Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Backward Mule

Clane said, “You had quite a stock of groceries there. Who bought those for you? The same person who established you in the warehouse in the first place?”

“What do you think?”

“I’m trying to find out what to think.”

“Find out some place else then.”

Clane was starting to say something when he heard the sound of echoing steps in the corridor. A key rattled in the lock. A burly, thicknecked man said, “Which one is Terry Clane?”

“I am,” Clane said, stepping forward.

“Out,” the man said.

“I knew they’d spring you,” Harold said. “You haven’t any hard luck.”

Clane extended his hand. “Good luck,” he said. “I’m probably merely being transferred. But here’s luck.”

After a moment Edward Harold reached out and took Clane’s hand. Clane noticed that the fingers which circled his hand, the palm which pressed against his, were wet with perspiration.

“If you see God’s blue sky again,” Edward Harold said, “tell it hello for me,” and then deliberately turned his back on Clane and the turnkey.

“What is it?” Clane asked as they walked down the corridor.

“You are being sprung,” the turnkey said.

“How?”

“Some Chinese girl and a lawyer. That’s one thing about the Chinese. When they get lawyers, they get good ones. Long as I’ve been here, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chink show up with a cheap lawyer. He either has none at all, or else he gets the best, regardless of what it costs. Don’t ever kid yourself the Chinese ain’t shrewd. Cripes! I’ve seen lots of fellows that thought they were wise guys show up with mouthpieces that we knew all about. Damn ambulance chasers. The guys were just throwing their money away, falling for a line of bull some cheap shyster passed out. But you take the Chinks. Boy, when they show up, they really have lawyers. And you’ve got one this time that’s the best.”

“Who?” Clane asked.

“Carl Marcell.”

“Never heard of him,” Clane said.

“Where you been the last few years, buddy?”

“I’ve been in the Orient.”

“I guess that accounts for it. Right this way.”

The turnkey unlocked the door at the end of the corridor, flung back the heavy steel casement, and Clane found himself in a waiting room near the entrance corridor of the jail. Chu Kee and Sou Ha were there, and a tall impressive man with a profile of granite, and silver-gray hair which swept back in well-kept waves from a high forehead.

“Clane?” the man asked.

Terry nodded.

Chu Kee beamed at Clane.

The tall man put out his hand, enveloped Clane’s in a muscular grip. “I’m Carl Marcell,” he said. “I’ve been retained to act for you. I’ve threatened a writ of habeas corpus, and they’ve turned you loose rather than put a charge against you.”

“And how about Sou Ha?”

“I sprang her an hour ago,” Marcell said. “I had a little more trouble with you. They tried to hang on to you until the last minute. They really hated to let you go.”

A door opened. Inspector Malloy appeared, his face positively beaming. “Well, well, well. You’re leaving us, Mr. Clane. That’s fine. That’s really splendid. I’m sorry we had to detain you. It was just one of those things. But you have Mr. Marcell in your camp, and he’ll take care of you. Yes, indeed, Mr. Clane, he’ll take care of you.”

“No hard feelings,” Clane said, smiling.

Carl Marcell said, “You were only holding him. There was no charge booked against him. You had no right to put him in a cell with a convicted felon.”

“Well, now, of course,” Malloy beamed, “accommodations are pretty hard to get in even the best hotels. And you take a hotel such as we run, on short notice that way it’s sometimes difficult to provide just the accommodations we want. But it’s all right now. We didn’t intend to keep your client too long.”

“No longer than it took a lawyer to threaten you with a habeas corpus.”

Malloy merely grinned.

The jail doors swung open and the little party debouched into the night, meeting the stares of some curious pedestrians who gazed first casually then with eager curiosity as someone pointed out the tall figure of Marcell, the famous criminal lawyer, flanked by the Chinese man and woman on the one side and a Caucasian on the other.

Clane heard one of the men say in a low voice, “Probably opium. He...” And then Sou Ha was opening the door of Chu Kee’s big limousine and Clane was helping her into the car, then getting in beside her.

Carl Marcell gravely shook hands.

“You’re not coming with us?” Clane asked.

“No,” the lawyer said, “I have my own car. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble, Mr. Clane; if you do, call me. Here’s a card which has my office number on it, and that number up in the right-hand corner is my night number, a private phone where you can get me at any hour of the day or night. Just don’t give it out to anyone. It’s a number I reserve for my important clients.”

“And your fees?” Clane asked.

Chu Kee said in Chinese, “What has been done is a matter of friendship.”

Marcell was more explicit. “I don’t suppose your friend cares about telling you all of the details, but... well, there is no charge.”

Sou Ha added by way of explanation, “Father keeps Mr. Marcell retained by the year.”

Clane showed his surprise.

“For situations of just this sort,” Sou Ha said.

Then Marcell was moving back toward his car, walking with the grace of a man whose business it is to impress spectators; and Sou Ha, behind the wheel of the limousine, was warming up the motor. A moment later they glided smoothly away from the curb and out into the traffic of the city; and Terry Clane, watching the life flowing past him, could not but contrast his lot with the plight of the man whom he had left in the jail cell to be subjected to the final indignity of being stripped of his outer clothing and pushed into a small circular chamber in which presently there would be the hiss of escaping gas.

Clane’s thoughts were interrupted by Sou Ha’s penitent voice. “I am clumsy, O First-Born. I am so slow in my mind as to be unworthy of your teachings. I failed to outwit this police person.”

“That police person,” Clane said, “is plenty hard to outwit. Just what happened?”

“I do not know when he first became suspicious,” Sou Ha said. “Perhaps it was almost immediately. But he took me to where I wished to go. It was only as I was getting out of the car that he suggested he had better inspect the bundle. To have protested would have made him only the more suspicious so I pretended that it was only the outside of the bundle he wished to see, and I held it for his inspection, then pushed his hand against it so that he could see that only clothes were on the inside. I said, ‘Dirty clothes. Me wash.’ But it didn’t fool him. He said, ‘Well, let’s take a look at the dirty clothes,’ and right then I knew the jig was up.”

“Was it bad?” Clane asked.

“Not bad. Only they wouldn’t let me telephone unless I talked in English.”

“Wouldn’t they let you phone your father?”

“I suppose so, but that I dared not do because of the Painter Woman. The officer was smart enough to know that I must have taken the place of the Painter Woman.”

“Then how did your father know where you were?” Clane asked.

Sou Ha said, “When the hours passed and I did not return, my father communicated with the lawyer.”

Chu Kee sat with his hands folded in his lap, beaming out through the windshield, his alert little eyes missing no detail of the traffic, his ears taking in the conversation. But there was nothing in the expression of his countenance to indicate that he understood what was being said.