The Casebook of Sidney Zoom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  It was but a matter of seconds until the lights of the lead car showed the knot of curious spectators which had gathered, even at that hour of the night, impelled by a morbid curiosity to gaze upon the features of the dead.

  There was an ambulance backed up to the curb, a pair of uniformed policemen, keeping the crowd back. Lights blazed in the windows of the apartment house, as well as in the windows of adjoining houses. Oblongs of light framed the black silhouettes of the curious.

  The cars swung to the curb, lurched to a stop. The plainclothes man touched Zoom on the arm.

  “We go in,” he said.

  Zoom turned to the dog.

  “Stay here, Rip, and watch.”

  The dog pricked up his ears then drooped them.

  The pair left the car. A knot of police and detectives pushed their way into the lobby of the apartment house. It was now a blaze of light. A middle-aged woman with sagging flesh drooping from the bones of her face, a triple chin and puffs under her eyes, rushed toward them. She was clad in a kimono and slippers with a glimpse of silk showing at the neck of the kimono.

  “I’m the manager. She wasn’t registered here. She didn’t have an apartment. It ain’t fair to pin a black eye on the place just because...”

  The men pushed her to one side. An officer led the way.

  “We parked her in a vacant apartment,” he said, “soon as we knew she might be connected with the stick-up.”

  They pushed their way through white-faced, half clothed inmates of the apartment house, who had huddled together in the hallways as chickens huddle when the dark shadow of a hawk skims along the ground.

  The officer opened a door. The men walked in. Zoom felt a hand on his arm, felt himself pushed forward. Then he was in a semicircle of men who stared silently down upon a still form.

  “Choked,” said one of the officers.

  “And how!” agreed another.

  “Clothes just the way they were when she was found?” asked the man who was in charge.

  “Just the same,” said the officer. “She was wedged in the elevator when we got there.”

  “You put the elevator out of business?”

  “Yeah. Sure. The boys are looking it over for finger-prints.”

  The plainclothes man nodded.

  “Well,” he said, “somebody sure as hell wanted something this broad had, and he wanted it bad. Lookit those clothes!”

  Sidney Zoom stared at the distorted features.

  “The girl you gave the ride to?” asked the plainclothes man.

  “The same,” agreed Sidney Zoom.

  “Got her identified?” asked the officer who had been at the apartment when the others arrived.

  “Yeah. Name’s Muriel Drake. She works at Harmiston’s Wholesale & Retail Jewelry. She was there when the stick-up took place this afternoon. You know, the one where they gunned out the guard and looted the box.

  “There was plenty of evidence it was an inside job and the boys were getting ready to give her a shake-down. She got a break and made a getaway. Went to the Continental and ducked. She lives at the Wentmore Apartments over on Ninety-sixth. But she was too foxy to head for there. She’s probably got a friend in this joint.

  “The door’s locked at night, and she couldn’t get in unless she had a key or unless somebody answered the ring and gave the door a buzz. Better start checking ’em over...”

  He was interrupted by a commotion at the door.

  “Here’s the baby she called on,” said one of the officers, and pushed a girl into the room.

  Chapter IV

  In the Clear

  The girl was clothed in a kimono over pajamas and slippers. Her hair was uncombed. Her face was white, eyes stating. She drew back from the gaze of the men, purposeful, appraising, hostile as that gaze was.

  The officer behind her pushed her forward.

  Then the girl saw that which was on the bed.

  She screamed.

  Her right hand, clenched into a fist, sought her mouth. The white teeth sank into the knuckles, and she screamed again.

  She turned, tried to run. A man grabbed her around the waist, whirled her back so that she faced the bed.

  “Take it easy, sister,” he said.

  The girl stood rigid, staring, quivering. Then she started to cry and the sobs twisted her frame, shook her shoulders, sent tears coursing down her cheeks. The circle of men stared at her, nor offered her their slightest sympathy.

  “Okay,” said the man who had brought her in. “She’s Stella Denny in 639. I knocked on all the doors and asked ’em if they knew a Muriel Drake. This jane gave me a tumble. I found she was holding something out and that she knew the broad, so I brought her down.”

  The plainclothes man who had questioned Sidney Zoom moved so that he was between the sobbing girl and the bed.

  “Okay, sister,” he repeated, “take it easy. That’s Muriel?”

  The sobbing girl nodded.

  “How long you known her?”

  She tried to speak twice before the words came.

  “T-t-two years.”

  “Pretty friendly?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew she was working for Harmiston’s Jewelry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “In a law office, Mr. Stringer’s office.”

  “I see. And you were out some place tonight?”

  “No. I was here. I came to my apartment right after I quit work. I cooked supper and didn’t go out.”

  “Okay. You read the evening paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you knew about the stick-up at Harmiston’s?”

  The girl hesitated for a second before she answered.

  “I d-d-don’t know. I guess so!”

  “Guess so, hell!” roared the plainclothes officer. “You know so, don’t you?”

  The girl nodded.

  “That’s better. Now, you may be all right, sister, or you may be in a tough spot. So you kick through and don’t hold anything back and we’ll give you the breaks.

  “Now, you tried to get Muriel on the telephone to see if she was all right and ask her about the stick-up, didn’t you?”

  The girl nodded.

  “And Muriel said she’d come over a little later and talk things over, didn’t she?”

  Another nod.

  “And you kept waiting for Muriel to come, and she didn’t come, and you rang her apartment and a man’s voice answered, and you got frightened and slid the receiver back on the hook, didn’t you?”

  Her answer was a gasp.

  “How... how did you know?”

  “We had men planted in that apartment, waiting for Muriel to come back. And you called and they took the call.

  “So you sat up and waited for Muriel and got tired, and went to bed. And then what happened?”

  There was a moment or two of silence. Stella Denny had ceased to sob now. The necessity for answering questions had served to distract her attention somewhat from that which was on the bed.

  “The telephone rang,” said the girl.

  “Yes, who was it?”

  “Muriel.”

  “What’d she want?”

  “She said she was in a jam and that I was to be all ready to let her in as soon as she rang the bell, and she didn’t know just when she’d get here, and then she hung up.”

  “Well, what happened after that?”

  “Nothing. Not for a long time. I moved the chair over by the button which opened the front door, and waited. I waited so long I fell asleep. I woke up when someone was pressing the button of the front door bell. I immediately pressed my button, the one that opened the door.

  “Then I waited for Muriel to come up, and I waited and waited, and nothing happened. So I thought maybe someone had rung my bell by mistake. That sometimes happens. Or sometimes someone wants to get in, and he’ll press all the buttons at once to make sure someone will give him a tumble.

  “So I
waited, and then I heard the siren, and I knew the police were coming, and I remembered what Muriel had said about being in a jam, and I thought the best thing I could do was to sit tight.

  “So I just sat there, and the door-bell rang, the one that’s on the apartment door, and I opened it, and it was this man who asked me if I knew Muriel.

  “I thought it was a message from her, so I told him I knew her, and then he showed me his badge and told me to come with him. And that’s every single thing I know.”

  The officers exchanged glances.

  One of them flung the girl around so she faced the body on the bed once more.

  “You’re the one that killed her. She had something you wanted. She had some of the stones that were stolen, and...”

  “No, no, no!” screamed Stella Denny. “Don’t make me look. For God’s sake, don’t make me...”

  She slumped in a faint, her lips bloodless, her face the color of death.

  The plainclothes man picked her in his arms, dumped her unceremoniously into a chair.

  “It wasn’t a woman’s job,” he said wearily. “It was a man that did it. Let’s go up to this frail’s apartment and give it a good frisking. Then we’ll check up on her boy friends and give them a shake-down. And we’ll check up on Muriel’s boy friends, and see what they know.”

  He turned, regarded Sidney Zoom.

  “I guess you’re in the dear,” he said. “You seem to have given us the straight dope. She ducked through the hotel to give you the slip. We can locate you whenever we want you, eh?”

  Sidney Zoom nodded.

  “Aboard the yacht, Alberta F.,” he said uncordially.

  “Guy,” the officer said, “you’re gettin’ all the breaks, an’ you ain’t got sense enough to know it.”

  Sidney Zoom said nothing. He strode from the room, tall, gaunt, unsmiling, pushed his way out of the apartment house, to his car, and stepped on the starter.

  As he drove away, his left hand dropped to the side pocket of his coat. The gems which he had found in the robe in his machine rattled like pebbles.

  He smiled, an enigmatical smile.

  Nor did he return to his yacht. He went, instead, to a hotel where he registered as Loring Grigsby of Chicago. He went to his room, left the dog in the car at the garage near by, and slept until morning.

  Chapter V

  Edgar Carver

  In the morning he read the newspaper accounts of the murder of Muriel Drake and a rehash of the account of the hold-up at Harmiston’s.

  The bandits, two in number, had moved with perfect efficiency, and with a knowledge of the exact location of what they wanted which led the police to believe that there was an accomplice employed within the stores. There had been a guard who had refused to surrender when he saw a gun poking at his stomach. He had made a motion toward his hip and had been shot down in his tracks.

  The crime had been singularly businesslike, utterly merciless, and had netted gems worth almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars wholesale. There had been a big shipment received but a few hours earlier in the day, and the bandits seemed fully aware of this shipment, its nature and extent, and exactly where it could be found.

  Sidney Zoom digested the newspaper accounts.

  With the finding of Muriel Drake’s murdered body, the police and newspapers alike had concluded that the case was virtually closed, so far as the inside accomplice was concerned.

  It seemed that a private detective agency, taking the employees in turn for grilling, had interrogated Muriel Drake. Her answers to questions had not been entirely convincing. She seemed unduly nervous. The private detectives had bundled her into their car, started for Headquarters, had an accident which had distracted their attention, and the girl had escaped, gone to the apartment house where her friend lived.

  The police theory was that one of the men concerned in the hold-up had been afraid Muriel would confess if she were taken to the station, or that some independent criminal had sensed that Muriel was an accomplice. In any event, the man, knowing in advance that she planned to spend the night with Stella Denny, had secreted himself within the apartment house and waited for the girl to show up.

  He had overpowered her, choked her, made a search of her garments, found, perhaps, that for which he searched, and made his escape. No one had seen him come, and no one had seen him go. He had waited, accomplished his sinister purpose and then faded into the night.

  Police were conducting a systematic round-up of the men friends of both Muriel Drake and Stella Denny. Those men were being questioned, asked to prove where they had been when the murder was committed.

  Sidney Zoom strolled to a barber shop, was shaved; went to the garage where he had stored his car, took his dog for a brief walk, and then went to Harmiston’s Jewelry Company.

  He entered the store and noticed that there were quite a number of people present. They were the curious who desired to see the safe which had been rifled, the exact spot where the man had fallen.

  Mechanics were busy repolishing the floor, removing certain sinister dark stains. The place where a bullet had entered the wood work was being repaired so that the dark hole in the polished mahogany was no longer visible.

  Sidney Zoom strolled the length of the store, peering into the show cases, studying the display of gems, flashing glances at intervals at the watchful clerks who stood at courteous attention.

  As he started back toward the door, on the other side of the store, he saw the man he had expected to find. He was standing behind a counter displaying diamond rings, looking quite expressionless of feature, wary of eye.

  It was the man who had worn the gray suit and overcoat, the man Sidney Zoom had last seen leaving the Bratten Arms Apartments shortly after Muriel Drake had entered the place, and but a short time before her body had been discovered.

  Sidney Zoom let his attention focus upon the diamonds.

  The man moved forward.

  “Was there something?” he asked in the tone of voice one uses when striving to be courteous, but expecting nothing reassuring in the way of a reply.

  “Yes,” said Sidney Zoom. “That diamond pendant interests me. What is the price?”

  Harmiston’s was the sort of a place where the commercial side of the transaction is kept purposely subordinate to the merit of the merchandise, the artistic beauty of the design. The man in gray looked slightly shocked.

  “You had better examine it, sir,” he said, and took out the pendant.

  Sidney Zoom stared at it, did not touch it.

  “The price?” he demanded.

  “Twelve hundred dollars!” snapped the clerk.

  “Wrap it up,” said Zoom.

  The man in gray gave an exclamation of surprise.

  “What was that? Er... what did you say?”

  “I said wrap it up,” said Sidney Zoom, and reached in his inside pocket, opened his wallet, examined the contents.

  He raised his eyes to the man’s face.

  “You sometimes take jewelry out for inspection?”

  “Yes, when a deposit is made.”

  “I shall make a deposit then, have you go with me to determine whether or not it meets with the approval of the person for whom the gift is intended.”

  “Yes, sir. A deposit of, let us say, two hundred dollars?”

  Sidney Zoom flipped two one-hundred-dollar bills upon the glass show case.

  “I am in a hurry,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man behind the counter. “I’ll be with you at once. Let me get my hat and coat, and get this pendant wrapped. Then I’ll give you a receipt.”

  “Very well,” said Sidney Zoom. “We’ll take a cab to the garage where I have my car stored. Then I’ll drive you to consult the young lady.”

  “I’ll take along another design as an alternate,” the man in gray called over his shoulder, and bustled away. Within five minutes he was back, ready for the street. Zoom called a cab, drove to the garage, indicated the sedan, and opened the
door.

  Rip, the police dog, stretched his tawny length, turned a questioning nose toward the newcomer.

  “Your name?” asked Sidney Zoom.

  “Edgar Carver,” said the man.

  Zoom nodded.

  “I want to present you formally to the dog. Rip, this is Edgar Carver.”

  The dog extended his paw. Carver took it with a nervous laugh.

  His eyes turned to Sidney Zoom, and there was a peculiar expression in them, an expression of bewildered wonder with just the faint glint of panic.

  “You keep him with you all the time, that dog?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Sidney Zoom. He meshed the gears, and swept out of the garage at a rapid rate of speed.

  Carver showed that he was uneasy.

  “I... er... wonder if I didn’t see you last night. I saw a man of about your build, walking with a dog.”

  Zoom shook his head.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” he said, “whether you saw me or not.”

  And he yawned.

  The man in gray showed visible relief.

  “After all,” he said, laughing a short nervous laugh, “there are lots of police dogs who walk around with their masters at night.”

  “Lots,” agreed Sidney Zoom.

  The car was flashing into speed.

  “Where do we go?” asked Carver, as the better class of apartments dropped behind and they turned toward the water front.

  “To my yacht,” said Sidney Zoom.

  Carver settled back, lit a cigarette.

  “This is the life,” he observed.

  Zoom garaged the car at the wharf, motioned to Carver to accompany him, walked down the planks of the big wharf, then down a flight of steep stairs to a mooring float against which was his trim white yacht.

  Carver walked aboard.

  “This way,” said Zoom.

  He led the man down the deck, into a cabin, down a short, steep flight of stairs. There was a door at the side of the little passageway at the foot of those stairs, and that door was painted green.

  Chapter VI

  Caught!

  Carver did not notice the color of the door, nor did he notice that the door was so low that he had to stoop to enter. That stooping prevented him from seeing the interior of the room until after he had entered it.