foreach $i ($elt)

You have to declare a counter outside of the loop and increment it when needed. Also, that code will run only once since foreach expects a list and $elt isn't one. Thus, there's no need to count anything. What about (untested):

system($check . $elt);
if (1 == $? >> 8) {
  chomp $elt;
  print blah blah;
}
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If, on the other hand, $elt is a reference to an array, you may be wanting something along this lines:

my $count;
foreach $i (@$elt) {      # @$elt is an abbreviation of @{$elt} -- see
+ perlreftut
  system($check . $i);    # using $i instead of $elt
  if (1 == $? >> 8) {
    chomp $i;
    print blah blah;      # use $i here
    $count++;
  }
}
## use $count here
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UPDATE: Typo fixed "$@" -> "@$". Thanks to Errto.