Crows Can't Count Page 5

  “That’s twelve thousand a year.”

  “That’s right.”

  Abruptly Bertha sat up straight in her chair. “How many years?” she asked.

  “Around twenty-two.”

  “How much was in the trust?”

  “It was appraised at eighty thousand.”

  Bertha tilted her head back and did mental arithmetic.

  “And,” I said, “the compensation of the trustees has to come out of that also.”

  “Then there must be a terrific income,” Bertha said.

  “There’s a gold mine which keeps right on doing its stuff. And I think Harry Sharples is going to be back.”

  Bertha was rubbing her hands avariciously. Her eyes glittered. “Donald darling, you do say the nicest things.”

  Chapter Eight:—THE RAZZLE-DAZZLE

  BERTHA COOL HAD LOCKED HER DESK and gone home for the night. I was sitting in the outer office talking with Elsie Brand.

  “You need an assistant, Elsie.”

  “I’m getting along all right. Gosh, Donald, it’s so good to have you back in the office. You don’t know what it means.”

  She looked at me and then looked away quickly. Her face flushed slightly.

  I said, “It’s meant more work.”

  She laughed nervously. “Of course it has. You’re the one that brings in the business.”

  “That isn’t what I meant. I meant that it’s made more work for you.”

  “I’m glad to do it.”

  “There’s no reason why you should. You can’t sit there and pound that typewriter to death eight hours a day. I think I’ll tell Bertha you have to have an assistant.”

  “I’m doing all right, Donald. Some days I get behind but usually there’ll be a break and I get a chance to catch up.”

  “An assistant,” I went on. “And I think I’ll let the assistant take care of Bertha’s work and you’ll be my secretary.”

  “Donald! Bertha would have a fit.”

  “In that way,” I went on, “you’ll get a lot more rest. Bertha is always sending out those damn form letters which she insists must be individually typed. It takes too much time and energy.”

  “They bring in business.”

  “What sort of business?” I said. “Little penny ante cases. We’re after the big stuff now. Okay, I’m going to fix it up.”

  “Bertha will have a stroke.”

  “Let her have it, she—”

  The telephone rang.

  Elsie Brand looked questioningly at me. I said, “Let it go, Elsie. No, wait a minute. It may be Sharples yelling for help. Let’s see who it is.”

  Elsie picked up the receiver, said, “It’s for you, Donald.”

  I took over and heard a well modulated, incisive voice at the other end. “This is Mr. Donald Lam?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Of the firm of Cool and Lam, confidential investigations?”

  “Correct. What can I do for you?”

  “This,” the voice said, “is Benjamin Nuttall. You called on me earlier in the day with the statement that a certain emerald pendant had been stolen. I’d like to talk with you about it.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You said you hadn’t seen the pendant and that was enough for me.”

  “Exactly,” Nuttall said dryly, “but the situation has changed somewhat now.”

  “So what?”

  “So I want to discuss the matter in greater detail with you.”

  I said, “I have a pretty good imagination but I can’t think of any change in the situation which would lead me to discuss with you the matter of an emerald pendant which you said you had never seen.”

  “Well, then, try this one,” Nuttall said dryly. “Sergeant Sam Buda is sitting across the desk from me and he’s asking the questions.”

  “Okay,” I said dryly, “five minutes and I’ll be up. Tell Buda I’m on my way.”

  I hung up.

  “What is it?” Elsie Brand asked.

  “In case Bertha should get in touch with you, I’m going up to Nuttall’s. Sam Buda is there and Benjamin Nuttall didn’t have sense enough to keep his trap closed. Now I’ve got to do a little explaining.”

  “Can you do it?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell until I try.”

  “Will you tell them the truth?” she asked apprehensively.

  I said, “Truth is a pearl of great price.”

  “Well?”

  “And isn’t there a proverb about not casting pearls before swine?”

  She was worried. “Donald, don’t get into trouble.”

  “I have to get into trouble every so often so I can remember the technique of getting out. You’d better get in touch with Bertha and tell her to keep herself out of circulation for the time being, until I can catch up with her and get our stories so they jibe.”

  “What’s your story going to be, Donald?”

  “I’d tell you if I knew. I don’t. It depends on whether Nuttall has said anything about Peter Jarratt.”

  “And if he has?”

  “If he has, I’m going to let Peter Jarratt, investment broker, do most of the talking. Get hold of Bertha and tell her to get out of circulation. I’m on my way.”

  I made time to the Nuttall jewelry company. A radio cop was waiting in the car outside. He took me in through the outer door. The Nuttall watchman on the inside turned me over to a guard who took me up the stairs to Nuttall’s office.

  Nuttall, Sergeant Buda, and Peter Jarratt were sprawled out in chairs smoking and saying nothing. The atmosphere of the room was heavy with smoky silence and the attitude of the men in the room was that of being in a dejected deadlock. I was reminded of the way jurors sit and look at each other when they can’t agree on a verdict and the judge won’t discharge them.

  “Hello, fellows,” I said.

  Sergeant Buda grunted a greeting, turned to Nuttall and said, “Tell him what you’ve told me.”

  Nuttall chose his words carefully. He acted as though he wanted to caution me against saying too much.

  “Earlier today,” he said in his painfully precise articulation, “this gentleman appeared and stated that he wished to see me upon a matter of prime importance. I talked with him. I asked to see his credentials and was shown credentials indicating that he was a private detective by the name of Lam and a member of the firm of—”

  “Forget it,” Buda interrupted impatiently. “Get down to brass tacks. What happened?”

  “He asked me if I had seen or knew anything about a certain emerald pendant,” Nuttall went on. “He illustrated the shape and design of the pendant by showing me rather a crude sketch. I asked him why he’d come to me and he said that it was because he understood I specialized in emeralds.”

  “Go on,” Buda said, “tell us the rest of it. Why did he say he was interested?”

  “Now that,” Nuttall said, “is something I cannot remember precisely. I don’t remember whether he was attempting to locate the pendant for a client or not. But I got the impression that there was, perhaps, a domestic entanglement somewhere in the background.”

  Buda turned to me. “What’s the low-down? Spill it.”

  “That’s just about it.”

  “What reason did you give him?”

  “I don’t think I gave him any.”

  “He thinks you did but he can’t remember it.”

  I grinned and said, “That’s the way I try to leave them. I talked fast and pulled a razzle-dazzle. I wasn’t here to give him any reasons. I was here to find whether he had seen that emerald pendant.”

  Buda chewed on his cigar and looked at me with eyes that were half hostile. “All right, try giving me a razzle-dazzle and see what it gets you. Why were you looking for that emerald pendant?”

  I said, “I won’t try giving you a razzle-dazzle, Sergeant. I’ll tell you the truth. A client wanted me to get the information.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll have to ask the client.”
/>
  “Harry Sharples?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  Buda mouthed the cigar and jerked his head at Nuttall. “Go on, let’s hear the rest of it again.”

  Nuttall said, “At the time I advised this young man quite truthfully that I’d had no information about a pendant such as he had described. Later on, however, Mr. Jarratt, whom I have known slightly, came in with such a pendant for an appraisal. I suggested to him that before I even committed myself on an appraisal, he had better get in touch with Mr. Lam and find out what it was that Cool and Lam wanted—what their interest in the matter was.”

  “That’s right,” Jarratt agreed with an effusive nodding of his head.

  “And where did you get the pendant?” Buda asked Jarratt.

  “From Mr. Robert Cameron. He asked me to have it appraised.”

  Buda chewed some more on the soggy end of his cigar, then banged it into a cuspidor. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  No one said anything.

  “I’m giving you a chance to tell your stories all together,” Buda said, addressing no one in particular, “so that no one can cover up at the expense of the others. On the other hand, that gives you all an opportunity to team up. If I find out that’s happened, I’m not going to like it.”

  We all kept quiet.

  “Ever done any business for Cameron before?” Buda asked Jarratt, shooting the question at him as fast and as unexpectedly as a fighter jabbing out a quick left.

  Jarratt raised his eyes so they were looking at the wall a couple of feet above Buda’s head. He frowned as though trying to bring back a hazy recollection and said. “I have met Mr. Cameron several times before. I may have done something else for him. I must have, or he wouldn’t have come to me for an appraisal. But no matter how I cudgel my brain, Sergeant, I simply can’t recall what other business I’ve done for him. It may come to me later.”

  “Just what is your business?” Buda asked.

  “Well, I am something of an intermediary. I handle expensive pieces for persons who have made loans and find it necessary to sell the collateral. And, of course, at times for clients who are financially embarrassed but who can’t afford to appear personally in the picture.”

  “Sort of a glorified pawnbroker?”

  “No, no. I carry no accounts myself. I act only as intermediary. I naturally have at my disposal a list of places where quality jewelry can be disposed of, and I know something about jewelry myself. Naturally I have to. I can’t afford to let a client be cheated in such matters.” “And Cameron came to you and asked you to get the best price you could for this pendant?”

  “Asked to have it appraised, which is, of course, different.”

  “But in your line of work, it leads to the same thing?” “Sometimes.”

  “Usually?”

  “Yes.”

  Buda whirled to me. “I suppose you were just making a general shotgun tour of the jewelry stores?”

  I didn’t walk into that trap. “On the contrary, Nuttall’s was the first and only place where I called.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have time to get to the others before this other matter came up.”

  “What other matter?”

  “This one.”

  “You mean Sharples?”

  “Our trip together to see Cameron.”

  Buda said irritably, “By God, you are giving me a razzle-dazzle. You’re trying to leave me with the impression that you let your hair down, but you haven’t told me a damn thing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Buda said, “We can stay here all night if we have to. You know where that pendant was found, Lam. I wanted to check up on it. I had my men cover the leading jewelry stores. None of them had ever seen it. Then we came to Nuttall. Nuttall gave us the lead to Jarratt, and then somewhat tardily remembered you. Now then, you were in here asking questions about this pendant. Why?”

  I said, “I’ll tell you as much as I can, Sergeant. That pendant was an heirloom. It belonged to a woman. Someone who is fond of that woman realized that she didn’t have it any more. He wanted to find out what had become of it.”

  “Why?”

  I said, “Suppose you suddenly realized that your wife didn’t have a piece of jewelry worth a good many thousands of dollars. You’d want to find out what had happened to it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Was this a husband-and-wife affair?”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “You as good as intimated it.”

  “When?”

  “When you were asking me just now how I’d feel about my wife,” Buda said irritably.

  I said, “That was just a question.”

  “Dammit!” Buda yelled. “I’m asking the questions!”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Was this a husband and wife?”

  I frowned and said, “Well, now, it could have been. I didn’t get the impression that it was at the time, but I’m afraid I can’t exclude that possibility. He didn’t say she was his wife.”

  “Well,” Buda roared at me, “did he say she was not his wife?”

  “No, Sergeant, I’m positive he didn’t say that.”

  “Oh, nuts!” Buda said. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Did you have the impression that it was blackmail?”

  “I think my client thought he would like to have that angle investigated.”

  “And did you investigate it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  I said, “As soon as I saw that pendant in Cameron’s possession, I felt satisfied there was no question of blackmail. In fact, as it turned out, the party in whom my man was interested had disposed of the property months before. Cameron had evidently picked it up from some other source.”

  Peter Jarratt grabbed at that explanation. He stroked the top of his bald head. “I think that’s a possibility to be considered, a very definite possibility,” he said.

  I said, “Hang it, Sergeant, I have a client to protect. I can’t go around just shooting off my face. But as a good detective, you should be able to figure the thing out from what I’ve told you. Later on today I was told that the party who had that pendant had disposed of it simply because she was tired of emeralds and wanted to get some diamonds. And the point that Mr. Jarratt is trying to make is, I believe, that Cameron picked it up merely because he was interested in emeralds.”

  “Exactly,” Jarratt said. “I feel certain that Mr. Cameron was interested in emeralds because of his long years in Colombia. I think he knew something about emeralds. I gather that the emeralds in this pendant were unusual as to depth and color. They were virtually without flaws. I appraised them as being very unusual and I asked Mr. Nuttall to confirm my appraisal.”

  “But who was offering it for sale?” Buda asked.

  “It was being appraised,” Jarratt insisted.

  “And who owned it?”

  Jarratt met his eyes. “Why, Mr. Cameron, of course.”

  “You’re positive of that?”

  “Why, I assumed he owned it.”

  “And had for how long?”

  Jarratt looked at me and said, “According to Mr. Lam, for several months.”

  Buda drummed with his fingers on the edge of the desk. “Why in hell would Cameron go to all that trouble to have the thing appraised so accurately and then pry the stones out of it?”

  I said, “Perhaps a burglar pried the stones out of it.”

  “Nuts,” Buda said. “Cameron took the stones out of the setting himself. We found a complete kit of jeweler’s tools in his table drawer. He took the stones out of the pendant and then he started hiding them. He put six of them in the crow’s cage in a place where he thought no one would find them. There were two of them on the table. That makes eight.”

  “Out of thirteen,” I said.

  “And,” Buda went on, “when we made a routine job of disconnecting the gooseneck at the bottom of the bathroom washbowl in the penthouse to see if t
he murderer had washed blood from his hands and left traces in the water, we found the other five emeralds!”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Then there aren’t any missing.”

  Buda looked at me angrily. “Now,” he said, “will you tell me why in hell Cameron took the stones out of the setting, put five of them down the washbowl, six of them in the crow’s cage, and left two of them on the table?”

  I said, “I take it you didn’t call me down here for a consultation.”

  “You’re damn right I didn’t,” Buda said. “I called you to get some facts, and I want those facts. If there’s any shenanigans about them, by God, Lam, I’ll have your license.”

  I said, “I think I’ve answered every question you’ve asked.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said sarcastically, “you’ve answered ‘em. You’ve even been voluble about it. And these other two gentlemen are being very, very helpful. But somehow I just can’t put my hand on anything.”

  I said, “You’re tired and nervous. You’ve been working too hard lately. As I see it, it’s very simple. I was called on to find out what had happened to this pendant, why it had disappeared, who had it, and why. I started out making a round of the jewelry stores—”

  “And by great good luck came to the one jewelry store that did have it first rattle out of the box, and then never called on any of the others.”

  I said, “It wasn’t quite as opportune as that, Sergeant. I knew that Nuttall had a reputation for handling high-grade emeralds so I came here first.”

  “And Nuttall told you he had it?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Nuttall was protecting his client.”

  “You mean he told you he didn’t know anything about it?”

  I said, “I mean that he gave me one hundred percent no information.”

  “Then why did you come to him if you knew he wouldn’t give you any information?”

  “I didn’t know that when I came to him.”

  “But you found it out?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then,” I said, “I was called off the job because other matters came up that were, for the moment, more important. And that’s all there was to it.”

  “But those more important matters led you to the pendant after all?”

  “Frankly, they did.”