Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

“And you?”

Her eyes went to his face. “You know how I feel,” she said. Then suddenly her eyes moved away and she added, in almost an undertone, “Or do you?”

“Smoke?” Clane asked.

“No, thanks. I will follow the custom of my race and sip tea and eat melon seeds. I feel very Oriental today, not an American at all.”

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I am fighting a tendency to retire within myself.”

“Why fight it?”

“Because I want to, I suppose.”

“And why do you want to?”

She smiled at him and said, “Because I think I will have more fun if I don’t.”

“Are you,” Clane asked, “leading up to something?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“You know that in China we have an expression — you’ve probably heard it: tie doh hahk hay.”

Clane nodded. “Meaning ‘too much of a guest’.”

“Exactly,” she said. “It is a rebuke that a hostess sometimes gives to a person who is on sufficient terms of intimacy to be accepted as one of the family, but who is acting with the formal restraint of a guest.”

“And what is the application in this instance?” Clane asked. “Do you think you are being too much of a guest?”

“No, you are.”

“I am the host.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Suppose,” Clane said, “I ask for a bill of particulars?”

“Whenever you wish us to do something, you are too diffident.”

“This particular thing may be rather tricky and dangerous, Sou Ha.”

“It’s a pleasure to feel that what one does is important. Tell me, First-Born, is it only when things concern the Painter Woman that you become so self-conscious and embarrassed about asking our aid? Is it because you feel that your friends are not our friends, particularly the friends who are closest to you?”

Clane faced the steady, inscrutable eyes. “What are you getting at, Sou Ha?”

“It would be embarrassing if she were to become your wife and thereafter felt that there was any reason why she should not avail herself of our friendship — any reason.”

“She is not my wife.”

“She may become your wife.”

“Is not that crossing a bridge before one comes to it?”

She said, “I do not like your proverbs. I prefer the proverbs of China. You say that one should not cross a bridge before one comes to it. In China we say that the wise man does not follow the road which is known to be infested with bandits. In both instances it is a case of looking ahead. We consider it a wisdom, you consider it a vice.”

Clane said, “But there is a difference between following a road on which there are bandits and following one on which there is a bridge. One should not cross the bridge before one comes to it.”

“Is it not unwise to follow a road where a bridge is out?”

Clane nodded.

“And unless one looks ahead far enough to see if the bridge is there, how is one to know when it is not there?”

Clane smiled.

“No, no, First-Born, do not smile. We are talking of Chinese proverbs, but what we have in the back of our minds goes far deeper.”

Clane said, “Look here, Sou Ha, this is no ordinary matter. This is a murder. And yet, it is much more than a murder. A man has been convicted of murder and he has escaped. Those who aid him in that escape are guilty of a very serious crime.”

“I know no man who has been convicted of murder,” Sou Ha said with a wooden face. “I know only that I have lent my coat and hat to a friend.”

“Try telling the police that in case you’re caught at it,” Clane said.

She looked at him, wooden-faced. “I will.”

“And probably get away with it at that,” Clane said. “Look here, Sou Ha, you can’t leave here now. You’ve got to wait until it gets warmer. Then you can carry your coat over your arm and... and we’ll just pray they don’t notice the discrepancy about the hat.”

“I am in no hurry.”

“But in the meantime, I have to go out.”

“I will be happy here with Yat T’oy. He and I will converse about the Chinese classics. He thinks that I am deplorably lacking in the knowledge of my fathers. How long will you be gone?”

“Perhaps an hour.”

She said, musingly, “The police will think the apartment is vacant. They have seen a man and a young woman enter. They have seen a man and a young woman leave. Now then, when you leave...”

“They will know that Yat T’oy is here.”

“Very well,” she said. “I will wait.”

“You will, of course, keep away from the windows.”

“Am I a fool?” she asked. “Or have you grown accustomed to women who lack responsibility?”

The man who opened the door in response to Terry Clane s ring was tall, rawboned, and flat-waisted. He had long arms, huge hands, big features and bushy eyebrows from underneath which dark intense eyes, that could easily become angry, surveyed his visitor with curiosity but no welcoming friendliness.

“My name is Clane. I am a friend of Cynthia Renton and I wanted to talk with you.”

Bill Hendrum stood to one side. “Come in,” he said. “I’ve heard of you.”

Clane entered the apartment. The place had the litter of masculine occupancy about it. There was a desk in the center of the room, a typewriter on the desk, several sheets of typewritten manuscript, the morning newspaper open and dropped carelessly by the side of a chair. Within convenient reaching distance were a humidor of tobacco, a crusted briar pipe, matches, an ashtray. Hendrum’s coat was draped over the back of the chair in front of the desk. The long sleeves dangled down, awkward in their emphasis on the length of the man’s arms.

Hendrum kicked a chair around with his foot. “Sit down.”

Clane seated himself. Hendrum looked at him for a second or two, then picked up the pipe, pushed tobacco into it, tamped it into place with his powerful forefinger, lit the pipe and settled back in the chair without seeming in the least to relax.

“What’s on your mind?”

Clane said, “Because of my friendship with Cynthia, I want to help Edward Harold.”

“Frankly,” Hendrum said, “I don’t see that necessarily follows.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Because of your friendship for Cynthia, you want to help Edward. One’s a woman, one’s a man. It could be just the opposite, you know.”

“You mean that because of my friendship for Cynthia, I wouldn’t want to help Edward?”

“It could be.”

“It happens that isn’t the case.”

“I just mentioned it,” Hendrum said, puffing on his pipe.

“In order to accomplish what I have in mind, it becomes necessary for me to get in touch with Edward Harold.”

“The police feel the same way.”

“This morning,” Clane said, “the Attorney General is moving the Supreme Court to dismiss the appeal of Edward Harold on the ground that the man is a fugitive from justice.”

“So what?”

“When the appeal is dismissed, he loses his opportunity to have the Supreme Court review his case.”

“Courts and lawyers!” Hendrum exclaimed in a deep, rumbling voice that indicated gathering anger. “They make me damn sick!”

“It happens that that’s the way our lives are regulated,” Clane said. “It’s the procedure by which we administer justice.”

“When you say ‘justice’,” Hendrum told him bitterly, “put it in quotes.”

“All right, I’ll put it in quotes, but It’s still our way of getting justice.”

“It’s not the only way.”

“It’s the only effective way.”

“It wasn’t very effective so far as Ed Harold was concerned.”