The Case of the Backward Mule

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  The Case of the Backward Mule

  by Erle Stanley Gardner

  A Terry Clane Mystery

  William Morrow • New York

  1946

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  TERRY CLANE

  Student and friend of the Orient who does some amateur sleuthing in San Francisco

  CYNTHIA RENTON

  Portrait painter whose impulsiveness leads to trouble

  YAT T’OY

  Clane’s servant, who believes in daggers as well as wits

  EDWARD HAROLD

  Who would prefer to shoot it out with the cops than surrender to “justice”

  HORACE FARNSWORTH

  A very dead investment dealer

  STACEY NEVIS

  RICARDO TAONON

  GEORGE GLOSTER

  Copartners, with Farnsworth, in the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company, an organization which lost a lot of money but reaped a lot of profits

  BILL HENDRUM

  Always cheering for the underdog

  SOU HA

  Chinese girl who knows some Occidental tricks

  CHU KEE

  Her father, who has a proverb and a solution for most situations

  SAM KENTON

  Farnworth’s man-about-the-house

  INSPECTOR MALLOY

  Who talks and talks and talks

  CHAPTER ONE

  AS THE BIG STEAMER eased her way through the Golden Gate, the western sun high-lighted the sides of San Francisco’s buildings until the city seemed to be all white, rising in stately splendour from the blue water.

  Terry Clane, returning from the Orient, fought back an impulse of exultation.

  Steeped in the philosophy of those wise men who dwelt in hidden monasteries where studies might be pursued in peace, Clane knew that triumph and defeat were body impostors, that success and failure were but different facets of the same jewel. Yet he knew also that here in San Francisco mere was work to be done—dangerous work, and he was eager to get at it, eager to see once more his native land.

  Standing at the rail, the wind ruffling his dark wavy hair, he watched the changing scenery of the shore-line until the vessel glided smoothly into the dock.

  The sun had now set and a new moon hung over the city.

  It was a delicately arched new moon, slender, graceful and promising, the moon which Chinese call “The Moon of the Maiden”s Eyebrow”.

  Seeing that moon, Terry Clane thought of Sou Ha, the Chinese daughter of Chu Kee, thought also of Cynthia Renton. Cynthia would doubtless be there at the dock to meet him, and following that meeting …

  The gang-planks were run aboard and for the next thirty minutes Clane was busily engrossed with the formalities of disembarking. Finally, his baggage having been inspected by Customs, Clane moved towards the fence-like structure which separated the incoming passengers from those who had come to greet them.

  Through the openings in the fence Clane saw his trusted confidential man, Yat T’oy, sitting calmly on a bench, hands folded in his lap, waiting. Clane caught Yat T’oy’s eye.

  His smile brought no answering gleam of recognition. Yat T’oy looked at him with wooden-faced indifference, turned calmly away, not too hurriedly, not too slowly.

  Clane, perplexed, looked around for Cynthia Renton. She was nowhere in sight.

  Clane emerged from the narrow passageway, caught the eye of a newsboy, flipped him a quarter and took one of the late papers, which he folded under his arm. He started towards Yat T’oy, proceeding cautiously now, knowing that Yat T’oy’s wooden-faced indifference masked some warning which the ancient Chinese servant dared not give.

  And now Clane was conscious of eyes that were resting upon him with more than casual interest. A man by the door, another by the baggage-truck, a third at the gate.

  Clane walked past the bench where Yat T’oy was seated, taking care not even to look at the old man.

  Yat T’oy took a cigarette from his pocket, fumbled awkwardly for a match. “Gie Heem,” he said as though merely muttering some imprecation at the failure of the match to light the cigarette.

  Clane hardly needed the Chinese warning of danger. He walked casually away from Yat T’oy, stood by the gate waiting for his luggage to be brought out.

  The three men kept their eyes on him, but made no move.

  Clane yawned, thought of the newspaper under his arm, unfolded it and snapped it open.

  The action might have been a signal. The three men converged on him at once, almost frantic in their haste.

  “You’re Clane?” one of the men said. “Terry Clane?”

  “Right.”

  The man took his right arm, another took his left. “Just a minute, buddy, it’ll only take a minute. Someone wants to ask you some questions.”

  “What about?” Clane asked.

  “We wouldn’t know,” the man said, and firmly removed the newspaper from Clane’s hands.

  “But look here,” Clane began, “you can’t …”

  “Take it easy, buddy, take it easy,” the men said.

  The third man was behind now and they were moving steadily forward.

  Clane held back.

  The pressure from behind increased and the pace was accelerated. He was rushed into a big black sedan, doors slammed, a motor throbbed to life and almost instantly a siren wailed into a low-voiced demand for the right of way, a wail which soon became a screaming, insistent command as the car rushed into speed.

  Clane, settling back against the cushions, surrendered to the inevitable, but in the back of his mind he filed one fact for reference. These men had been watching him to see what he would do, to see with whom he would speak, where he would go. Yet one thing had forced their hands, one thing which had evidently been carefully agreed upon in advance. Clane was to have no opportunity to glance at the evening newspaper. The minute he opened that newspaper, the men had gone into action.

  It was an interesting fact to which Clane gave due consideration so that that which was to happen next would not come as too great a surprise.

  CHAPTER TWO

  TERRY CLANE LIT A CIGARETTE, settled back comfortably in the chair. Across the desk, Police Captain Jordon adjusted a combination desk lamp and ashtray so that it was midway between them, a gesture apparently intended to make the ash receptacle mutually convenient.

  Terry Clane, however, noticing the peculiar grilled sides of the light-stand, realized that there was a microphone concealed within the metallic base, and that by placing it exactly between them Captain Jordon had assured himself that the conversation would be duly recorded on waxed cylinders.

  “Mr Clane,” the police captain said, Tm not going to take more than a few minutes of your time. I realize how anxious you are to be free to see the city, so I’ll be frank—and abrupt.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “You’ve just returned from the Orient, Mr Clane?”

  “Yes. Your men were waiting for me when the boat docked.”

  “I take it you know why.”

  “Frankly, I do not.”

  “You have been in the Orient for some time?”

  “Yes.”

  “War work?”

  “Yes.”

  “And before that you were an old hand in the Orient?”

  “I had lived in China, studied there.”

  “I believe you once specialized on the art of concentration in some Chinese monastery?”

  “Yes, I spent two years in study.”

  “You became adept in the art of concentration?”

  “I was a novice. I learned a little.”

  “Learned to concentrate for some specified period of time?”

  “
Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “A little over four seconds.”

  “Four seconds, Mr Clane?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Surely you are joking! I have never studied concentration, but I frequently find myself concentrating for several minutes, sometimes an hour.”

  Clane kept the smile from his lips. Only his eyes showed amusement. “You have, as you so aptly state, never studied concentration.”

  “You mean that you doubt my word?”

  “Not at all. We merely use the word concentration in a different sense. In the way the word is used in the Orient it means contemplation, with every bit of mental energy brought to bear upon that which is being contemplated every bit.”

  “Well, That’s the way I do it.”

  “Does the ringing of the telephone interrupt your concentration and make it difficult for you to return to a contemplation of the problem?” Clane asked innocently.

  “Indeed it does. Sometimes my wife rings up when I’m concentrating and …”

  Clane’s smile caused the police captain to break off in mid-sentence.

  “In the Orient,” Clane said, “one who would hear the ringing of a telephone bell would be held not to be concentrating. Only when the contemplation becomes so absolute that no external disturbances can distract the attention is concentration even considered as having been begun.”

  The police captain looked sceptical, then suddenly changed the subject. “All right,” he said crisply, “we’ll let all that go and get down to business. Before you left for the Orient this last time you were either engaged to Cynthia Renton, a portrait-painter, or were very well acquainted with her. You had also known her sister, Alma Renton, for some years. After you left, rumour has it that Cynthia was pretty much broken up for a while, then she took up with a chap named Edward Harold. Did you ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Never.”

  “You know about him?”

  “Yes. In a way. I was not engaged to Cynthia Renton when I left. I had been engaged to her. I suggested that she had better be free when I had to leave on this war work. My mission was highly dangerous. The chances were good against my ever returning. I wanted her to be free to meet other men on the basis of becoming interested in them. Otherwise the engagement would have dragged along and then inevitably have been broken. It’s only human nature to crave companionship, and Cynthia is very much alive, a bundle of dynamite, or she was the last I saw of her.”

  “Exactly. Now about Harold”s trouble. What do you know about that?”

  “I knew that he had been arrested for the murder of Horace Farnsworth, tried, convicted, sentenced to death and had appealed. The trial took place just as I was leaving China.”

  “How did you know of the verdict, the sentence and the appeal?”

  “By wireless.”

  “From Cynthia?”

  “Yes.”

  “She appealed to you for help?”

  “She hoped I’d get back from the Orient in time to be of some help, yes.”

  “You knew Farnsworth?”

  “Yes. He had some money of Cynthia”s which he was investing for her. He was also a partner in the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company. I knew the others in that company Stacey Nevis, Ricardo Taonon and George Gloster. Farnsworth had, I believe, been in the Philippines for a while, investigating some gold-mining properties near Baguio. Naturally, I don’t think Harold was guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think he did it. I think he was framed.”

  “Yet you don’t even know him?”

  “Except through Miss Renton’s letters.”

  “You would, perhaps, do a great deal to see that he was not executed?”

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Captain. I’d do anything in my power, regardless of the cost, to see that sentence of death was never carried out.”

  “Exactly. Where were you last night?”

  Clane showed surprise. “On the boat, some 200 odd miles offshore.”

  “You didn’t leave that boat by plane or otherwise?”

  “Heavens, no. Of course not. I couldn’t possibly have done so even if I’d had the opportunity. Why do you ask?”

  “Because last night Edward Harold was being taken by motorcar from the county jail to San Quentin prison, where the death sentence was to be carried out. His appeal was, of course, pending, but it is customary for criminals convicted of felonies to be taken to the penitentiary to await the disposition of their appeals.”

  Clane sat rigid, attentive, waiting for that which he felt was to come. The desire to keep him from seeing the newspaper could have but one explanation.

  “And,” Jordon went on, “at approximately ten-thirty last night the car had what appeared to be an ordinary blow-out. Later on police found that heavy roofing-tacks had been sprinkled all over the road. While the officers were making a first somewhat dejected appraisal of the flat tyre, two masked men stepped from the bushes by the side of the road. They were heavily armed, and inasmuch as the surprise was complete, they were able to rescue Mr Harold. The officers were handcuffed with their own handcuffs. Harold was taken away with these masked men.”

  Clane sucked in a quick breath. Beyond that he showed no emotion. “Do you know anything about this affair?”

  “Only what you have told me. This is the first I have heard of it. “Did you have any part in it—any part in the planning of it?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “And you have absolutely no idea where Mr Harold might now be hiding?”

  “None whatever.”

  Captain Jordon pushed back his chair, said casually “Rather a peculiar, interesting law point is involved, Mr. Clane. The Supreme Court will dismiss an appeal taken by a person who is a fugitive.”

  “You mean that, if a person is convicted of a crime in an illegal manner, simply because he has escaped from jail the Supreme Court would impose a penalty?”

  “Come, come, Mr Clane. That’s loosely stated. The Supreme Court doesn’t impose a penalty. The man is already under sentence of death and the Supreme Court merely assumes the position that it is the height of impertinence for a criminal who is hiding from the law to seek to invoke the benefit of the law.”

  “I take it that’s all?” Clane asked.

  “Just one more point, Mr Clane. If we should consider it necessary, would you have any objection to repeating your statements to a polygraph operator?”

  “None whatever,” Clane said.

  And no sooner had the words left his mouth than he realized by the expression on the face of the police officer that the trap into which he had walked had been the sole object of this preliminary phase of the examination.

  “Excellent,” Captain Jordon said. “We consider it necessary for you to do so. It will only take a few moments. Right this way, please, Mr Clane.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE ROOM WAS ENTIRELY FREE of the taint of the Inquisition. It wasn’t particularly cheerful, but on the other hand there was none of the hostile atmosphere so frequently found in rooms at police headquarters. The place might well have been an office, furnished plainly but efficiently. The machine, of course, dominated the room just as the electric chair dominates the execution chamber but the chair in which Clane was placed was comfortable and, once the various electrodes and gadgets had been adjusted, the machine itself seemed trying to be friendly. It looked perfectly innocuous, something which might have been a radio waiting to be turned on.

  There was only one man in the room, in itself a disarming factor and this man seemed anxious to put Clane at ease. Moreover, the manner in which he went about doing it showed that he was a good student of psychology.

  “Of course, Mr Clane,” he said, “with a man of your intelligence, we don’t try to pull any hocus-pocus. We simply ask your cooperation in taking the test. We know that if it weren’t voluntary on your part, you wouldn’t be here. Na
turally if you had anything to conceal, knowing that you weren’t obligated take this test, you would have refused it. So, in a way, our examination becomes something of a matter of form.”

  Clane nodded.

  “And,” his interlocutor went on, “in view of the fact, we don’t try to conduct the examination the way we would that of a suspected criminal, for instance.”

  “I see,” Clane said.

  “Now, of course,” the man went on, smiling, “I’ve got to turn in a record which will show the examination has been effective. In other words, it will show your emotional reaction to questions. There’s no use trying to persuade a man of your intelligence that that isn’t what we’re after. You know as well as I do that’s the sole object of the machine.”

  Clane nodded again.

  “By the way,” the man said, “my name’s Maynard—Harry Maynard.”

  “I’m very glad to meet you,” Clane said. “I presume you not only have my name but my fingerprints as well.”

  Maynard laughed. “Oh, hardly that, Mr Clane. I understand You’ve had some very interesting experiences in the Orient in connection with psychology.”

  Clane merely nodded again.

  Maynard laughed. “I’m not even going to look at the needles on the recording devices, Mr Clane. With you I think It’s an idle gesture, but you must realize that in order to turn in a record showing a fair test, I have to first get some normal reactions.”

  Again Clane nodded.

  “And,” Maynard said, smiling, “it doesn’t need any glance at the machine to tell me that You’re indignant, that back of the mask of your cold courtesy you are angry at the police for subjecting you to this indignity, perhaps a little angry at yourself for having consented to do something which would prolong the interview and delay getting you settled in your hotel.”

  “I don’t think a man needs much knowledge of psychology to reach that conclusion,” Clane said.

  Maynard threw back his head and laughed heartily. “After all, Mr Clane, I merely work here.” Clane smiled.

  “So,” Maynard said, “we can’t do anything until you relax, Mr Clane. If you’ll just have enough confidence in me to relax and forget about this machine and all the inconveniences to which you have been subjected and chat for a few moments, I’ll then be in a position to go on with the test. And please believe me, Mr Clane, when I tell you that I won’t try to take any unfair advantage of you. I’ll tell you when the test is starting.”