The Casebook of Sidney Zoom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  Sidney Zoom leaned forward.

  “If you’ll put your cards on the table, Bill, I’ll try and clear up the case for you.”

  “If I put my cards on the table,” asked the police captain, “will you put yours on the table?”

  Sidney Zoom’s answer was explosively prompt.

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  Zoom laughed lightly.

  “Because I’m going to play with a marked deck.”

  “You think the woman isn’t the guilty party?”

  “I’m almost certain of it.”

  “It would hurt the police a lot if we should go ahead and try to pin a murder rap on her and then have it turn out it was a mistake,” said Bill Mahoney, slowly.

  Sidney Zoom knew when he had won.

  “Get your hat, Bill,” he said.

  Captain Mahoney reached for his hat.

  “Where to?”

  “To Harry Raine’s place, out on West Adams. I’ll drive slowly, and you can tell me what the police have found out while we’re driving.”

  “Sergeant Gromley would die if he knew I was doing it,” sighed the captain.

  But Bill Mahoney had seen Sidney Zoom perform seeming wonders upon many other occasions, and beyond the sighed regret he showed no other signs of hesitancy.

  As they purred along in Zoom’s high powered, multi-cylindered car, his police dog crouched in the rumble seat, sniffing the air with curious nostrils, Captain Mahoney gave Zoom a brief summary of the facts the police had discovered.

  “It’s a family fight affair. Guess old Raine was a man who had at least one killing coming to him. He had a son, Edward. Edward fell in love with Eva, the girl. Raine kicked the boy out. The boy started in doing some gem business, buying and selling. He was making good. Then, one day, he was killed, suddenly.

  “There wasn’t any insurance. The girl found herself widowed, with a stock of gems that had to be sold. She started probating the estate to get good tide to the gems, and old Raine sued the administrator.

  “It developed that there was an illegality about the marriage. He’d known it all along, had been saving it as a weapon. Therefore, Eva wasn’t the boy’s widow. Harry Raine was the only surviving relative. There wasn’t a will. Raine claimed the gems. The court gave them to him. He and his lawyer took possession of them yesterday afternoon.

  “The girl didn’t have any money to carry on a fight. She let him have them. But she had some of her husband’s old effects. Among these was a key ring with a key to the house. Apparently, the girl sneaked out to the house after every one had gone to bed and stole the jewels.

  “She’d have made a good job of it, too, because no one suspected she had the key. But she was just a little clumsy in the get-away and knocked over a chair. That woke old Raine up.

  “He dashed after the burglar, but she eluded him and got out into the night. He chased her for a ways in his pyjamas, then came back, got into his clothes, and started to go after her.

  “He told his attorney he’d caught a glimpse of her, running into the wind and rain, and had recognized her. He was furious, wanted to catch her red handed and all that.”

  Sidney Zoom shot Captain Mahoney a swift glance.

  “Told his attorney? What was his attorney doing there at midnight?”

  “He lives there. Raine is a funny old codger, or was. He goes in for collecting things, stamps, first editions and what not. And he’s a litigious old cuss, always in court. He sues his neighbors, sues the dealers who sell him things, sues the paving contractors who do work on his street, sues everybody.

  “He’s got a white-haired old lawyer that he found somewhere, down and out, and took the lawyer to live with him in his house. And he always keeps the lawyer busy. Then he’s got a butler who’s a character, looks like an old pug; and there’s a Chinese cook. That’s the household.”

  Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “That,” he said, “is just about how I figured the case.”

  Captain Mahoney shot him a shrewd glance.

  “How’d you’ figure any of that out?”

  “There were legal papers in the pockets of the corpse,” he said, “and the latest of them was a case where he’d sued the administrator to quit title to some of the jewelry his son had had at the time of his death. A copy of the judgment was in his coat pocket at the time. The cop on the beat found it.”

  Captain Mahoney squinted his eyes.

  “Well,” he said, “here’s the way Gromley reconstructs the case. Old Man Raine started after the girl and didn’t catch up with her until he was almost at her apartment. He grabbed at her and clutched a string of synthetic rubies she was wearing, a present from her husband.

  “She broke away, shot him, then turned and fled to her apartment. She was panic-stricken, and ditched the jewels and the gun. She probably was so excited she didn’t know he’d broken the necklace when he grabbed at her.

  “She was afraid they’d be coming for her, however, so she ripped her name off the mail box to balk them of that much of a clew, and went to her apartment to pack, then she heard the sirens and knew any woman who started to leave the apartment house while the police were there would be stopped and questioned.

  “So she pretended she’d been in bed asleep, and waited to see if the police were coming. If they hadn’t found her she’d have ducked out as soon as the police left. She figured that if they did find her she could stall them off. And she might have done it if it hadn’t been for Gromley’s being so damned shrewd with his questioning.”

  Chapter VI

  The Dead Man’s House

  Sidney Zoom shook his shoulders as though to relieve them of some weight.

  “That’s what I didn’t like about Gromley. He’s damned clever, and he used his cleverness, not to reason out what must have happened there at the time of the murder, but to trap the girl. It wasn’t fair.”

  Captain Mahoney smiled mechanically.

  “Things in this world aren’t always fair. But they’re fairly efficient. It’s the result that counts.”

  Sidney Zoom gave a single expletive.

  “Bah!” he said.

  “Still believe in divine justice, eh?” asked the police captain.

  “I’ve seen something closely akin to that save several innocent people from jail or the death penalty,” said Sidney Zoom.

  Captain Mahoney shook his head.

  “You’ve been lucky, Zoom. But it wasn’t divine justice. It was your own damned cleverness, plus the fact that you’ve got sufficient money to ride your hobby as far as you want to.”

  Sidney Zoom said nothing.

  “That’s the place,” remarked Captain Mahoney. “The one on the other side of the street. The big house with the iron gate and the padlock.”

  Sidney Zoom made a single comment.

  “Yes,” he said. “It looks like the type of place he’d have lived in.”

  “Evidently you didn’t take a shine to him?”

  “No, I didn’t. His character showed on his face, even in death.”

  “It takes all sorts of people to make a world, Sidney.”

  Sidney Zoom’s answer was typical:

  “All sorts of things come up in a garden. But one pulls out the noxious weeds.”

  Captain Mahoney sighed.

  “Your philosophy’s too advanced for this age, my friend.”

  Sidney Zoom abruptly reverted to the clews which had led the officers to the crime.

  “Would you ever have found the girl if it hadn’t been for the beads?”

  “You mean the synthetic rubies broken from the string?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eventually, but we’d have had to go to the house first When we got there and talked with the servants who had heard the commotion we’d have gone after the girl.”

  “But the beads were the clew?”

  “Naturally. They led from the corpse to the outer door of the apartment.”

  “Of the apartment house,
you mean.”

  “Well, yes.”

  Sidney Zoom fastened his intense, hawk-like eyes upon the man who was staring at him with sudden curiosity.

  “Did it ever strike you as being a bit strange, Bill, that the beads only went as far as the outer door of the apartment house, and that they were spaced most evenly? Why weren’t there any beads between the door and the entrance to the girl’s apartment?”

  Bill Mahoney laughed.

  “There you go, Zoom, with some of your wild theories. The beads were the girl’s all right. We’ve identified those beyond any doubt. And the rest of the string was found behind the mirror in her room where she’d tried to conceal it. She’d put it there. There was the imprint of a finger in the soft surface of the chewing gum. It was her finger.

  “What happened was that the man she’d shot broke the string of beads with his last death clutch. They were spilling all over the street, but the girl didn’t know it until she got to the door of the apartment. Then she gathered up what was left, probably some that were on a thread that had dropped down the front of her dress.

  “She knew she had to hide them. She wanted to put them where the police would never find them. By that time she knew they had been spilling, leaving a trail directly to the apartment house. That’s why she pulled the card off of the mail box. She knew the officers would trail those beads and, if they found a card bearing the same name as the dead man, they’d come right up.”

  Sidney Zoom stretched, yawned, smiled.

  “Did you notice, by any chance, if there was a cut on the fingers of Eva Raine?”

  Captain Mahoney’s glance was gimlet eyed.

  “Yes. There was. What made you think there might be?”

  “The edges of the card container on the letter box were pretty sharp, and she was in a hurry. I thought she might have cut herself.”

  “And that such cut accounted for the red stain on the mail box?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think,” said Captain Mahoney, very deliberately, “that we’ll go on in. You’ve told me too much — and not enough.”

  Zoom uncoiled his lean length from behind the steering wheel, grinned at the officer. “Come on.”

  They walked up a cement walk, came to the porch of the house. An officer on duty saluted the captain, regarded Zoom curiously. The police dog, padding gravely at the side of his master, managed a dignity which was the more impressive in that it was entirely natural.

  The door swung open. Two men stood in the hallway.

  Captain Mahoney intoned their names to Sidney Zoom in a voice that was informative, but not social.

  “Zoom, this is Sam Mokley, the butler; Laurence Gearhard, the lawyer.”

  Zoom nodded, stalked into the hallway, suddenly turned to transfix the two men with his hawk-like eyes.

  “I want to see two things,” he snapped. “First, the room from which the jewelry was taken; second, the bed where Harry Raine slept.”

  The lawyer, white-haired, cunning-eyed, shrewd judge of human nature, swept his pale eyes over Zoom’s tall figure, vibrant with controlled energy.

  “Show him, Mokley,” he said to the butler.

  The man nodded. “This way, sir.”

  He was all that Captain Mahoney had described, a ferocious looking figure, massive, heavy-handed, his ear cauliflowered.

  “Here is the room, sir. The gems were in a concealed cabinet back of the bookcase. Only a very few people knew of that bookcase.”

  But Sidney Zoom did not even glance at the place of concealment. Instead he dropped to his hands and knees and started crawling painfully, laboriously, over the edges of the carpet, his fingers questing over every inch of the carpeted surface.

  He remained in that position, searching patiently for some three or four minutes. If he found anything he gave no sign. As abruptly as he had assumed the position, he straightened to his full height, looked at the two men.

  “The bedroom,” he said.

  “This way, sir,” said the butler.

  They trooped into the bedchamber. It was a dank, chilly place of slumber, suggestive of fitful sleep, disturbed by periods of worry, or restless thoughts, of selfish desires.

  Zoom inspected the cheerless room.

  “Where,” he asked of the butler, “did Raine keep his gun?”

  The lawyer cleared his throat.

  Zoom shot him a glance.

  “I asked the butler,” he said.

  The butler’s face was wooden.

  “I haven’t seen him with a gun for some time, sir. He used to have one, a thirty-eight, Smith and Wesson, sir.”

  Zoom strode to the dresser, started yanking open the drawers.

  There were suits of heavy underwear, coarse socks, cheap shirts, a few frayed-edged, starched collars. In an upper drawer was a pasteboard box with a green label on the top. The sides were copper colored. Zoom pulled out the box, ripped open the cover, turned it upside down.

  Upon the dresser there cascaded a glittering shower of brass cartridges, cartridges for a forty-five automatic.

  The lawyer cleared his throat again. Then he shrugged his shoulders, walked away. Zoom stared fixedly at Captain Mahoney.

  “I want to see the Chinese cook,” he said.

  Captain Mahoney studied the level intensity of Zoom’s eyes for a moment, then motioned to the butler.

  “Come with me and let’s find the cook.”

  They left the room. The lawyer cleared his throat, turned, regarded Sidney Zoom.

  “Going to say something?” asked Zoom.

  “Yes,” said the attorney. “I was about to remark that it was a nice day.”

  The door opened again and Captain Mahoney escorted the butler and the Chinese cook into the room. The cook was nervous, plainly so.

  “Ah Kim,” said Captain Mahoney.

  Zoom looked at the man. The slant eyes rotated slitheringly about in oily restlessness.

  “Ah Kim,” snapped Zoom, “do you know much about guns?”

  Ah Kim shifted his weight.

  “Heap savvy,” he said.

  Zoom indicated the pile of shells.

  “What gun do these fit?”

  “Alla samee fit Missa Raine gun. Him florty-five, automatic.”

  Zoom turned on his heel, faced the lawyer.

  “You made Raine’s will.”

  It was a statement rather than a question. The pale eyes of the lawyer regarded Zoom unwaveringly.

  “Yes,” he said “Of course I did.”

  “Who were the beneficiaries?”

  The lawyer pursed his lips.

  “I would rather answer that later, and in private.”

  Captain Mahoney glanced at Zoom, then fixed the attorney with his dark, thoughtful eyes.

  “Answer it now,” he said.

  The lawyer bowed.

  “Very well. The property, what there is, and it’s considerable, is left share and share alike to the two servants, Ah Kim and Sam Mokley.”

  Chapter VII

  The Hidden Gun

  The Chinese heard the news with a bland countenance that was utterly devoid of expression. Sam Mokley gave a gasp of surprise.

  “What!” he said.

  The lawyer bowed.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you until the investigation was over, but Raine left his property to you two.”

  “Did you share in it?” asked Captain Mahoney.

  “No.”

  “He didn’t leave any to Eva Raine?” asked Zoom.

  “Naturally not,” said the lawyer, “One does not ordinarily bequeath property to one’s murderer. And the girl was utterly unscrupulous. She testified falsely in the lawsuit over the gems. She broke into the house and committed burglary.”

  Sidney Zoom nodded careless acquiescence.

  “Do you ever read the Bible, Mr. Gearhard?”

  The white-haired man smiled.

  “I have read it,” he said, dryly.

  “It is an excellent passage,” commented Si
dney Zoom, “which remarks that the one who is without sin may throw the first stone.”

  The lawyer’s lips settled in a straight line.

  “If you mean anything at all personal by that,” he snapped, “you had better watch your tongue. There is a law in this State against libel. Your attitude ever since you entered this place has been hostile.”

  It was apparent that the grizzled veteran of many a court room battle was very much on the aggressive whenever his personal integrity was assailed.

  Zoom bowed.

  “You are mistaken,” he said. “My attitude is that of an investigator.”

  He turned to Captain Mahoney.

  “The murder,” he said, “is solved.”

  Captain Mahoney stared at him.

  “Who did it?”

  Zoom smiled.

  “Since there is a law against defamation of character, I will say nothing, but will refer you to absolute means of proof. A step at a time, we will uncover the matter.

  “Rip, smell of the gentlemen.”

  And Sidney Zoom waved his hand in a gesture, a swift flip of the wrist.

  An animal trainer would have known that it was the gesture, more than the words which made the police dog do that which he did. But the effect was uncanny. The dog walked deliberately to each of the three men, smelled their clothing with bristling hostility, ruffling the hair on his back.

  “Come, captain,” said Sidney Zoom.

  And he turned, stalked from the room.

  “We will leave the car parked here,” said Zoom as they gained the porch, leaving behind them three very puzzled individuals, “and start walking by the shortest route toward the apartment which the girl maintained.”

  Captain Mahoney fell into step.

  “Zoom,” he said, quietly, “have you any idea of just what you’re after?”

  Zoom’s answer was a single explosive monosyllable.

  “Yes.”

  They strode forward, walking swiftly.

  “Search,” said Zoom, and waved his arm.

  The dog barked once, a short, swift bark, then started to swing out in a series of questing semicircles, ranging ahead and to either side of the walking men.