Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

It was a small one-story warehouse. The front part contained a room which could be used as an office, and behind this was the warehouse proper. Here were tiers of packed cases wrapped with braided strips of flexible bamboo bearing Chinese characters and the stenciled label “Eastern Art Import and Trading Company, San Francisco, U.S.A.” There was about the place the peculiar mingling of the musty smell of a warehouse with the smell of the Orient.

Terry Clane walked to the doorway of the office while Cynthia walked out toward the back of the warehouse, and his eyes, trained to take in details, photographed upon his mind the things which he saw.

The office had been cut off from the rest of the warehouse building by a partition, and occupied the entire east side of the building. The warehouse door was on the north. Opening it, one entered the main warehouse. A few feet farther on and to the left was a door which opened into the partition dividing the warehouse and the office. In the southeast corner of that office room was a wall telephone. On the south side of the room, moved out a few feet from the wall, was a table. Three or four chairs were scattered about the place. In the center of the room was another small table covered with old magazines. On the northwest side of the room and directly back of the door from the warehouse was a washroom, the door standing open. It contained a wash bowl and a toilet. Back of that and in the northeast corner of the room was an army cot, a folding canvas affair, on which were several army blankets. Another blanket had been folded over so as to serve as a hard makeshift pillow. On the floor were canned goods piled against the wall so that the labels were plainly visible — soups, fruit juices, canned beans, canned meat, vegetables, canned milk, and a big glass jar of coffee. A big waste basket was partially filled with empty tins. Over on the table at the south end of the room was a portable electric plate, a small aluminum frying pan, some knives and forks, a can opener, a cup and saucer, and a coffee pot.

Clane took another step, then came to a startled halt.

Just to the east of the table, lying so that the feet were pointed toward the door to the warehouse and the head toward the southeast corner of the room, was the body of a man, lying face down. And from that body a pool of thick blood seeped in an ever-widening circle.

“Cynthia,” he called over his shoulder, “this way, quick. Don’t touch anything.”

He kept his eyes busy while he waited for her to join him.

The tall oblong windows in the office were so covered with dust and cobwebs as to make it almost impossible to see out of them. They were all closed with the exception of a window in the southwest corner, which was raised wide open and through which the damp, fog-filled atmosphere penetrated into the room, giving the place a dank, clammy chill.

Clane turned as he felt the pressure of Cynthia’s body against his back, saw her peering over his shoulder. “Terry... Terry, what is it?... Oh, for God’s sake, is...”

“Take it easy,” Clane cautioned. “There’s a body on the floor.”

“Of course there is. I... Terry, let me pass, let me in there, I say!”

Terry pushed her back.

“Terry, if that’s Edward, if...”

“Get back,” Clane commanded.

“Terry, I must, I have to...”

“You don’t have to do any such thing. Keep your hands at your sides.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t afford to touch anything. You can’t afford to leave a single fingerprint here. Do you understand?”

The expression on his face, the earnestness of his words, carried conviction. “Oh, Terry,” she said, “I have to... Let me go to him.”

Clane shook his head. “Take a careful look, Cynthia. Is that Edward Harold?”

“I... I can’t see from here. Oh, Owl, is he dead?”

“I’m going to find out,” Clane said. “You stand right there. Don’t touch anything. Don’t move out of that doorway. Above all, don’t touch any object.”

Terry Clane, on the other hand, exercised no care to keep from leaving fingerprints. He rested his hand on the back of a chair, moved around the little square table, then walked over to stand by the larger table where he could look almost directly down on the body.

“It’s George Gloster,” he called out.

Cynthia said, “Oh!” and that was all.

Clane bent over the table now, looking down at the knife and fork, the spoons, the cup and saucer, the cooking utensils. They were all clean and polished, indicating that they had been carefully washed and dried after they had been used the last time. On a corner of the table was a small ash tray, fairly well filled with cigarette ends and burned matches. Beside the ash tray was a pocket-size magazine, opened and placed face down on the table as though the reader had wanted to mark the place from which he was reading.

Nearby on the table was the end of a cigarette and a long groove was burned in the finish of the table. A chair had been pushed back from the table and was almost against the wall, separated by some two feet from the edge of the table. It was, Clane noticed, the only chair which had a padded seat.

On the desk was a clean, oblong desk blotter and impressed upon the buff unstained freshness of this blotter were the prints of four fingers, marked in what seemed to be grimy oil dust, the sort of dust which would accumulate over the years in a city warehouse. The print of the index finger was broader than the others, that of the little finger so small as to be little more than a dot.

Clane turned, walked back to Cynthia, said, “Okay, Cynthia, this is where you get out.”

“And what do you do?”

“I notify the police.”

“Terry, you can’t. You keep out of this... You...”

“There is every possibility,” Clane interrupted, “that the police have my telephone tapped. In that event they know George Gloster asked me to meet him here. For you to be here would be suicidal. Police would claim that you had secreted Edward Harold here, that Gloster surprised you, and you shot him to keep him from notifying police.”

“Oh, Owl. Why that’s a nightmare.”

“A nightmare,” he said, “that will come true if the police ever know you’ve been here. You should never have arranged that escape. Now you have a murder case of your own on your hands.”

“Owl, you’ll have to let me tell you all about this, how it happened that I...”

“Not now,” he interrupted impatiently. “Get on your way. I’ll give you ten seconds and then I’m going to notify the police.”

“Owl, I can’t. You mustn’t. We...”

Clane gravely took her elbow, piloted her out toward the door that led from the warehouse on the north. “Did you touch anything after you came in?”

“I don’t think so. Yes, the doorknob on the inside. I...”

Clane took his handkerchief, carefully wiped the inner surface of the doorknob, held it open and escorted her to her car. He held the car door open, helped her in, then slammed the door shut. “On your way,” he said.

“Look, Owl, can’t you...”

Clane turned and deliberately walked away. Cynthia watched him a moment, then switched on the ignition. Clane heard the whir of the starting mechanism, then the pulsing of the motor. A moment later the lights came on and the car slipped smoothly away into the fog-filled night, leaving Clane standing in the deserted side street surrounded by the buildings of the warehouse district, dark, forlorn, gloomy buildings from the eaves of which the fog moisture dropped to the ground in a steady cadence of mournful dripping.

Clane walked over to examine the car which was parked off the road. It was a closed car, a two-tone club coupé. The fog moisture had collected in beads on the windshield and on the hood. Two little rivulets of water, fed by this moisture, had dropped down the windshield and down the hood, trickling to the ground in vertical lines. Clane noted the license number of the automobile. He dared not open the door to look at the registration certificate.