Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

Harold’s head drooped down until his eyes were fixed in unwinking scrutiny on the floor of the cell.

There was a long period of silence, a period which would have been awkward under any other circumstances. But in the jail there was no criterion for the passing of time. Here human beings were frozen into a static existence which left them divorced from life itself. They had the semblance of free and independent agencies but there was no place for them to go, nothing to do. Time moved on, but time ceased to have any significance because time would lead to no change. It was as though some motion-picture machine had suddenly broken down, leaving the images of men projected upon a screen. The attitude was one of action. The external manifestation of the figures was that of animation, but that appearance was only an arbitrary illusion. The figures remained stationary on the screen. The figure that was walking kept his leg advanced, his foot upraised, but the step he was about to take never materialized.

Already the grip of the jail had impressed itself upon these men so that the long minutes of silence seemed to call for no attempt at alleviating the conversational inactivity. There in the jail cell, silence and inaction were normal. One could resist them with spasmodic bits of conversation, with an occasional physical motion, but those were gestures of futility. In the end, the silence and the inaction were destined to dominate the scene.

“You know,” Harold said at length, “for a while I thought... I thought you were sort of a god. Then, after I had started to worship you, I came to hate you.”

Clane sat silent.

Harold kept his head down, his chin on his chest. “Hell,” he said, “what’s the use? I’m finished. My race is run. I worshiped you and then I came to hate you because you were standing between Cynthia and me. You have done something to Cynthia that can never be undone. You have impressed your personality so indelibly upon her that you have made her a part of you. You can separate, you can even fight, but you can’t resist that peculiar blending. You’re welded together in some way.”

“In other words,” Clane said, “you’re jealous. And your jealousy has distorted your perspective.”

“Of course I’m jealous. I was jealous. I’ve nothing to be jealous of any more. A dead man can’t have a wife.”

“You’re not dead yet.”

“I’m legally dead.”

“Nonsense.”

Once more silence dominated the scene, a silence steeped in the sticky sweet smell of jail antiseptic. Night had fallen and this wing of the big jail was silent save for an occasional rumbling of noise which came from one of the tanks up near the front. A big incandescent blazed down from the ceiling. Soon it would be switched out and only a small night light would furnish dim illumination, the forces of darkness allying themselves with those of silence to finish their work of crushing the human initiative of the inmates.

“I suppose I did make a mistake,” Harold said. “I certainly got my defense all messed up. I lied to my lawyer and that’s always bad. After all, it was really you that did it.”

“I did?” Clane asked in surprise.

“You remember that figure you gave Cynthia, the figure of the man on the mule?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how much of the real philosophy of that Cynthia ever got. She’s a spontaneous creature. You don’t associate her with philosophy. She’s an opportunist, an extravert.”

“I know,” Clane said.

“Lovable because she has no need for philosophy. She lives her philosophy. She’s keyed to the universe in some way. She is life. What I’m trying to say is that life manifests itself through her and life is immortal. Life is spontaneous. Life is perpetual youth. And Cynthia is a priestess of that... Oh, hell, I’m getting all balled up trying to tell you something that you can’t express in words.”

“I know what you mean,” Clane said.

Harold was silent again, then after a minute or two went on as though there had been no break in the conversation. “She told me something about the philosophy of that figure on the mule. You’d told her about it and she’d remembered just enough of it to make it impress itself on my mind. I kept thinking over what she’d told me, adding to it. Perhaps building up something of my own ideas in connection with it until it seemed... well, it seemed something of a philosophy of life that was completely satisfying, a soul food which contained all the vitamins. Damned if I know why I’m talking to you this way, but you’re probably the last man I will ever see who will have the ability to understand what I’m trying to say. Despite the fact that I hate your guts.”

“You don’t need to hate me,” Clane said.

“I do, and don’t come back with any of that sop about having no hatred for me, only pity. You’ve stepped in and succeeded where I’ve failed. I thought I had Cynthia’s love before I learned that she didn’t have any love left to give. Her heart was yours. She thought she had taken it back from you, but she hadn’t. She couldn’t.”

Clane said, “As to that, I’m quite sure you’re wrong.”

“And I’m sure I’m right.”

“I know Cynthia pretty well.”

“You knew her pretty well. How much have you seen of her in the last three years?”

“Nothing.”

“There you are,” Harold said. “You planted a seed. It germinated and grew — just as a man could stick a seed in a flower pot and walk away and say, ‘See, there’s nothing but barren soil in that flower pot.’ But three months later he’d come back and find that it had sprouted a rose bush which had come into blossom. I tell you I’ve been with Cynthia. I studied her. I’ve seen her and I know.”

Clane sat silent and the other seemed to have no feeling of resentment for that silence, to consider it as purely normal.

“You can believe it or not,” Harold went on, “but I liked Farnsworth. Farnsworth was an interesting chap. He had a lot on the ball. And he had a lot of thoughts that many people don’t have. The day Farnsworth was killed I went to see him, and there was something on Horace Farnsworth’s mind. He tried to talk to me and couldn’t. He bogged down. It was something that had him on the ropes. I asked him if it was about Cynthia’s dough, asked him if he’d lost it. He said, no, that her money was all right. And then he told me that he’d got himself in a jam where there was no way out. He said he was licked. I couldn’t get out of him what it was. But I did learn that he was right on the ragged edge. He was... hell, Clane, the guy was getting ready to commit suicide.”

“So what did you do?” Clane asked.

“I told him to wait right there, that I was going to be back, and I went out to Cynthia’s and got that figure of the man on the mule. I wanted to go back and talk to Horace Farnsworth about it. That philosophy has steadied me down in many a tight spot. The figure got to mean a lot to me. The old guy was a friend of mine, an adviser, a father-confessor. I was hoping that I could talk to Horace Farnsworth and make him understand something of what I saw in the figure.”

Harold ceased talking, and the silence of the cell enveloped them.

Clane shifted his position on the stool. Harold sat with his elbows on his knees, motionless, brooding, dreaming of the past and of the strange whim of fate which had trapped him in the meshes of a first-degree murder charge, left him an outcast among his fellows, a man condemned to death.

“Funny thing,” Harold said, musingly, after a while, “the way Fate has tricked things around. There I was wanting to go to Farnsworth to give him some sort of a philosophical fife, and as a result I have to die.”