Эрл Гарднер: The Case of the Buried Clock

“Yes.”

Della Street quietly extracted a notebook from her purse, unscrewed the cap from a small fountain pen, and started making shorthand hieroglyphics.

“Why did you go up to the cabin to meet Hardisty in the first place?” Mason asked.

“It was Martha’s idea. She’d been reading the dope in this magazine about how this drug made people talk. Hardisty had been dipping into funds, and Blane was going to have to make good, so Martha figured that by giving him a shot of this drug, we could make him talk his head off, and get the money back.

“She knew she was going to have to use force. That’s where I came in... I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to. She’ll tell you that herself.”

“I know,” Mason said sympathetically, glancing from the corner of his eye to see that Della Street was keeping up with the conversation. “Just tell me what happened, so that I can check it with Martha’s story.”

“Martha won’t lie, she’ll tell you the truth.”

“I know,” Mason said soothingly.

“Martha and I would have married, only Blane doesn’t want a married housekeeper. He always said he never hired a couple that was any good. Either the man was good and the woman wasn’t, or the other way around... Well, Martha and I was going together secret-like. This thing came up, and she called on me.”

“Where did you get the hypodermic?” Mason asked.

“One she used to give Blane his shots for diabetes.”

Mason waited for the other to go on.

Smiley, recalling what had happened, became less hostile. “Okay,” he said in a nasal, somewhat whining voice as though he were accustomed to registering complaints which did no good, “what was there for me to do? I had to go through with it. Martha got the gun for me.”

“What kind of a gun?” Mason asked with a significant glance at Della Street.

“A thirty-eight. It was Mrs. Hardisty’s gun. Mrs. Hardisty was spending part of the time over here. She kept that gun in her suitcase. Martha got it and gave it to me. We went up to the cabin. Hardisty was there, all right. He’d parked his car and was standing right by this big granite rock. He had a spade in his hands, like he was going to dig. I wanted to try talking with Hardisty, to be reasonable about it, but Martha was all business. She gave him the works right away.”

“Shot him?” Mason asked.

“No. Don’t be silly! I had the gun. She told him she was going to give him this hypo, that it would make him tell the truth, and not to try getting rough. I cut down on him with the gun, and made him get his hands up. He was scared, but not too scared.”

“And what did Martha do?”

“She gave him the hypo.”

“And then what?”

“Then, I guess he came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t shoot. Anyway he made a swing at Martha, and clipped her one that knocked off her glasses, and it gave her a jolt.”

“And you shot?” Mason asked.

“Not me, brother. I got sore when he pasted Martha. I hauled off and hit him.”

“With the hand that was holding the gun?”

“No. I tossed the gun away when I pasted him... Damn little shrimp, hitting a woman. I should have broken his jaw. As it was, I knocked him down and he broke his glasses — we thought we’d picked up all the pieces. Guess we missed some.”

“And then what happened?” Mason asked.

“He wouldn’t talk for a while, then finally he got to talking. At first I thought that magazine article was on the up-and-up. He said he was just about ready to call the whole thing off and go to Blane and make a clean breast of it He said that he didn’t have the nerve for a job like that, that every time he hid the stuff he was afraid the police would find it. He said he’d hid it in his house first. Then he’d got nervous and gone up to the tunnel with it, buried it in the end of the old mining tunnel. That had been only an hour or so ago, but he’d got nervous before he’d driven half a mile and began thinking of other and better places. He said after he’d hidden the stuff in the tunnel it seemed like any school kid would have picked the tunnel as a place to look.

“Of course, it’s easy to look back now and see what this guy was doing to us. Martha had made the mistake of telling him this drug was going to make him tell the truth. Maybe it would have if we’d given it a chance, but he out-foxed us. He pretended it had taken effect before he even felt it, and sent us on a wild-goose chase.”

“You mean you went to the tunnel?” Mason asked.

“Sure. We fell for it, hook, line and sinker. We left him there at the rock, and Martha and I went up to the tunnel. We took his spade along to dig with.”

“And you dug?”

“I’ll say we dug. I haven’t shoveled so much dirt in a year — and the lousy crook had the swag right there in his car all the time. He just outsmarted us, that’s all.”

“What did you do when you realized he’d been lying to you?” Mason asked.

“We came back to see if we could question him some more. Naturally, we couldn’t find him. He’d dusted out, lock, stock and barrel, as soon as he got rid of us. So then we came on back home.”

“Exactly where was it that you met Hardisty?”

“Right by that big granite rock. He was there with the spade. Looked like he was getting ready to do some digging. If we’d only laid low we could have caught him red-handed. It was this hypo that queered things, gave him his chance to slip one over on us.”

“And this was before dark?”

“Sure. It was late in the afternoon, but it was light, all right.”

“While you were driving up, did you meet Adele Blane on the road?”

“She drove right past us just before we made the turn off to the cabin,” Smiley said, “but she didn’t see us. She had some fellow with her.”

“Did you see anything of a clock that was buried near that—”

“Nope,” Smiley interrupted. “I read about that buried clock. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why would Hardisty want to bury a clock?”

For a long moment there was silence, then Mason said, “You came back to this house with Martha Stevens?”

“Nope. We were afraid there might be a kickback on that dope business. She put me on the interurban. I went in to Los Angeles. She was to meet me there the next night at a hotel. She’d registered, all right, but she went out again and didn’t come back. I called there and hung around for a while, but she never did show up.”

“And you didn’t go back to recover your gun?” Mason asked.

“No. I just chucked it away when he hung one on Martha. Then after I got him licked and he got started talking, I forgot all about the gun. As soon as he said he’d buried the stuff in the tunnel, Martha and I fell for it. We beat it up there. I did want to take him with us, but he acted dopey and just sat down all caved-in like, and his eyes got glassy. Martha pushed the spade at me and said to come on, that she knew where the tunnel was... Shucks, the guy had never been near the tunnel. I tell you he had the dough right there in the car with him.”

“Did you go into the cabin when you got back from the tunnel?” Mason asked.

“No. We saw Jack Hardisty’s car was gone, so we took it for granted he’d beat it. We left the spade up there, got in our car and came back.”

“How long were you up at the tunnel?”

“I don’t know, maybe an hour and a half from the time we left until we got back. It was pretty dark when we got back to the cabin.”

“How did it happen you didn’t pick up the gun, if you picked up the broken glasses?”

“We picked up the glasses right after the fight. You know how a person picks up glasses as soon as they get broken. Martha was picking up pieces of glass almost as soon as he’d knocked ’em off.”