Honest Money

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  Corning took a taxicab, and went to his office. The night operator took him up on the elevator. Corning inserted his key in the spring lock of the office door, and pushed it open. A paper, which had been inserted between the door and the sill, caught his eye. He picked it up.

  The note was scribbled in a few words, on a single sheet of paper: “Apparently you handed me wrong envelope. Have you another? Call GLadstone 6-4938.”

  The note was unsigned. There were not even any initials on it.

  Ken Corning looked at his strapwatch. It was 1:45. He sat down at the telephone and dialed the number of Helen Vail’s apartment. He heard the bell ringing, and waited for several rings before he heard her voice on the line.

  “Were you asleep?” he asked,

  “Don’t be silly,” she told him. “I was lying awake, thinking up nice things to say to you in the morning for ringing my telephone at this hour.”

  He managed a grin, but it was a grin with his lips only. His eyes were cold and hard.

  “Remember when we represented the men who were arrested in that theater war?” he said. “There were several smoke bombs that were held for a while as evidence. We have them in the office somewhere. Where are they?”

  “In the cloak closet. In a big box over in the back. Why do you want them?”

  “I happened to think of them for a certain purpose. If I didn’t have them I’d have to think up something else.”

  “Are you going to get any sleep?”

  “Probably tomorrow,” he said.

  “I thought you were going to be in court tomorrow.”

  “I think,” he said, “the case will be continued.”

  He slid the receiver back on the hook, and called GLadstone 6-4938.

  The sound of the ringing signal came over the telephone just once, and then a rasping, impatient voice snapped: “Hello. What do you want?”

  “Corning speaking,” he said. “I gave you the wrong envelope.”

  “I know you did,” Flint’s voice replied, with a certain cold suspicion in its tone.

  “I’ve got the right envelope now,” said Corning.

  “Where are you?” Flint inquired cautiously.

  “I’m out in the ninety-four hundred block on North Bronson. Can you meet me there in about an hour?”

  “I can get there before that.”

  “No,” said Corning, “I think an hour will be about right.”

  “Look here,” Flint told him, “the proposition that I made you is predicated on fair play all around. You can’t get what you want unless I get what I want, and I don’t want any more false alarms.”

  “Don’t come unless you want to,” said Corning, and slammed the receiver back on the hook.

  He went to the cloak closet, got out the box which contained the smoke bombs, carried them down to his car, and made time through the deserted streets.

  The house at 9486 North Bronson was a stucco residence in a fairly exclusive neighborhood. The building was set back from the sidewalk, with a strip of lawn and some ornamental trees at the corner.

  Ken Corning moved with the swift certainty of a skilful lawbreaker who knows exactly what he intends to do. He walked along the shadows until he had reached a side window. A jimmy from his pocket pushed open the window. He lit a smoke bomb, tossed it inside of the house. He walked to the back of the house, jimmied another window, tossed in a second bomb, circled on the other side, and put two more bombs in the house. Then he returned to the sidewalk, where he sat in his automobile, patiently waiting.

  After a few minutes dense clouds of black smoke began to pour from the windows of the place. There was, however, no sign of activity. The building remained slumbering and dark.

  Ken Corning looked at his watch.

  Ten minutes passed. There was a light suddenly visible in a window in the upper floor of the house. Almost at once other lights came on. These lights showed dimly as reddish oblongs of illumination through the billowing clouds of smoke which eddied about the place.

  Once more Ken Corning consulted his watch.

  Getting hurriedly from his car, Corning raised his voice in a shout of “Fire! Fire!! Fire!!!”, ran across the strip of lawn and started to pound on the front door with hands and fists. After a few moments, he kicked in the glass of a window, making a great noise as he did so, and once more shouted his alarm of fire.

  He heard steps on the stairs, a man’s voice shouting.

  The lower floor was filled with pungent, thick, oily smoke. Ken Corning climbed through the window, shouting at the top of his lungs, and pushed his way through the smoke. He found a doorway, stairs which led up from a hall, and saw a faint light shining through the smoke at the top of the stairway. A dim figure loomed up out of the smoke ahead of him.

  Corning shouted once more: “Fire!”

  A man’s voice said irritably: “What is it? Where is it?”

  Corning reached forward, touched the bulk of the figure with questing fingers.

  “Can you get out?” he shouted. “The whole basement is on fire! The place is going up in smoke!”

  “Just a minute,” said the querulous voice.

  “There’s no time to be lost! You’ve got to get out right now!” said Corning. “I’ve turned in the fire alarm, but the timbers may collapse at any moment.”

  The man on the stairs cursed and started to turn back. Ken Corning clutched at his garments.

  “No, no, you can’t go back there! It’s fatal! You’ve got to come!”

  The man swung a clumsy fist in an awkward blow which glanced from the side of Corning’s head. Corning let loose his hold and the man ran upstairs. After a second, Corning started in pursuit.

  The man reached the top of the stairs, plunged along the dimly lighted corridor, through which dense clouds of smoke were moving slowly. He entered the door of a room and vanished. Corning waited by the door of the room, crouched, tense, expectant.

  Forty seconds passed and the man came running out of the room. As he reached the corridor, Corning stopped Mm, then swung Ms fist expertly to the man’s jaw. The man slumped, knocked out.

  Corning caught him and flung the senseless form over his shoulder. He groped his way down to the lower floor, found the front door, got it open and stumbled out into the night, with his helpless burden.

  Several people were standing in front of the house, clad in various forms of nightdress, staring with wide eyes and open mouths. A clanging gong and the wail of a siren announced that the fire department was within a few blocks of the place.

  Corning ran out across the lawn to his automobile and dumped the man into the machine. He was about sixty years of age, tall and thin, with a hatchet face and thin lips. He was clad in pajamas and slippers.

  One or two of the spectators crowded up close to the machine.

  “Overcome by smoke,” said Corning. “I’m rushing him to a hospital.”

  He ran around the car, climbed in behind the steering wheel, stepped on the starter and purred away from the curb.

  A car was parked some fifty yards down the street and a man stood by the car, watching the sidewalk and street, then turning to stare at the residence from which the smoke was pouring.

  Ken Corning slowed the car as he approached. His lights struck the man who was standing by the running-board. It was B. W. Flint.

  Corning called to him: “Okey, Flint. Fall in behind and follow me.”

  The man in Corning’s car stirred, groaned and asked an unintelligible question in thick tones. Corning pushed him back against the cushions.

  He ran his car around the corner, made speed for three blocks, and then pulled to the curb. The other car, with Flint at the wheel, was right behind him. Corning switched off his lights and the motor and waited until he heard Flint’s steps coming along the sidewalk. Flint drew alongside the car.

  The man at Corning’s side made an ineffective effort to open the door. Corning pushed him back.

  “Have you got the envelope?” asked Flint.


  “Come around the other side,” said Corning. “I’ll talk to you there.”

  Flint moved around to the other side of the car.

  Corning spoke rapidly.

  “The reason I gave you the wrong envelope,” he said, “was because I didn’t have the right envelope. I wanted to find out what it was all about. The general idea was that Grosbeck was killed by a stick-up. He wasn’t. He was betrayed by a friend. When you thought you had the envelope you took it right to Jason, which fold me what I had surmised—that Jason suspected Grosbeck had important evidence that was to go to the Grand Jury, Jason was out when Grosbeck came to his house to see him. Grosbeck waited for Jason to come back. Somebody shot Grosbeck.”

  The man in pajamas struggled feebly. ‘‘What the devil’s the meaning of this?” he asked.

  “You were overcome by smoke,” Corning told him, “and I rescued you.”

  “All right, I can get out now,” said the man.

  “Who is it?” asked Flint.

  “Harry Stanwood,” said Corning. “Do you know him?”

  Flint gave an exclamation of surprise.

  Corning continued to talk rapidly.

  “Two witnesses pin the kill on Fred Parkett. There’s a man named Longwell and one named Monteith. They claim they were there and saw Parkett miming away from the scene of the crime. They weren’t there. Those witnesses were planted. I’ve got an affidavit showing they couldn’t have been there. It’s the affidavit by one of the young women who was with them at a hockey game that didn’t break up until an hour after the murder. Mrs. Jason heard the shot, but she didn’t hear anyone running away from the car where the murder was committed. The reason for that is that nobody did run away. ”

  Corning turned abruptly to Stanwood.

  “How about those papers, Stanwood?”

  “What papers?” gasped the man, his face a pasty white.

  “The papers that you took from Grosbeck’s body as soon as you had killed him,” said Corning. “The papers that were of such importance to the Grand Jury. The papers that were going to incriminate Dick Carr and some other detectives.”

  “You’re crazy!” Stanwood said.

  Corning smiled, and the smile was cold.

  “It won’t be hard to find out,” he said. “The way I dope it out, Stanwood made the kill, and Dick Carr, the detective, is standing back of him. They needed a fall guy, so they picked on Fred Parkett, the ex-convict. Naturally, Stanwood wasn’t going to surrender the papers until he was out in the clear. But even then he couldn’t stand the gaff. He figured that he had to gild the lily and paint the rose, so he worked with Carr, and got a purse snatcher to plant some evidence on my secretary. I put some smoke bombs in his house so that he d think the place was burning down, and I figured he’d carry his most valuable possessions with him when he went out.”

  Stanwood cursed and swung his fist full into Corning’s face. Corning took the blow without flinching, leaned forward and pinned Stanwood’s arms. Flint ran around the car and jerked open the door. The two struggling men fell to the running-board. Flint reached up with the barrel of the gun and brought it sharply down on Stanwood’s skull. Stanwood lay limp.

  Flint reached an exploring hand into the breast of Stanwood’s pajamas.

  “Here it is,” he said.

  “All right,” Corning said. “I don’t want to mix in this any more than I have to. Suppose you tell me what your connection is.”

  “I’m a Federal detective,” said Flint. “I was in touch with Jason right after the murder. Jason suspected it wasn’t a simple hold-up, but we always figured Parkett had done the job. Grosbeck had some valuable evidence, and he’d split with the gang. He was going to turn the evidence over to Jason. Jason told him to come to his residence. He’d talked with Jason over the telephone. Jason was delayed getting there, and when he got there Grosbeck was dead.”

  Ken Corning brushed the dust from his knees.

  “How about packing him over to your car?” he said. “I don’t want to figure in this part of it if I don’t have to. I’ve got a young woman named Mabel Fosdick in the Beechwood Hotel She’s made an affidavit, and she’s willing to tell the truth. She can give you the lever that will crack the testimony of Longwell and Monteith. They’ll probably name the people higher up when you work on them.”

  Flint clicked handcuffs of the wrists of the unconscious figure in pajamas. He looked at Corning and his grim features relaxed.

  “Do you always get your clients out?” he asked.

  Ken Corning shrugged his shoulders.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I get a break. And sometimes … I have to make a break.”

  Flint chuckled.

  “All right,” he said. “You take his feet and I’ll take his head.”

  Making the Breaks, Black Mask, June 1933

  Devil’s Fire

  KEN CORNING PUSHED HIS WAY THROUGH the gawking pedestrians who still loitered on the sidewalk. They had formed in a white-faced ring about the red pool which spread along the cold surface of the gray cement, reflecting the street lights until they seemed like glowing rubies.

  “Who saw it?” Corning asked.

  A uniformed officer extended a long arm.

  “On your way,” he ordered. “It’s all over now. On your way. Keep moving. Nothing more to see.”

  A man moved up to Ken Corning, sized him up with eager eyes.

  When he spoke, his voice was whining.

  “I seen it, boss.”

  The officer singled out Ken Corning.

  “Hey, you! On your way. There ain’t nothin’ more to see. Keep movin’.”

  Ken Corning sized up the narrow shoulders, the glinting eyes, the lips that twisted back from the teeth.

  “All right,” he said. “What happened?”

  The officer barged into them.

  “You heard what I said. Get movin’ an’ keep movin’. Just because there’s been a man hurt ain’t no sign that …”

  “I’m collecting evidence,” Ken Corning told him.

  “Huh? Collectin’ what?”

  “Evidence.”

  “Who you with?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I’m representing the man that was arrested for the murder, George Pyle.”

  “You’re a lawyer, representing George Pyle?”

  “Right.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “A friend of Pyle’s. They told me to get here and get the facts, then to see what I could do for Pyle.”

  The officer’s eyes showed doubt. The crowd, sensing some new diversion, surged in to a closer circle. The man at Ken Corning’s elbow said for him alone: “Let’s go some place where we can talk, bo.”

  The officer restated his command, this time in a louder voice, as though he would make himself more certain by adding to his vehemence. Ken Corning took the man’s arm.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They pushed through the curious ring of spectators, heard in the dim distance the wailing of a siren, heard the officer, assured now of his power, ordering the curious bystanders to be on their way.

  Ken Corning picked a rooming-house.

  “We can go up here,” he said.

  “Okey, boss,” the man told him.

  They turned in under the illuminated sign and climbed a flight of dark stairs. A simpering landlady, well past middle age, pushed a buckram-backed book with frayed pages across an inclined desk.

  Corning looked at the narrow-shouldered man.

  “Got any place where you’re staying?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Henry Lampson.”

  “All right. Write it. I’m staking you to a room.”

  The man wrote his name on the register. The broad-hipped landlady regarded him with shrewd eyes, then looked at Ken Corning.

  “Something at twelve a week,” she suggested.

  Ken Corning peeled off two fives and two ones from a roll of bills which h
e took from his pocket.

  The landlady took down a key from a hook and labored slowly down the corridor. The men followed. She opened a door with something of a flourish. Ken Corning pushed Lampson into the room, followed him, and closed the door.

  “All right,” he said, “what happened? When did it happen?”

  The man looked around the room, turned to regard the closed door. His eyes slithered over Corning.

  ‘‘About half an hour before I saw you in the crowd and heard you say you were hired for this guy Pyle. That’s right, is it? You’re the guy’s lawyer, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s in it for me?”

  “Nothing unless you tell the truth.”

  “Then?”

  “That depends on what the truth is.”

  Lampson thought that over for a few minutes, then said: “Well, there were three or four guys walking down the street—the dead man, the man that got pinched, and a couple of others. They were ahead of me. There was some sort of an argument. I didn’t pay too much attention to what it was. Then I saw there was a fight, or it looked like it would have been a fight.

  “You say you’re representing the guy that got the pinch, and that his name is Pyle?”

  “That’s right,” Corning said.

  “Who’s the dead man?”

  “A chap named Frank Glover. He draws quite a bit of water in some sections of the underworld. Go on. Tell me what happened. I’m interested in that fight business.”

  “Well, it wasn’t really a fight. The two guys were holding your man. The one that was killed was sore, but he was keeping his hands in sight, and not making any passes with his fists. Your man, the one that you’re actin’ as lawyer for, was talkin’ plenty. He was sore, too, and he was telling the whole cockeyed world about it. The two were holding him. He was trying to do something, either to reach a gun, or to swing his fists. There was a lot of argument.”

  The man paused.