you’ve got to come up with something better than that, Pint Size.”

  “What the hell do you mean, something better than that?” I blazed. “I’ve got some rights! Here’s my place completely ruined and ransacked, and you birds are standing there dead on your feet. Just because I’m a private detective doesn’t mean I have to put up with all that stuff! If you’re talking about lawsuits, I’ll file one.

  “Now, suppose you quit kicking me around and find out who the hell ransacked this apartment.”

  Sellers looked at Giddings. “The guy’s got a point,” he said. “Let’s get a fingerprint man up here and take a look.”

  Giddings gave a hollow, mocking laugh. “And waste more time?”

  “We’re laying a foundation,” Sellers said.

  He went to the phone and called headquarters.

  By the time the fingerprint man arrived, I’d spotted the empty flask on the kitchen sink.

  “That’s not mine,” I said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “That flask.”

  “The guy may be right at that,” Sellers said to Giddings. “He takes a drink with a babe once in a while, but he doesn’t hit the booze. I’ll bet he never has had a bottle in the apartment.”

  He turned to the fingerprint man. “Take a look.”

  The fingerprint man dusted the whiskey flask. “It’s lousy with latents,” he said.

  “All right, let’s get some photographs,” Sellers said, “and let’s take a look at Donald’s fingerprints and make sure they aren’t his.”

  They took my fingerprints; they dusted the apartment; they didn’t find any fingerprints that weren’t mine or the housekeeper’s except the fingerprints on the whiskey flask.

  “It looks like a plant,” Giddings said.

  “Of course it looks like a plant,” Sellers told him, “but we aren’t overlooking any bets; not in dealing with this guy. I’m telling you, he’s smart.”

  “He thinks he’s smart,” Giddings sneered. “Wait until I get done with him.”

  “Come on, Pint Size,” Sellers told me. “You’re going up to headquarters.”

  “I believe we got enough prints on that flask to damn near make a classification,” the fingerprint man said. “There are prints all over it.”

  I said, “The guys that picked on me were big fellows. I think I could identify one of them from a mug shot.”

  “Okay, Pint Size, we’ll give you all the chance in the world,” Sellers said.

  It was shortly after 1:30 a.m. that I picked out a face in the mug shots.

  “That looks like the guy,” I told Giddings.

  Giddings was skeptical. “Okay, Wise Guy,” he said, “we’ll check the fingerprints.”

  Ten minutes later there was a very great change in the manner of Inspector Thad Giddings.

  “What about the prints?” I asked.

  Giddings looked at me and shook his head wonderingly. “They check,” he said. “The guy’s fingerprints are on that flask. Hell, you may be on the up and up.”

  I heaved a big sigh. “Well,” I said, “now we know where the idol I had is.”

  “There are some other prints on there, too,” Giddings said. “Let’s not go off half-cocked on this.”

  “Have it your own way,” I told them. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m a citizen whose apartment has been burglarized, and I’d like to see some police activity.”

  “You’re getting it,” Giddings told me. “You’re getting it. Don’t get ants in your pants.”

  They left me alone for twenty minutes; then Giddings and Frank Sellers both entered the room.

  “I guess we’ve got your men identified, all right, Pint Size,” Sellers said.

  “How come?”

  “The man you identified is named Ferguson. He’s out on parole and he’s living at 9611 Sixty-first Street. He makes regular reports to his parole officer, has got a good job working in a TV concern. He’s an expert on electronics and has been making good on his parole.

  “However, while he was in prison he was teamed up with a fellow named Jimmy Lenox who has the nickname of ‘Next County’ Lenox, because whenever anyone tried to pick him up for a job, he’d always swear he was in the next county at the time, and usually made it stick.

  “Now then, the thing that gives you a break, Donald, is the fact that Jimmy Lenox’s prints are also on that flask. That ties the two of them in together, and when those two crooks get together, you can gamble something is happening.

  “Moreover, that address at 9611 Sixty-first Street almost backs up on the place where Mortimer Jasper is living on Carrolton Drive. Now then, we just could have something here.”

  I nodded.

  “It’d be a good idea, under the circumstances, if you signed a complaint charging Lenox and Ferguson with burglary, and made an affidavit that would enable us to get a search warrant.”

  “Why should I sign anything?” I said. “Why don’t you fellows take it on your own shoulders?”

  “Now look, Donald,” Sellers said, and his voice was almost pleading, “we’re in deep enough on this thing. We’ve gone along on your say-so and…well, the whole thing is getting mixed up all to hell. We’d like to solve it, but we aren’t going to stick our necks out any farther. Now, you’re a private citizen as well as a private detective. Your place has been burglarized and you think you know the men who did it. Be a sport. Sign a complaint and an affidavit and let us use a search warrant.”

  I looked at Giddings. “I don’t know whether I feel like cooperating or not. I’ve been kicked around too much this evening.”

  “Now, don’t hold anything up against Thad,” Sellers said. “Thad is just a good, two-fisted, square-shooting cop that maybe got you wrong earlier in the evening.”

  “I haven’t heard him say so,” I said.

  Giddings took a deep breath. “Maybe I got you wrong earlier in the evening, Lam,” he said.

  The way he said it was like having all his teeth pulled.

  “Come on,” I
told them, “let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was two-thirty when the police cars slid up on the place at 9611 Sixty-first Street.

  They did it in the most approved manner. They shut off the motors a block away and coasted up to the place. They used the emergency brakes to stop so the red brake light didn’t give forth a telltale glare. They got out without the slamming of car doors. They had a sledge hammer and a couple of curved bars to jimmy doors fast. One detail went around to the back of the house, and Sellers and Thad Giddings went to the front.

  After they’d been ringing the doorbell for a couple of minutes, a light came on inside the house and somebody inside the door said, “Who is it?”

  “Police,” Sellers said. “We have a search warrant. Open up.”

  “Hell, you’ve got nothing on us,” the voice said.

  “Open up. We have a warrant,” Sellers said.

  “You can’t have a warrant,” the voice said. “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Open the door or we’ll break it down,” Sellers told him.

  The door opened.

  The tall man was standing there in athletic underwear and he was big. He even loomed half a head above Sellers.

  Giddings pushed me forward. “Ever see this guy before?” Sellers asked, directing a flashlight on the top of the porch so that both of our features were illuminated in a bounce light.

  “I never saw the guy before in my life,” the big man said, “and I don’t intend to be rousted out at this hour of the night to answer questions. You guys can go roll your hoops. I’m clean, and—”

  “Who says you’re clean?” Sellers interrupted. “Is this the guy, Donald?”

  “That’s the guy,” I said, with conviction.

  “I never saw that little sonofabitch in my life,” the big man protested.

  “Okay, Ferguson,” Sellers told him, “we’re coming in. We’ve got a warrant. Who else is in here with you?”

  “No one.”

  About that time there was a commotion at the back and one of the men who had been detailed to watch the back door came in with a shorter individual who was wearing pants, shoes, coat and undershirt. He hadn’t even stopped to put on a shirt.

  “We caught this guy taking a sneak out the back,” the officer said. “Look what he had in his coat pocket.”