Honest Money

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  Ken Corning stiffened. His eyes became wary and watchful “What about him? What do you want me to do?”

  “Defend him.”

  “Perhaps he’d prefer to pick his own lawyer,” said Corning. “Are you authorized to act for him?”

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  “Then you can’t retain me to act as his attorney.”

  “Could I retain you to act as my attorney, to … to do anything that you could for him?”

  Ken Corning fastened his eyes upon hers. Then he said: “That would depend upon several things.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “The size of the retainer, for one thing.”

  She opened her purse, took out thirteen fifty-dollar bills. The bills were crisp and new. She laid them down on the desk. As she laid them down, one at a time, her lips moved soundlessly, counting, When the last bill had been placed there she looked up at Ken Corning.

  “That,” she said, “is the retainer.”

  Ken Corning said: “It must have been a big diamond.”

  She gasped, stared at him, then clenched her left hand and dropped it below the desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  Ken Corning made no move to reach towards the money. He let it lie there on the desk, cool, crisp and green.

  “The next thing I’d want to know,” he said, “is who you are.” She seemed to have been prepared for that question. She smiled at him. “I,” she said, “am a mysterious figure who wouldn’t appear in the case at all. You could enter me on your books as Madam X. From the moment I walked out of this office you’d lose sight of me. You couldn’t call me on the telephone, you couldn’t reach me, no matter what the emergency. You could do just one thing, go ahead and see that George—Mr. Colton, got whatever breaks you could give him.”

  “And not let him know that you had retained me?”

  “You could use your own judgment about letting him know that someone had retained you, but you wouldn’t even describe me, or let him know that it had been a woman who called on you.”

  Ken Corning said, slowly: “Let’s pass that for a minute. This is a sensational murder case. The newspapers are hinting at a something that’s in the background and may develop at any minute. You want me to keep your identity secret because you’d be pilloried by the press if they could drag in a ‘beautiful woman’ angle. But there’s something specific you want me to do. What is it?” She said: “I want you to drag his wife into it.”

  Ken Corning raised his brows, said nothing.

  She started to speak, rapidly: “He’ll have another lawyer who will be handling the case for him. I don’t know who that lawyer will be. But it’ll be somebody who will do just as George … Mr. Colton says. It’ll be somebody who will go before a jury with that story about someone else firing the shots from another room, and all that stuff that Mr. Colton told the newspapers.

  “That’s all hooey. He shot Harry Ladue because Ladue had been too friendly with his wife. The unwritten law is the defense he should make, and he’d be acquitted on it. But if he sticks with this yarn about some mysterious person standing in the darkness of another room, or in the corridor and firing the shots, he’ll get the death penalty!”

  Ken Corning’s eyes narrowed.

  “Have you any scintilla of evidence of what you’re talking about?” he asked.

  She nodded, reached in her purse, took out a sheet of stationery that bore the printed head of a cheap hotel. The stationery was covered with fine writing, in a feminine hand.

  “Here,” she said, “is a list of the places where Ladue stayed with George Colton’s wife, and the names that they registered under. I want you to promise me that you’ll drag them into the case, rip the facts wide open.”

  Corning said: “Through the newspapers?”

  “I don’t care,” she said, “how you do it, just so it’s done. I don’t want Colton to think he’s shielding the name of a woman and go to his death because of it.”

  Corning said: “So he’s shielding the woman, eh? That’s the reason he’s pulling this line about someone standing in the corridor and doing the shooting as he walked into the office.”

  “Of course,” she answered.

  Corning took the sheet of paper and looked at the dates, names of hotels and names of persons.

  “The handwriting would all be by Ladue,” he said. “How could you prove who the woman was?”

  “Get photographs of his wife, silly, and chase around through the bellboys. You can work up the case with that evidence. Just get the thing started and it’ll work up itself. There’s only one promise I want from you, and I want it made on all that you hold sacred. That is that I don’t want you ever to tell a soul that I called on you. You’ve got to swear that.”

  “You mean,” he asked, “that a woman called on me?”

  “No. I mean that you’ll never disclose my real identity.”

  “But I don’t know it. You just mentioned that I’d never find it out.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about that. I … I think you’ll find out who I am. You’ve got to promise.”

  He pursed his lips. Tears came to her eyes. She reached into her purse and took out a small handkerchief. As Corning followed the motion of her hands he saw that the handkerchief was soggy, saw, also, the glint of blued steel in the purse.

  He spoke calmly.

  “Is the gun new?” he asked.

  She gave a little gasp and clutched at the purse. Ken Corning reached over, clamped his hand on her wrist, raised his eyes to hers, and said: “So you’re Mrs. George Colton, eh?”

  Had he struck her with his fist she would not have turned whiter. She stared at him with eyes that were dark with terror. “How—how did you know?”

  He kept holding her wrist.

  “And I’ll take the gun, so that you won’t get into any trouble with it,” said Ken.

  She let go her hold on the entire purse, and, as Ken freed her wrist, leaned forward and put her hands to her face. “It’s horrible,” she said. “He’s trying to save my name. He doesn’t love me.

  But he’d take a death sentence rather than let the newspapers bandy my name about. I can’t let him do it. I’ve got to force him to make the facts public, and then—”

  She paused.

  “And then?” asked Ken Corning.

  She motioned towards the purse which held the gun.

  “Then—” she said, and pitched forward to the floor.

  Helen Vail sopped a wet towel on the woman’s forehead and said: “What happened, Ken?”

  He shook his head. “She kind of wobbled. Before I could catch her she’d gone into a nose dive. Her pulse is all weak and stringy. Guess she hasn’t had much sleep. She seems to have been on a terrific strain. Where’s that whiskey? Fine. Now hold her head while I see if we can get a little more down her.”

  He poured whiskey past the white lips. The woman’s eyelids fluttered and she stared at them with fixed eyes that seemed glassy and unseeing, Like the eyes of a cat that is just recovering from a fit.

  “Feel better?” asked Ken Corning.

  She didn’t answer the question.

  A knock sounded at the door of the private office. Ken Corning looked meaningly at Helen Vail. “Go out and see who it is. If it’s anybody that*s snooping around, hand ’em a stall.”

  Helen Vail went to the door, opened it, tried to block the entrance with her slender body. A man pushed her to one side. Ken Corning saw the glitter of light from the windows reflected from the lense of a camera. He saw a long arm hold up something above Helen Vail’s head. Then there was a “poom” and the white glare of a flashlight exploded.

  Ken Corning went forward, low to the ground like a football player charging the line. He went past Helen Vail like a charging bull. A man with a camera and a flashlight was running across the outer office. Ken Corning caught him at the door.

  The man whirled as Ken’s hands sought the camera. He made a swift pass at
Ken. Corning dodged the blow, brought his foot sharply down on the man’s instep, jerked at the camera. It came loose in his hand. Ken whirled it around his head, banged it down on the floor. He crossed his left, and, as the man staggered, got hold of his coat collar with one hand, jerked the door open with the other.

  The man struck an ineffectual blow. Ken Corning leaned his weight against the struggling victim, pushed him down the hall, sped him on his way with the toe of a well-directed boot.

  The man sprinted to the stairs, then whirled.

  “You can’t get away with that!” he yelled. “I’ll have you in jail before night for assault and battery. My paper’s got some prestige and you can’t pull a stunt like that. I’ll show you who’s who in this man’s town.”

  He was still talking as Ken snapped the door shut.

  He walked into his reception-room, kicked the camera to fragments, jerked open the door of his private office, and said to Helen Vail: “Get her out of here, and keep her under cover!” Helen Vail stared at him.

  “Who is she?” she whispered.

  “Don’t ask me, and don’t ask her,” rasped Ken Corning. “Get her out of here. Take her down a floor and into the ladies’ restroom. Keep her under cover until you can sneak her out. If she can make it, better make a try for a hotel right now.”

  The woman got to her feet, clutched at the edge of the desk for support. “I can make it,” she said, smiling wanly. “Did-—did the newspapermen follow me?”

  “Some tabloid guy,” said Ken Corning.

  “Did he get a picture?”

  “He did, but he can’t use it. His camera’s smashed.”

  The troubled eyes were filled with gratitude.

  “The only thing for you to do now is to get under cover and stay there,” said Corning. “Those babies are wise and they’ve been following you. Anyhow, they knew you were coming here, or knew it when you got here. Don’t tell anyone what you told me. I’ll bust into this fight as counsel that was hired by you. I’m going to try and work out some way of handling the situation.”

  The woman said: “The things I’ve told you have got to come out. When they do I can’t face the world. I’m finished.”

  Ken Corning jutted his jaw at her.

  “Shut up and get out of here,” he said. “You talk like a damned fool. Get her out, Helen.”

  Helen Vail had moved with crisp efficiency while they were talking. She had on her hat and coat.

  “I’ll try the back way,” she said. “I think we can make it. I’ll telephone when I get located.”

  “Stay with her,” said Corning, “every minute of the time, night and day. Don’t let her out of your sight. Here’s some money for expenses.”

  He tossed her two of the fifty-dollar bills.

  “But—” the woman started to protest.

  Helen Vail’s voice broke in, cool, efficient, determined.

  “Can the chatter,” she said, “and get started. Can’t you see Mr. Corning has work to do?”

  She pulled the woman out into the hall, let the door close. Ken Corning called, just as the door was closing: “Call me at the Antlers Hotel, ask for Mr. Mogart.”

  Helen’s voice drifted through the open transom.

  “Okey,” she said.

  Ken Corning grabbed a copy of the Penal Code, a volume on evidence, some blank forms which dealt with writs of habeas corpus, caught up his hat and lunged for the door.

  He didn’t bother with the elevator, but took the stairs two at a time. Nor did he go out of the lobby of the office building to the street, but went, instead, through a back door which gave upon a storeroom, a musty corridor, and a barred door which opened on an alley. Ken Corning unbarred the door and emerged into the fresh air of the warm morning.

  He took a taxicab to the depot, caught another there and went to the Antlers Hotel, where he secured a room under the name of E. C. Mogart of Kansas City.

  The telephone rang while he was arranging his books on the dresser. He answered it and heard Helen Vail’s voice.

  “We’re at the Gladstone,” she said. “We got a break getting away from the office. The guy you threw out was yammering at a cop in front of the place, and it was attracting a crowd. I picked this joint because it’s close to the Antlers. What do I do next?”

  “Just sit tight,” he told her. “What name are you registered under?”

  “Bess and Edna Seaton,” she said. “The room’s five-thirty-six.

  “Which is Bess and which Edna?” asked Corning.

  “Be your age!” she said, and hung up.

  Ken Corning grinned, lit a cigarette and started pacing the floor.

  He walked the floor like a caged animal, smoking cigarette after cigarette, the smoke whipping back over his shoulder, his eyes squinted in thought.

  There was a knock at his door. He opened it. Helen Vail grinned at him, “I came to tell you,” she said, “that I’m going to be Bess. We tossed up for it.”

  “Anybody see you come up here?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Come on in.”

  She came in. He closed the door and locked it.

  “How much do you know?” he asked.

  “All of it,” she said. “You didn’t think she’d have someone to get weepy with without spilling all of the information, did you?”

  Ken fell to pacing the floor again.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  “It’s a mess,” she agreed.

  “How’d it happen?” he wanted to know.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “She’d known Ladue before she got married—and she knew him afterwards.”

  “Wasn’t she happy, Helen?”

  “No.”

  “Why is she willing to ruin herself to save her husband, then?” “Because that’s her sense of loyalty. If she loved anybody, it was Ladue. I guess her husband’s like all the rest of them. He didn’t treat her with any particular consideration, and he was playing around with a blonde—a manicurist in a barber shop.” “Which shop?” he asked.

  “Kelly’s, down on Seventh Street.”

  “The wife knew about it?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did she say anything to him about it?”

  “Yes. They had it out.”

  “And then he accused her of being intimate with Ladue, I suppose, and she admitted that, and then he went out and shot Ladue.”

  Helen Vail shook her head.

  “No. She didn’t think that he knew anything about her and Ladue. If he did, he didn’t mention it, and he should have mentioned it. They had some little scene. She didn’t object to the blonde as long as he didn’t flaunt her in the faces of their social set. But it had been getting pretty raw, and she wanted him to tame down.”

  “What’d he tell her?” asked Corning.

  “What do husbands always tell their wives when the wives are in the right?” she asked.

  Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders. “Never having been a husband, I’ll pass. What’d he tell her?”

  Helen Vail grinned. “Told her to go to hell,” she said.

  Ken Corning said: “And then he went out and shot Ladue, eh?”

  “That seems to be about the size of it.”

  Ken Corning shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense, Helen. I wonder if maybe it wasn’t some sort of a frame-up.” She sat on the edge of the bed, shrugged her shoulders, and said: “I’d take a cigarette if anybody’d offer me one.”

  He passed her the package. “Matches in the glass smoking stand,” he told her. She pouted. “Don’t I rate service?”

  “No,” he said, and started pacing the floor again. “I’m busy.”

  She lit the cigarette, and Ken Corning paused abruptly in his walking of the floor, strode to the telephone, scooped the receiver to his ear and gave a number to the operator.

  “Who’re you calling?” asked Helen Vail.

  “District Attorney’s office,” he said.

  “Hello,” he said into t
he instrument when a feminine voice came over the wire, “who’s handling the George Colton case?”

  “Two or three,” said the girl in the District Attorney’s office. “Don Graves is going to sit in on the trial. Probably the D. A. himself will handle the prosecution.”

  “Let me talk with Graves,” said Corning.

  “Who is it?”

  “Kenneth Corning, the lawyer.”

  “Oh, yeah. Just a minute.”

  There was a click of a connection, then Don Graves’ voice came over the wire. It was a rasping, cold voice, bloodlessly efficient.

  “Corning, eh?” he said. “Are you retained in the Colton case?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s funny. Old Burnham of Burnham, Peabody & Burnham, has been employed by Colton.”

  “I’m retained by an intimate friend,” said Ken.

  “The wife, eh?” said Graves.

  “I didn’t say that,” said Corning.

  I know,” said Graves, “I said that. You didn’t deny it.”

  “That’s not the point,” said Corning. “I want to talk with Colton.”

  “Yeah? Maybe he don’t want to talk with you.”

  Maybe,” said Corning. “And then again, maybe he does. You going to pass me in to see him, or have I got to get rusty about it?”

  “If he asks us to pass you in, we’ll see that you get a pass as his lawyer,” said Graves.

  “But, if I can’t see him,” said Corning, “how the hell can I get him to make the request of you?”

  “That,” said Graves, chuckling, “is one of the problems that you’ve got in connection with the case. It’s your hard luck. It ain’t mine.”

  “Okey,” said Ken. “As attorney for someone who is acting on his behalf I can file a writ of habeas corpus application and that’ll bring him into court. I’ll talk with him there if I can’t talk with him any other way.”

  Graves spoke in icy tones.

  “Going to get nasty, eh?”

  “If I have to, yes.”

  “Okey,” said Graves. “In that event you might be interested to learn that there’s a warrant out for your arrest. Assault and battery on the person of one Edward Fosdick, reporter for the Daily Despatch I believe I can add a count of malicious mischief in the breaking of one camera, too. Show up in court any time you want to, Corning, and the warrant will be served on you then.”