The Count of 9 Author:Erle Stanly Gardner under pen name A.A. Fair I tried to grin but my face was too lopsided with swelling, and one eye was pretty well puffed up. Inspector Giddings looked me over the way a trainer might look at a battered up prize fighter to see whether he should throw in the towel. "You look as though you took the full count," he said. — "Only the count of nine," I told him. — "Your ears w... more »ere bad, Donald. You've been down and now you're out. Out. O-U-T We don't like to have smart private dicks playing around in murder cases. Now talk!"
"Well," I said,"it all starts with a model who poses for artists and photographers in the nude."
"That's one thing about Donald," Lieutenant Sellers said to Giddings. "If there's a babe in the picture, she starts unloading on his shoulder, and Donald's really good at taking it from there." Then he turned back to me.