The Case of the Backward Mule

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  She nodded with a self-satisfied little smile, and said “You know, Owl we must practise talking out of the sides of our mouths. If we’re going to be outlaws, we want to look the part. Heavens, you can’t tell. They might want us for the movies some day and if you talked out of the front of your mouth, people would think you couldn’t have amounted to much after all. I mean as a criminal, you know.”

  “Well,” Clane said, sighing, “I guess you’ve made a criminal of me all right. One thing’s certain—Inspector Malloy never will believe your story about how you happened to get here.”

  “Tell him to make up one of his own,” Cynthia said.

  Clane raised his eyebrows.

  “Let him do the explaining for a change,” she said. “he’s the one who had his man frisk the apartment and decided there was no one in it. Then he put men out to watch everyone who came and went. If he thinks he’s so damn smart, let him tell you how I got in here.”

  “It’s an idea,” Clane said. “But unfortunately the talking will have to done in front of a jury.”

  “Not unless they catch you, Owl.”

  Clane sighed, knowing that when Cynthia had one of her irresponsible streaks there was very little that a man could do about it.

  “All right,” Clane said. “Let’s begin at the beginning. I want to know exactly how Edward Harold escaped and who rigged it up for him what your part in it was, how you happened to hide him down there in that warehouse.”

  “But, Owl, I didn’t.”

  Clane settled back in his chair, tapped a cigarette on the edge of his thumb nail. “Want one?”

  “Not now, thanks.”

  “Did you engineer the escape, Cynthia?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?” Clane asked.

  “Didn’t anything.”

  “You mean you didn’t engineer the escape?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hide him down in that warehouse?”

  “No.”

  “How did you know where he was, then?”

  “Owl, I wish you wouldn’t shoot questions at me like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you sound sort of official and … I don’t know. It makes me want to lie to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve always been that way. I want to tell people what I want to tell them and when I want to tell it to them. And when people start shooting questions at me, it makes me just… well, I feel they’re opening the door and walking in without knocking. And I hide.”

  “Behind lies?”

  “I suppose so, if you want to put it that way.”

  “Lying,” he said, “is negative.”

  “Not the way I do it, Owl. It’s artistic. It’s wonderful. I don’t just tell a lie and then wait and get caught. But I tell a lie and embellish it into a beautiful story and when I get done with it, It’s so much more beautiful than the truth that I’m darned if I don’t sometimes believe it myself.”

  Clane said “Keep playing around with that philosophy and the police are going to nab you.”

  “I suppose so. I guess that they’re going to nab me anyway. You have to admit I’m giving them a merry chase.”

  “Are you going to tell me or am I going to ask you questions?”

  “If you ask me questions, I’ll lie.”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  “Yes. If you aren’t so damned eager about it. You look as though you are ready to grab the words before that even hit the roof of my mouth.”

  Clane settled back and watched the smoke eddying upward from the cigarette. There was a long interval of silence.

  Cynthia sighed. “The first thing I knew of his escape, Owl, was when I heard it over the radio.”

  “So what did you do?” Clane asked, not looking at her, but keeping his eyes on the cigarette smoke and making his tone sound casual.

  “I didn’t want the police to find him. And I thought the police would start looking for me, thinking I might be mixed up in it and if they could find me right away and find I didn’t know anything about where he was and hadn’t been mixed up in it, that would … well, don’t you see? That would narrow their circle. I thought that, if I could be a sort of decoy and start out running, then whatever time it took the police to catch me would be that much time gained.”

  Clane merely nodded, didn’t even glance at her.

  “So,” she said, “I spent the night with a girlfriend. I drew some money out of the bank as soon as it opened and went places. I tried to fix it so the police couldn’t find me, and then when that did, they couldn’t prove a single darn thing on me. I was upset and just wanted to get away from everything. I thought of the amnesia racket for a while and then decided that I couldn’t get away with that. I thought I could do better by pulling the old stuff about something snapping inside my brain.”

  “That’s a pretty tough alibi to put across with the police,” Clane said.

  “Don’t kid yourself. Women kill their husbands every day and stand up in front of a jury and tearfully tell them about how something snapped in their brains. And doctors get on the stand and give it some scientific name with a lot of Latin embellishments, and the jury go out, and That’s all there is to it. If Sou can kill a husband because of something snapping in your rain, why shouldn’t I be able to just go out and wander around?”

  “Suppose the police aren’t as easily influenced as the jury?”

  “Then I was going to look them straight in the eyes and tell them, so what? I decided to go out and wander around the country. I didn’t see Edward, I didn’t know where he was, and There’s certainly nothing you can do to a citizen for just getting out and wandering around.”

  “Then how did you know he …?”

  “No, don’t, Owl,” she interrupted. “I’ll lie to you just as sure as shooting.”

  Clane grinned. “If you have any good lie, you can trot it right out. It might be a good plan to sort of warm it up and get it ready for action, because you may have to be using it soon.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’d rather tell the truth instead.”

  “That suits me.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then, as though having reached a decision, she spoke swiftly, trying to get the words out before she might change her mind. “You know, Owl, I have been doing a little commercial painting lately. Not the sort of stuff that Alma would approve of. It was commercial, pot-boiling, mail-order stuff, and I didn’t want to do it under my name. So I took the name of Vera Windsor. It was sort of a pen name and I needed an address for it so I got a post-office box. No one knew anything at all about Vera Windsor’s being Cynthia Renton. Alma didn’t know it.”

  “Edward Harold know it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he got in touch with you that way?”

  “Yes. I went over to the post-office box and, sure enough, yesterday afternoon there was a postcard giving me the address of the warehouse of the Eastern Art Import and Trading Company. Nothing else on it, just the printed address.”

  “What did you do with the card?” he asked. “You didn’t leave it in your purse, did you?”

  “No. I put it right back in the post-office box. I felt that it might be dangerous evidence and I wasn’t at all certain but that at any moment some detective might step out and tap me on the shoulder. And then I knew they’d search me. But I felt that’d never dare to go in and search a post-office box so I just read the card and dropped it right back in the box and left it there.”

  “You knew it was from Harold?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there was just that address on it and that’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “So I knew you were coming in on the boat and I wanted to ask you what to do. I didn’t know whether I dared to see him or what to do. And I wasn’t at all certain that I wasn’t being shadowed. So I went down
to the boat and I saw them nab you. And then I was pretty much in a pickle. So I came back and waited around.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”

  “I had to sort of sound you out first to … Oh, I don’t know, Owl. I’m just not built that way. I can’t throw myself wide open without any preliminaries. I care so much for you that it hurts. But even you can’t open the door and walk right in.”

  “But you intended to tell me?”

  “Yes. I was stalling around. I wanted to find out how important your errand was and—well, I wanted to suggest that you go down there arid see Edward with me.”

  “You don’t think he’d have liked that, do you?”

  “I don’t know. I … I … I don’t know, Owl.”

  “But why did you want me with you?”

  “I don’t even know that.”

  “You knew it was dangerous to see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew he was in love with you and wanted to see you alone?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But you wanted to drag me along?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Not right away, but after we had been talking a while?”

  “I don’t know, Owl. It was sort of delicate. I thought you might not like to go and I felt that Edward might not like to have you there and—but I wanted you there. And if you ask me why, all I can tell you is, I don’t know, and if you keep on asking me why, I’ll tell you one of the most marvellous hand-embroidered lies you ever heard in your life.” Clane ground out the end of his cigarette.

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You must have had some reason, something in the back of your mind.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what it may have been, Owl. I have always wondered about Edward and whether … well, I think perhaps I wanted to find out just how far things were going to go. I … Owl, stop it, You’re making me lie to you and I don’t like it.”

  “And that was a lie?”

  “That was the beginnings of a peach of a lie,” she said, “a gee-whillikens of a lie. I was making it up as I went along, but I was just a paragraph or two ahead and it sounded fine to me. What was coming would have really been a razzle-dazzle. Stop asking me questions about it.”

  “If you didn’t arrange for Harold’s escape, then who did?”

  “It must have been Bill Hendrum. I can’t think of anyone else. Hendrum is just the type who would have gone through with it.”

  “But you don’t know it was Hendrum?”

  “No, I’m just guessing To me something about Hendrum. he’s a big, tall, raw-boned chap, reckless as they come. It would be just like him to do something like that.”

  “But you haven’t talked with him about it?”

  “No.”

  “Have you had any communication with him?”

  “No.

  “Why?”

  “Hendrum was the last man in the world I would have tried to talk to. You see, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to have any knowledge that would be dangerous. And then, of course, I knew that the police would be keeping an eye on me, so I thought I’d just run around in circles and—well, you know, that would be a help.”

  “And then you dropped your purse.”

  “And then I dropped my purse,” she said bitterly.

  Terry Clane thought things over.

  “Well?” she asked after a few moments.

  “I think,” Clane said, “we have to find out about Hendrum.” Then he added “I’m not certain but that this escape plays into the hands of the police rather than otherwise. Of course, the police are irritated at the ease with which it was accomplished. At least that pretend they are.”

  “But you think it may be some sort of a police trap?”

  “No, not that. But the point is that Harold is playing right into the hands of the police now.”

  “What do you think he should do?”

  Clane said instantly “I think he should surrender himself into custody, then go ahead with his appeal.”

  “It would be pretty difficult to convince him.”

  “But I think we have to do just that—difficult or not.”

  “Well,” she said, “in order to do that, we’ve got to find him and we’ve got to talk to him. That isn’t the sort of thing you can do without personal contact—you know, you couldn’t just put an ad. in the personal column of the paper, and say “Dear Ed—Terry C. thinks you should go to the nearest police station and surrender”.”

  Clane poured Cynthia another cup of coffee, filled his own cup, said “There’s one way you could bring him out into the open.”

  “How?”

  “Let the police catch you and charge you with aiding and abetting in his escape. Then he’d come forward.”

  “I don’t like that way, Owl.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “Any other suggestions?”

  Clane said “I think we should talk with this man Hendrum. If you’ll give me his address, I’ll get in touch with him.”

  “And what do I do in the meantime?”

  Clane said, with emphasis “There are only two things that you can do. One of them is to stay here without even going near a window, keeping yourself absolutely out of sight.”

  “And what”s the other thing?”

  “You can try to be smart and pull something and get your picture in the paper.”

  Cynthia said “You do think of the most wonderful things, Owl.” Then she started to hum “Oh, what a beautiful morning, oh, what a beautiful day.”

  Clane took a pencil from his pocket and on the tablecloth traced a circle about the size of a half-dollar. Within that he placed a circle the size of a dime, and within that second circle a dot.

  Cynthia gave him her undivided attention, watching him as he put the pencil away, then watched his eyes come to a focus on that dot in the centre of the tablecloth.

  For some six or seven seconds Clane sat absolutely motionless then he took a long breath, pulled the cigarette-case from his pocket and opened it.

  “I’ll have one now, Owl,” she said.

  He handed her a cigarette, took one for himself and snapped a match into flame with a quick motion of his thumb. When they were both smoking, Cynthia indicated the circles on the tablecloth. “Something new?” she asked.

  “Just a device,” he said, “to assist the mind to bring itself to a sharp focus.”

  “What did you think out, Owl?”

  Clane said positively “You can’t stay here. Sooner or later the police are going to be looking for you here.”

  “But I can’t leave, Owl. They’re watching the place. They’d nab me as soon as I left.”

  “They’re watching the place,” Clane conceded. “That doesn’t mean you can’t leave. It means we must take precautions so that when you do leave you aren’t picked up.”

  “But how can you do that?”

  Clane walked over to the telephone, dialled Chinatown exchange and spoke to the operator in Chinese. Shortly afterwards he heard the voice of Sou Ha on the line.

  “Hello, Embroidered Halo,” he said, translating her name into English and thus letting her know who was at the other end of the line.

  “Hello yourself. Did you sleep last night?”

  Clane went at once into Chinese. “My sleep was filled with dreams of you,” he said, and then added abruptly “Sou Ha, I have one mouth there are many ears.”

  “Speak, then, for one ear alone.”

  Clane said “It would be a great favour to me if you and your father should come to visit me.”

  “When?”

  “Any time. But I can hardly wait to see you.”

  “Are there any suggestions?”

  “Dress warmly.”

  Sou Ha thought that over for a moment, then she said “Your desires have been communicated. They will be obeyed. Is there anything else?”

  “That,” Clane
said, “is all. Tell your father how much I regret having to inconvenience him.”

  “It will be a privilege,” she said. “We will see you within four characters of the clock,” and hung up.

  Clane dropped the receiver into place, returned to the breakfast-table.

  Cynthia was watching him with speculative eyes. “I always get suspicious of you when you go into that Chinese stuff, Owl. Was that Sou Ha?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you ask her to do?”

  “I asked for her help and her father’s.”

  Cynthia said abruptly “I suppose you know, Terry, that she loves you?”

  “Sou Ha loves me? Nonsense!”

  Cynthia shook her head. “You are wise in the ways of the Orient, Terry, but you are but a man in the ways of a woman. I do not know the Orient, but as a woman I know women.”

  “Don’t further complicate the situation,” Clane said.

  “It is not I who complicate it.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  Abruptly Cynthia asked “Owl, tell me again just what is the meaning of that figure on the back of a mule, the one that you gave me before you left for China, the one who rides the mule backwards?”

  “It is the story of Chinese fatalism,” Clane said. “Which in reality is not fatalism at all.”

  “Are the Chinese fatalists?”

  “Not in the sense that we understand fatalism. They have a doctrine of non-resistance, which is something entirely different.”

  “Is Sou Ha coming here?” she asked abruptly.

  “Yes.

  “Alone.”

  “No, with her father.”

  “How soon?”

  “She said within four characters of the clock.”

  “Which means how much, Owl?”

  “I have told you before,” he said.

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “Each character represents five minutes. Four characters is twenty minutes.”

  “Oh yes, I remember now. Tell me some more about the Chinese philosophy of non-resistance, Owl.”

  “Why do you want to know that now?”

  “Because you have brought Sou Ha into the picture and … and I want to have you talking to me so I can listen.”