The Casebook of Sidney Zoom

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  “Samson,” he said, “you will take this letter. The signature is forged. It purports to be a letter from Finley Carter, written to you some two weeks ago, asking you to be sure and drop in and see him when you arrive in the city. The dictation marks show that it was dictated to Nell Benton. No one else will know about it.”

  Samson stared curiously.

  “Carter will know about it, won’t he?”

  Zoom nodded.

  “Carter will know about it,” he said. “If Carter makes any trouble about it, you are to get in touch with me at once on the telephone. I will stand back of you. But I don’t think Carter is going to make any trouble about it. I don’t think you’re going to see Carter.”

  Samson nodded slowly.

  “What I want,” said Zoom, “is to find out just who it is that keeps you from seeing Carter.”

  Samson took the letter, slipped it in the inside pocket of his coat.

  “Okay,” he said, and moved purposefully toward the companionway. Food and clothes had made a big difference in him.

  When he had gone, Nell Benton said slowly, “What do you think has happened, Mr. Zoom?”

  Sidney Zoom’s voice was as crisp as the cracking of a lash.

  “There’s no question about what’s happened,” he said. “In some way, Exter planned to get complete control of Finley Carter. He knew that there were checks signed in advance and drawn on the housekeeping account that you supervised. Naturally, he wanted to get rid of you. He did that by seeing that you were accused of crime, and knew that Carter would discharge you. What I can’t understand is how he has been able to get Carter to talk over the telephone, unless he has an accomplice who is a very finished actor and who is able to mimic Carter’s tones over the telephone. That is the probable solution. We’ve got to get Burt Samson’s report in order to find out.”

  “But,” she pointed out, “Samson doesn’t know Finley Carter. They might have someone posing as Finley Carter and let Samson go in to see him.”

  “That,” said Sidney Zoom, “is why I phrased the forged letter so it would appear that Samson was quite intimately acquainted with Carter.”

  She frowned thoughtfully.

  “They wouldn’t try withdrawals from the bank where Carter regularly keeps his large deposits,” Zoom said slowly. “They started building up deposits in the Second National Affiliate, which probably has been very anxious to get Carter’s account.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Should we,” she asked, “notify the police?”

  Zoom shook his head.

  “Not yet,” he said. “In the first place, we have nothing to go on except suspicions; in the second place, I am not entirely certain that Finley Carter has a generous disposition.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I am not entirely certain,” he said, “that he would make proper restitution to you.”

  “He wouldn’t,” she said. “He’s obstinate, and he’s tight.”

  “He pays plenty for his original paintings, doesn’t he?” Zoom asked.

  “Yes,” she said bitterly, “but that’s all he does pay out for. He never paid me a decent salary all the time I worked for him. I’d have gone to some other position if it hadn’t been that jobs were so scarce.”

  “Yet,” said Zoom slowly, “if we save Carter from exploitation at the hands of a bunch of crooks, we are entitled to a reward, and the fact remains that Carter, himself, will not care to pay that reward. Therefore, it remains for us to do it for him.”

  “You’re talking in enigmas,” she said.

  Zoom smiled at her.

  “Don’t worry about methods,” he said, “simply leave the entire thing to me.”

  Chapter IV

  An Interview

  Sidney Zoom prided himself upon his ability to fight the devil with fire so adroitly as to leave no backtrack.

  Following Samson’s report that he had been curtly denied admission to the Finley Carter residence, despite the letter which he had produced, a letter which assuredly was signed by Carter himself, Sidney Zoom, attired in a neat-fitting, well-pressed business suit, presented himself at the door of the residence.

  “I,” he said, “am from the Second National Affiliate. I desire to discuss a matter with Mr. Carter personally.”

  The butler in the doorway eyed Sidney Zoom with cold suspicion.

  “Do you,” he asked, “know Mr. Carter personally?”

  Zoom appeared to notice nothing unusual in the question.

  “I am familiar with his signature,” he said. “I have heard his voice over the telephone. I have never met the gentleman.”

  The grim-faced hostility of the butler relaxed slightly.

  “And what did you wish to see Mr. Carter about?”

  “I merely wished to get his okay concerning certain withdrawals.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” said the butler with ponderous servility, “but I think that matter has been discussed with Mr. Carter over the telephone. He might become very much displeased if you took the matter up with him again.”

  “That,” said Zoom gravely, “is a chance I will have to take on behalf of the bank. Please tell him that Mr. George Coleridge, from the bank, is here to interview him.”

  Sidney Zoom gravely extracted a leather wallet from his pocket, took from it an embossed card, handed it, with something of a flourish, to the butler.

  The butler examined the card.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “George Coleridge, special investigator for the Second National Affiliate.”

  “Exactly,” said Sidney Zoom. “And will you please tell Mr. Carter that if he refuses a personal interview, his refusal may lead to banking complications.”

  Sidney Zoom’s smile was reassuring, but his eyes were steady.

  “Please step in and be seated,” said the butler. “I will take the matter up with Mr. Carter.”

  Zoom was ushered into a reception hallway, given a seat. The butler climbed a flight of stairs. Somewhere from the upper corridor, Zoom heard the deep-throated barking of a big dog, the slamming of a door. There followed an interval of silence, and then the thud of the butler’s returning feet became audible.

  “If you’ll be so kind as to step this way, sir,” he said, “Mr. Carter will be glad to give you a few moments. He is not feeling well and wishes you to make your visit as brief as possible.”

  Sidney Zoom surrounded himself with a cloak of banker-like dignity as he followed the butler up the stairs.

  A big police dog lay in front of a closed door. As he saw Sidney Zoom, he twisted his lips back from his fangs and gave a deep-throated growl, but made no motion to leave the door.

  The butler opened a door across the corridor.

  “Mr. Carter,” he said, with something of a flourish.

  A man, attired in bathrobe and pajamas, sat up in bed. Pillows were bolstered behind him. Both hands were concealed beneath the covers of the bed. His eyes were deep-set and glittered irascibly. When he spoke, his voice had the distinctive rasping harshness that Zoom had heard over the telephone.

  “You’re Coleridge,” he said, “from the Second National Affiliate?”

  Sidney Zoom bowed.

  “What I want to know,” said the man, “is what the devil you folks mean by making so much commotion about a few ordinary withdrawals. I gave you an account some time ago. You thought it wasn’t large enough and kept asking me to give you more of my accounts. Recently I decided to do it. You’ve made so much commotion about it that one would think a check for more than one hundred dollars never went through your bank oftener than once a year.”

  Zoom’s smile was reassuring.

  “Hardly that, Mr. Carter,” he said, “but, you understand we’re a branch bank. The parent bank desired a report. I’m from the parent bank.”

  “I don’t give a damn who you’re from,” the other said. “You’re making a confounded nuisance out of yourself. I’m putting money in your bank. I have a right to
draw it out whenever I wish. I’m putting in some rather large deposits. I want to withdraw them whenever I want to.”

  “The deposits are made only with a rubber stamp endorsement,” Sidney Zoom pointed out.

  “That’s the way deposits are made in any active account,” Carter said. “That’s the way nine-tenths of your commercial houses make their deposits. The withdrawals are all made by checks that bear my personal signature.”

  “I have here a list of withdrawals,” said Sidney Zoom. “Would you mind okaying them?”

  The man sighed with annoyance.

  “Very well,” he said, “but I’m playing a correspondence chess game, and you’re making me so mad I can’t concentrate on it the way I want to.”

  He indicated a chess board on the table beside the bed, a chess board on which men had been arranged. A pawn or two had been moved. Aside from that, the men were arrayed in two rows on opposite sides of the board.

  Sidney Zoom stared thoughtfully at the board.

  “Rather a peculiar opening,” he said.

  “It’s the opening I like to play,” the other told him.

  Zoom handed over the list. The long, thin fingers of the other man checked off the withdrawals.

  “All correct,” he said, “and all in order.”

  “Would you sign it?” asked Sidney Zoom.

  “No,” snarled the other, “I won’t sign it. I’ve given you enough of my time. You’ve had my okay over the telephone. You’ve got my signed checks. I’ve gone over this and okayed it. If you don’t like it, I’ll take my account out of your bank and put it somewhere where it’s appreciated.”

  Sidney Zoom bowed.

  “Very well,” he said, “and thank you.”

  Turning, he walked toward the door with rigid dignity.

  The rasping voice of the man on the bed called to him as he reached the door.

  “Don’t think I don’t appreciate your interest, Coleridge,” he said, “I do. I know you’re just safeguarding my money, but I want the privilege of withdrawing checks from my own account in my own way.”

  Sidney Zoom’s bow was grave.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Chapter V

  A Trap Is Baited

  Sidney Zoom was never happier than when he was concentrating upon some mental problem.

  He raised his long, thin legs to place his feet on the table in the dining salon. His eyes glittered with concentration. His fingers were interlaced across his thin stomach.

  “An impostor,” he said, “a rank impostor. I find that there have been very few pictures of Finley Carter taken.”

  “Yes,” Nell Benton said, “he was suspicious of cameras.”

  “But I nevertheless located one,” Zoom said. “This man looks something like him, but he isn’t Carter. Moreover, Carter is a chess expert. The man who has engineered this crime knows nothing about chess. Knowing that Carter was a chess player, the man sought to impress me by having a chess atmosphere about the room. A chess board sat at the side of the table. Some men had been moved, but they weren’t in the position in which players would have moved them. Moreover, the white queen had been placed on the black square instead of the white.”

  “Then,” said Nell Benton, “we must go to the police.”

  Sidney Zoom shook his head.

  “No,” he said, “Finley Carter deserves to be punished. He discharged you, when, if he had used his brains, he would have known you were the victim of a conspiracy which was soon to involve him. Moreover, there is compensation which you must receive. Carter has never been generous. The salary that he paid you shows you that he hasn’t even been fair. No, there’s another way of handling this. Let me think.”

  He stared with a fixed, unwinking scrutiny, his eyes fastened upon distance.

  At length he spoke; there was an accentless quality to his voice, as though he had been talking in his sleep.

  “How many checks were signed when you left, Miss Benton?”

  “I don’t know, half a dozen perhaps. Why?”

  “These men aren’t forgers,” he said, “or else they know that they can’t forge Finley Carter’s signature well enough to fool a bank... Did Mr. Carter keep a police dog?”

  “No. He’s afraid of dogs. He wouldn’t have them in the house.”

  Zoom nodded slowly.

  “We could,” said Samson, “go to the police and get a detective into the house as a building inspector or something.”

  Zoom shook his head.

  “There’s the matter of payment,” he said, “and there’s one other matter. I’m satisfied that they’ll kill Carter before they’d let him talk. He’s under guard, probably somewhere in the house.”

  Suddenly he chuckled.

  “I think,” he said, “I have it.”

  He turned to Samson.

  “You,” he said, “have got to act a part. You’ve got to keep your head. If anything goes wrong, you’ve got to be able to show that you were doing what you were doing for the purpose of exposing the guilt of these people.”

  “What,” asked Samson, “am I supposed to do?”

  Zoom made no reply, but picked up a telephone and dialed the number of Finley Carter’s residence.

  “Will you,” he said, “please tell Mr. Finley Carter that I am Mr. Coleridge of the Second National Affiliate, and that I desire to talk with him over the telephone for a few moments.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the receiver made a metallic noise, and Sidney Zoom said affably, “Our bank regrets causing you inconvenience in connection with your account, Mr. Carter, but we feel called upon to take determined steps to protect your interests. In order that there may be no possible misunderstanding, would you mind telling us what checks you have outstanding against your account? That is, checks that have not been cashed, but which may be presented within the next twenty-four hours.”

  The metallic diaphragm of the receiver registered a squawking protest which sounded like static, then Sidney Zoom said, “I understand all that, Mr. Carter. I can only repeat that this is for your own protection.”

  The receiver made more violent noises and Sidney Zoom’s voice lost its purring pleasantry.

  “Very well,” he said, “if you want to take that course, you may do so. I was only trying to protect your interests... When may we expect this check to come in?... Very well, thank you.”

  He slammed the receiver back into place and nodded to the little circle of his attentive listeners.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ve done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “Led them to believe that the chase is so hot they’ve got to dust out. They were looking for an excuse.”

  “What do you mean?” Nell Benton asked.

  “They planned,” he said, “to make as large deposits as they possibly could in the account of the Second National Affiliate. They planned to withdraw those deposits by checks which had previously been signed by Mr. Carter, checks that were signed in blank because he knew that they couldn’t be raised. The fact that the account was limited to five hundred dollars kept him reasonably safe. What Carter overlooked, was the fact that it’s easy to make deposits where the money goes into a regular bank account, so the crooks simply took over Carter’s affairs, collected whatever sums came in through the mail, or whatever they could collect otherwise, and made huge deposits. Then they made large withdrawals in the form of what amounted virtually to cash.”

  “Well?” asked Nell Benton.

  “Now,” said Sidney Zoom, “the man who poses as Finley Carter, convinced that the game is about at an end, and thinking that he was talking to the bank, has advised me that he is sending down a check closing out the entire account. The balance, as I happen to know from my investigation, is ten thousand two hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifteen cents.”

  Sidney Zoom opened a drawer in the table, from it he took a pad of blank checks drawn on the Second National Affiliate. Working with the skill of a practiced penman, he f
illed out a check in an angular handwriting. The check was payable to cash. The amount was ten thousand two hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifteen cents, and Sidney Zoom signed the name of Finley Carter to that check — signed it so perfectly that Nell Benton gave an exclamation.

  “But,” she said, “it’s a perfect imitation of his signature.”

  Zoom nodded.

  “Therefore,” she said, “a forgery.”

  Zoom nodded once more.

  “And,” he said with pride in his voice, “a very good one.”

  “But,” she said, “it’s against the law, you’d be sent to prison.”

  Sidney Zoom smiled.

  “After all,” he said, “my methods are irregular, I’ve warned you of that.”

  “But,” she told him, “you mustn’t do that. It’s not right. It’s not the way to handle it.”

  Sidney Zoom smiled at her.

  “If,” he said, “I should tell you that by using this check I would save Mr. Carter ten thousand two hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifteen cents which he would otherwise lose, would you think that it was right?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly, “if that’s the case.”

  “That,” said Zoom, “is the case.”

  He beckoned to Burt Samson.

  It was a few minutes before dosing time at the bank when Sidney Zoom presented himself at the cashier’s window.

  “You will remember me,” he said, “I was checking up on Mr. Carter’s account.”

  The clerk nodded.

  “I have been given a check,” said Sidney Zoom, “by a man who claimed to represent Mr. Carter, stating that he desires to dose out his account. The amount of the check is for ten thousand two hundred and ninety-one dollars and fifteen cents, which is, I believe, the exact amount Mr. Carter has on deposit.”

  The cashier frowned.

  “We don’t want him to draw out his account,” he said. “There must be some misunderstanding.”

  Sidney Zoom said slowly, “I don’t think there is any misunderstanding, I think the check is a forgery.”

  “You think it’s a forgery?” said the cashier.

  Sidney Zoom nodded and produced the check.