Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

She instantly switched on the lights, slammed home the gear shift, and eased her foot back on the clutch pedal. The windshield wiper fought back fog-bred moisture. “Waiting for you,” she said. “And I’ve been there so long I’m chilled to the bone. I thought you would never come out.”

“Why didn’t you send a message? Why didn’t you telephone?”

“I was afraid to. I thought the police would have your line tapped. I was waiting where I could see you at the boat. I saw them pounce on you, and I was afraid. I ran away.”

“How did you find my flat?”

“Through Yat T’oy, of course. I’d been up there several times, helping him arrange things. And then... this...”

Clane placed his hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy, Cynthia.”

She said, “Look, Owl, I can’t drive and talk. I’m going to swing around on a side street some place where we can park. We have lots to talk about and I want to be where I can look at you without being guilty of what the speed cops have insisted is negligent driving.”

“I’m on my way to meet someone, Cynthia. It may be rather important.”

“Oh, bother that someone. You haven’t anything in your whole life that’s half as important as this, Terry.”

Abruptly she concentrated her attention entirely on driving the car. Clane felt the same thrill he had always felt when riding with her, the deft sure touch of her hand on the wheel, the daring abandon with which she slammed down the throttle to the floor boards and zipped through traffic. Now she made time through the deserted streets.

“Don’t be picked up for speeding,” Clane cautioned. “It might be embarrassing.”

“I’m watching my rear view mirror and the side streets,” she said. “Here’s a good place where we can talk.”

She swung the car in an abrupt turn and almost in the same motion selected a parking place near the curb, guided the car adroitly to its berth between painted white lines, switched off the ignition and headlights, squirmed out from behind the steering wheel, swung to face him, and raised her lips.

Clane put his arms around her, felt once more the oft-remembered warmth of her body, the fragrance of her hair. Her lips, warm and eager, were hot on his; and her arms twined around his neck, strained him to her.

“Terry,” she breathed after a moment, and as she turned her cheek, Clane felt the moisture of her tears.

“Cynthia, you’re crying.”

“You’re damn right I’m crying,” she said. “My gosh, I thought you’d never get here.”

“Cynthia, what ever possessed you to do it?”

“What?”

“Arrange Harold’s escape.”

She was silent for several seconds, then she said suddenly, “Let’s talk about it in order, Owl.”

“Where do we begin?”

She said firmly, “We begin with when you went away and were so damn noble that you wouldn’t marry me before you went.”

“I couldn’t have taken you with me, Cynthia, and the chances were wenty to one I’d never come back. I wanted you to be free and...”

“Oh, I know all about that,” she said impatiently. “You made it plain enough when you left.”

“And,” Clane went on keeping his eyes on the fog-shrouded sidewalk, “it turned out that I was right. You became interested in Edward Harold.”

For a long time she said nothing. Clane, looking out through the window, suddenly realized that she would say nothing until he had turned to meet her eyes. He swung his head. She was looking at him and there was enough light from the ornamental street lights to show the tears glistening on her cheeks.

“And now,” Clane went on, “you’ve done something that was typically Cynthia. You’ve done the impulsive thing, the thing that takes everyone by surprise. Who were your accomplices, Cynthia?”

She said somewhat angrily, “Is that all you have to ask?”

“What else could there be?” he asked in surprise.

“Nothing,” she said sharply and wriggled back behind the steering wheel.

“I’ve gone over the newspaper accounts of the case,” Clane said. “When you stop to analyze the evidence that connected Harold with the murder, it was all circumstantial evidence and not what you would call a robust case. The thing that brought about Harold’s conviction was the way he told his story, his denial that he had gone back to see Farnsworth.”

“Perhaps he didn’t go back,” she said with fierce loyalty to the absent friend.

“The evidence doesn’t indicate it.”

“Oh hang the evidence! People have been mistaken on identifications before.”

“Not this time, I’m afraid, Cynthia.”

She said abruptly, angrily, “All right, you have an appointment. I’ll drive you to where you want to go.”

“Cynthia,” he said, “we’ve got to straighten this out. I want to know where Harold is.”

“Why?”

“Because he has to give himself up.”

“Give himself up to be executed,” she said. “He’d rather die first and I’d rather have him. It’s better to be out in the open, shooting it out with a bunch of cops and going down with a chestful of bullets than to be dragged out of a cell like a cur being hauled out of a cage, placed in an airtight execution room, and have people leering at you through windows while you listen to the hissing of the cyanide tablets dropping into the acid and forming the gas that you’ll presently inhale. And all the time those leering eyes of the morbidly curious, looking at you through the glass slits. You, chained there to a chair, surrounded by this ring of curious eyes that can’t even give you enough privacy to meet your end decently. To hell with it! Edward would rather hole up in a building somewhere and shoot it out with the cops, and I don t blame him.”

“There’s yourself to be considered,” he said gently.

“And I don’t count either,” she said. “The trouble is with you you’re so damn right.”

“You don’t act like it now.”

“I’m not talking about now. I’m talking about when you went to the Orient. I was happy-go-lucky and impulsive, and everything in life seemed a joke. And you told me that I couldn’t live life that way, that life was serious, that it would get me down in the long run. Damn it, you’re right! But I’m not going to yield to life without a struggle. I’ll fight it all the way. I hate being logical and careful and safe and conservative and cautious and conventional. I hate the whole damn business. Do you hear me, Owl?”

“Life doesn’t care particularly whether you hate it or not,” Clane said. “Life exerts a steady pressure. You learn that causes build effects, which in turn become causes until you have a wheel.”

“Not that, Owl. I won’t let life get away with all that. Why not just laugh at life and throw cut your chips? It’s a gamble anyway. I think you develop as much character by gambling as you do by the patient, slow, plodding, mathematical way of trying to live life. Life isn’t anything that can be hoarded. It’s a force. It’s something you’re spending even when you’re trying to save it. You.. you might just as well go along with it.”

“But,” Clane pointed out, “you were trying to tell me that I had been right and life had got you down.”

“On account of... on account of you, Terry Clane.”

“In what way?”

“When you went away, my life was... All right, we won’t talk about it. You want to talk about the murder case. You want to talk about the circumstantial evidence and all that. Go ahead.”

“The point is,” Clane explained patiently, “The Supreme Court will review the case and consider that it was a case of purely circumstantial evidence, that the jury were probably unduly prejudiced by Harold’s manner on the stand and his clumsy attempt at denying that he had returned to Farnsworth’s house.”