The Casebook of Sidney Zoom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t suppose my word or that of Gravy will amount to anything, but Gravy swears he heard the woman say, ‘Let him have it,’ just before the shot was fired. He thinks that it was the adventuress herself who fired the shot, but he wasn’t where he could see. But he swears the shot sounded from behind Ames rather than in front.”

  Zoom gravely shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bendley, but the post mortem shows absolutely that the shot was fired from the direction in which Mr. Ames was facing, and the two witnesses, who are positive in their testimony, are men who are absolutely reliable.”

  “Oh, well,” she sighed, “what’s the difference? It’s all up now. I knew when I read the account in the paper that I was in bad. I was disguised as a man, and I tried to stow away on a freighter. Some sailors found me, started to beat me up, found I was a woman — then you came along.”

  She gave her undivided attention to the dog.

  There was silence in the cabin for several seconds.

  “The new wife had a second will made?” asked Sidney Zoom.

  “No. She didn’t need to. In this State a marriage made subsequent to the execution of a will makes it void. Therefore the will is no good and the wife takes all the estate as the only heir. She was shrewd, that woman.”

  Sidney Zoom clipped the end from a cigar, smoked it meditatively. From time to time he stared at the girl with thought-slitted eyes. The girl, still sitting on the floor, caressed the dog’s head. From time to time the heavy tail of the animal thumped lazy appreciation.

  “There’s something strange about this case,” said Sidney Zoom. “From all the physical evidences, young lady, you’re lying.”

  Her eyes showed no resentment “All right,” she said, “let it go at that.”

  Sidney Zoom glanced at his secretary.

  Vera Thurmond avoided the questioning eyes.

  Zoom gave his attention to the cigar. “My faith in human nature has given me some queer hunches in my time,” he observed.

  “If you fall for this case,” snapped Vera Thurmond, “you’ll be getting into trouble.”

  “Go ahead,” murmured the girl, “don’t mind me. Say it.”

  Zoom took the cigar from his mouth.

  “The fighter,” he said, “rarely gets sympathy. That is particularly true with women. Men like women who are beautifully helpless. I’m different. I like the fighter. I’m going to stand back of you, Miss Bendley.”

  “Meaning?” she asked.

  “That we’re putting out to sea. That is, you are. I’m going to get you outside of civil jurisdiction on the high seas. I’m staying behind to work on the case. I’ll be in radio communication with the yacht.

  “Tell me just one thing. This man, Gravy — who is he? Can I trust him?”

  “Sure you can trust him. His name is Graves. He’s the butler out there, been with us for two years, and he’s a square shooter. He’s stuck up for me through thick and thin.”

  Sidney Zoom stroked his chin.

  “The return of Mr. Ames was rather unexpected?”

  “You mean when he came back from the reception?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure it was. His wife got sick — damn her, I wish she’d croaked!”

  “Nothing serious?”

  “No. She even forgot all about it, whatever it was, after she’d seen that the bullet had made her a fortune.”

  “And you think she was glad the shooting took place?”

  “Glad! I’m telling you she shot him. I don’t care how reputable your witnesses are. That woman did the murder.”

  Sidney Zoom whistled to his dog, pressed his finger on an electric button. A white clad shape came softly and swiftly along the deck of the yacht.

  “Put out to sea at once, Malcom. Stay beyond the twelve mile limit until you receive other orders via wireless. Understand?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Come, Rip!”

  And Zoom’s feet thudded to the planking of the float, followed by the padding of the dog’s feet as the tawny shape arched through the night.

  Almost at once a line hit the deck of the boat, the running lights switched on, and the motor started its rhythmic chugging.

  On the rail of the boat, just aft of the pilot house, the figure of Vera Thurmond showed, her eyes straining into the night, her arm up flung in a gesture of farewell.

  Beside her was the indistinct shape of the girl who had boarded the yacht under such exceptional circumstances. She was motionless, silent.

  The yacht swung out on the tide, the motor speeded up and a churning of cheesy water just under the stem, marked the pulsation of the screw as the craft gracefully melted into the darkness.

  Chapter IV

  The Adventuress

  Mrs. Nettie Pease Ames regarded Sidney Zoom through tear reddened eyes.

  “B-but you s-s-said you w-w-wanted to give me some information. N-n-now you’re asking questions. I w-w-would not have seen you at all so soon after the tragedy.” Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “I am very sorry, madame, to intrude upon your grief; but I must get certain matters clear in my mind before I can give you the information. Then I believe I can clear up the shooting mystery and have the culprit in your hands.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “Come up to my sitting room,” she said. “There are too many servants around here.”

  And the sobbing stammers had entirely disappeared from her voice.

  Sidney Zoom followed her up a flight of stairs, into a room, tastefully furnished. The woman indicated a chair, facing the window, and sat opposite.

  “Now spill it,” she said.

  Sidney Zoom chose his words cautiously.

  “I know the police feel Eve Bendley is guilty of the murder. Yet there are certain facts which haven’t as yet been satisfactorily explained.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “Such as?”

  “Several things. I will come to them later. In the meantime, may I ask another question? There’s no possibility that the marriage didn’t annul the will, I take it? In other words, you are the sole heir?”

  The eyes widened.

  “Of course, I hadn’t thought of it. I’d been so prostrated with grief. But I guess that’s right. In fact, an attorney so advised me this morning.”

  Sidney Zoom smiled, a close-clipped smile of frosty humor. “Your great grief didn’t prevent you from consulting him, I take it?”

  The woman crossed her legs, leaned back in her chair and grinned.

  “All right. There’s no use beating around the bush. I’m a gold digger. But I married him. I’m damned glad he’s gone. I wouldn’t have helped him along any, but I knew he wouldn’t live forever when I married him. He was in the late seventies. I’m twenty-nine. You’ve suspected all this, and I might as well own up to it — privately. You ever repeat a word of this conversation and I’ll call you a liar.

  “But that’s all I have been keeping under cover. As for the rest, it’s right out in the open. The girl killed Ralph Ames. I don’t know whether she did it deliberately or whether she lost her head. She was getting money out of the safe when we came in. I’d recognize her figure anywhere, man’s clothes or woman’s. I know the way she carries head, the little swing she has to her shoulders.”

  Sidney Zoom smiled.

  “Thanks for being frank. You know, of course, that the girl only took the money from the safe that was due her under the bonus agreement with Mr. ’Ames.”

  “I know nothing of the sort!” snapped the woman. “I know that the books she kept had been doctored, and I have an idea there was a lot more money in the safe than she admitted or acknowledged in her books.

  “And I know something else. I know that she has been traced to the waterfront, that she was dressed in men’s clothes and tried to stow away on a freighter. I know that she was in a brawl with a bunch of sailors, and that some man who was about your build rescu
ed her.

  “Now you haven’t told me what your interest is in this case and I don’t know as you need to. But I’ll tell you something. You either get that girl into the hands of the police, or I’ll charge you with being an accessory!”

  Sidney Zoom lit his cigarette, regarded the blazing eyes of the woman, and smiled, his frosty smile of cold humor.

  “Very well, Mrs. Ames. Now we understand each other perfectly. If you’ll dismiss the charge you made against the girl of theft and embezzlement, I’ll have her come back here to answer the murder charge.”

  The laugh which greeted this comment was coarse and mocking.

  “Go jump in a lake! The jury might acquit her on the murder charge. Juries have been known to do fool things. But I’ve got her dead to rights on the theft. I’m going to see she has plenty to occupy her mind for a while.”

  Sidney Zoom crossed his long legs, and sighed.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, “after—”

  “After what?”

  “After you catch her, of course.”

  The woman’s face mottled with dull rage.

  “Go ahead and wise crack,” she said. “See what it gets you.”

  She reached for the telephone.

  “Police headquarters?” asked Sidney Zoom, courteously.

  “No,” she snapped. “I’ve no confidence in the police. I have a private agency at work on this, and they’ll pick you up from the time you leave here and tell me where you go and what you do.”

  Sidney Zoom arose and bowed.

  “I enjoyed the chat, anyway. I suppose you’ll be the heart-broken widow with the red eyes the next time I see you.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool,” sneered the woman. “Of course I will.”

  And, holding the telephone ready for her call with her right hand, she reached for a small bottle with her left, and drew it under her nose. Almost instantly tears welled into her eyes and trickled slowly down her cheeks. The eyes themselves reddened and the lids became swollen.

  Sidney Zoom turned the knob of the door.

  “Good day,” he said.

  The woman made no answer. She was giving a number to the telephone, a number which was, doubtless, the telephone number of the private detective agency, just as she had threatened.

  Sidney Zoom closed the door, paused in the hallway.

  A shadowy figure flitted from an adjoining door on noiseless feet. A long, bony finger was pressed crosswise upon thin lips. Gray eyes that set like jewels in a fine network of smile wrinkles, regarded Sidney Zoom with stem speculation. Then the bony finger left the lips, crooked in a gesture of beckoning, and the man led the way down the corridor.

  Sidney Zoom followed.

  Within a small bedroom on the ground floor, back of the kitchen, the figure once more confronted Sidney Zoom.

  “You saw her?” husked a hoarse whisper.

  Sidney Zoom laughed.

  “You’re Graves, I take it.”

  The man nodded, slowly, solemnly.

  “She always called me Gravy,” he remarked.

  “You mean the girl?”

  The nod was quick and eager this time.

  “You’re her friend?” asked the butler.

  Sidney Zoom smiled. “Right at present I’m an investigator, getting certain facts together.”

  The butler’s face twisted into a smile.

  “Beg pardon, sir, but I was listening, sir, at the doorway, you know. It’s a prerogative of servants, sir. I heard — and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, I know you’re a friend of the girl.”

  And the gray eyes twinkled from their network of radiating wrinkles.

  Sidney Zoom answered the smile.

  The butler lowered his voice to a mere whisper.

  “If they catch her, sir, I’m going to swear that the shot came from the other direction. I know she didn’t fire that shot. Why, she wasn’t the kind. She’s so tender hearted she wouldn’t hurt a fly, sir.”

  Sidney Zoom smiled again.

  “She didn’t impress me as being particularly soft,” he remarked.

  The affirmation of the butler was eager.

  “Yes, sir. That’s right, sir. She isn’t, sir. But with those she likes she’s always thinking of anybody but herself. I had to urge her to get the money in the way she did. And yet it was hers, sir. By every right and every justice it was hers!”

  The gray eyes were blazing with earnestness now, and an anxious hand groped for the lapel of Sidney Zoom’s coat.

  Chapter V

  Clews in the Yard

  “Of course, sir, you know that I was the one that gave her the idea in the first place. Probably I shouldn’t say so, sir. But I don’t want her to take all the blame. I guess I’m an accessory or something in the eyes of the law; but it was a mistake of the head and not of the heart, sir.

  “I tell you what I’m afraid of, sir. I’m afraid that our conversation was overheard, and some one was lying in wait to grab the money from her. Or perhaps, it was that blond adventuress, after all, sir. Miss Eve swears that the shot came from the other side of the room, and it sounded so to me, sir.”

  Sidney Zoom let his eyes bore into the gray eyes with their puckered wrinkles radiating from the corners.

  “Very well, Graves, could you swear to that?”

  “Swear to it, sir! I’ll tell the world, I’ll swear to it. I’d even swear to anything that wasn’t the truth to help the young lady out. And this is the truth, sir. That shot sounded from the back of the room, sir.”

  “But the bullet,” said Sidney Zoom, speaking with the finality of a judge pronouncing sentence, “entered Mr. Ames’s chest and came out at his back. Every one agrees that he was running after the masked figure.”

  The butler twisted his mouth in a grimace. For several long seconds he seemed lost in thought.

  “Do you know, sir, I believe it was some one standing just outside the house, sir, in the yard. That would account for the peculiar sound of the explosion. The window in the south-east corner of the room was open. A man could have fired through that window, and—”

  “Show me,” snapped Sidney Zoom, his voice clipping off the words with machine gun precision.

  The butler went to the door, opened it, peered cautiously up and down the corridor.

  “Come,” he said.

  Sidney Zoom followed him to a wider corridor that went past the kitchen, through a door, and walked down a carpeted passageway. A long room opened before him.

  “This was where it was done,” whispered the butler.

  Sidney Zoom surveyed the room, the safe in one comer, the entrance hall from the outer door, then, after he had given these things a close inspection, followed the direction of the butler’s pointing finger.

  He saw a window in an alcove, open.

  “It’s nearly always left open, sir.”

  Zoom regarded the window, the interior of the room again.

  “The body fell here?” he asked.

  “Just about, sir.”

  “The shot might have come through the window, all right. If the old man had been partially turned it could very readily have come from the window.”

  The butler nodded eager acquiescence.

  “What I thought, sir, was that perhaps some one standing outside the window might have made a motion, and the old man half turned and caught it square in the chest.”

  Zoom pursed his lips.

  “Have you looked outside the window?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t, sir. Fact of the matter is, I’m mixed up in this too much as it is.”

  Zoom strode toward the window.

  “Have a care, sir. She’s a devil, that adventuress. If she finds you—”

  “Bosh!” snapped Sidney Zoom. “Look here, Graves. Here are foot-prints in the soil out here. Have they been made recently?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. If you would not mind, sir, I’d like to leave the room—”

  “Bosh again, Graves. Don’t be so frightened o
f her. You want to help Miss Eve, don’t you? Very well, then, you’d better stick by me for a little while. How can we get outside from here without using the front door?”

  “Right this way, sir. Back of the curtain are French doors, sir.”

  Sidney Zoom walked to the curtains, pushed them apart, strode through the doors and began to examine the loamy soil which fringed the cement walk running around the house.

  “Look here, Graves. This is serious. See where a box was planted in the soft loam there? And it looks as though some one had stood on it! And look here. Here’s a perfect footprint!”

  The butler bent down.

  “Yes, sir. So it is, sir. But I’d rather not mix in it any further—”

  Sidney Zoom grasped the man by the shoulder, whirled him back against the side of the house.

  “Now, Graves, come dean. You’re trying to duck out of this because you think you know who was standing out here. Tell me the truth and talk fast.”

  The butler gulped, stammered, swallowed with audible effort, then began to spill words with a rapidity that was almost hysterical.

  “Amos Style, sir. He claims to be a cousin of the adventuress. But I think he’s a son of hers by a former marriage. She’s altogether too fond of him for a mere cousin, sir, and he’s nothing but a callow lad. He comes to visit her and stays here in the house a large part of the time.

  “If the woman wanted Mr. Ames out of the way quickly, she could have conspired with her son to do the trick — if he is her son. And the fact that Mr. Ames just happened to find Miss Eve at the safe, sir, was in the nature of a coincidence, and—”

  Sidney Zoom regarded the imprint of the foot in the soft soil, the oblong indentation that had marked the place where the end of the wooden box was placed.

  “Stays here in the house, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Here now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Could you get me his left shoe?”

  The butler sighed.

  “I don’t know, sir, but I can try. I’d do anything for Miss Eve, sir.”

  And Graves melted away, as furtively silent as a shadow, as swift as a stalking cat.