I said, “What about the four prints that you’d taken? To whom did you deliver them?”
“The one that ordered them, of course,” Bessie said. “You mean Lucille?”
“That’s right... Say, you know about her?”
“Uh huh.”
“Where do you fit in on it?”
I said, “I was just picking up some more prints and trying to check upon what happened. You don’t happen to have Lucille’s address, do you?”
“You don’t happen to have another twenty-five bucks on you, do you?”
I said, “You girls seem to be always looking for the side of the bread that has the butter.”
“What’s everyone else always looking for?” Bessie asked.
“You tell me,” I said.
She grinned, and said, “Virtually everybody tips me a dollar, making it an even five dollars for the four pictures. Some of the smart ones try to add fifty cents or a dollar to it and want to own you.”
I said, “All I’m looking for is an address.”
“Give it to him, Elsie,” she said.
Elsie extended her hand.
I gave her another two tens and a five, mentally groaning at the thought of what would happen when Bertha saw my expense account.
Elsie opened the book again and gave me the address: “Lucille Hollister, 1925 Mono Drive, care Mrs. Arthur Marbury.”
Elsie asked me casually, “You got a card with you, Mister?”
“Sure,” I said.
She held out her hand.
I said, “That’ll be ten bucks.”
“Where do you get that noise?”
I said, “I figure you’ll sell that for twenty-five to the next person that comes along. I’m willing to leave you a fifteen-dollar profit.”
The girls looked at each other, then laughed.
Bessie said, “Come on, Elsie, get started. I’ve got to start running those pictures through. It’s going to be a mess. Looks like we’re going to make a killing tonight. We’ve got to get back to the Red Rooster and deliver that twenty dollars’ worth of pictures and then get back here fast. We won’t have time to make the Wishing Well.”
I said, “Okay, I’ll ride over with you, then bail out.”
“I wish you’d give me your name,” Bessie said wistfully.
“I know you do.”
She laughed and said, “You’re nice. Since you won’t tell us who you are, you can help me with this batch on the way.”
“With both hands,” Elsie said acidly.
Eleven
I picked up the agency crock at the Red Rooster.
Rolling along toward Mono Drive, I noticed headlights in the rear mirror. They were quite a way behind. I stepped on the throttle a bit and moved along at a pretty good clip.
The headlights kept behind at just about the same distance, too far really to be following me.
I got more speed out of the car.
As a matter of driving habit, I glanced at the petrol gauge on the dashboard.
The hand showed the tank was empty; yet I’d filled up before starting out for the Red Rooster.
Of course, it could have been that the gauge had developed trouble. In any event, this was a good time to use up what petrol I had as fast as it would flow through the carburettor.
I put the throttle down to the floorboards.
I was on a lovely stretch of road cutting across the back part of the city. It travelled through an industrial centre with a few factories scattered around, spur tracks crossing the highway at intervals, vast vacant spaces — little traffic and lots of darkness.
The agency car coughed and went dead, picked up again for a few seconds, then coughed, spluttered, and this time quit for keeps.
I had the door open by the time the car came to a stop. There was no traffic anywhere along the road, but behind me those steady, persistent lights coming with dogged purpose.
I looked around and didn’t like what I saw. Over to one side was a factory, standing dark and silent, surrounded by a high fence that had signs placed along it at regular intervals, “Keep Out.” There was a spur track, with some box cars standing on the siding just clear of the road. Farther down, I could see a storage yard with a high board fence blotting out all view of what was inside of it.
The logical thing of course was to stick around the car and beg some motorist for a push to the nearest petrol station.
I didn’t feel that it was advisable to do the logical thing.
I looked around for a good place to hide. There wasn’t any.
I ran across the road and climbed under the rods of one of the box cars. I huddled up in the shadows.
It was a damn poor hiding place.
Headlights danced shadows along the road, then the car that had been rolling along behind me came to a stop. I heard doors open and slam shut. A man’s voice called, “Hello, what’s the trouble? Everything okay?”
In the night silence I could hear the smooth running of the other motor.
A second voice, a woman’s voice, said, “He’s around here someplace. He must have run out of petrol. He was right ahead of us.”
I kept stiffly silent under the freight car. The pair prowled around. I could see their shadows and occasionally get a glimpse of their legs. The man’s legs were stocky and muscular; the feminine voice went with a pair of legs that would have made a swell stocking ad, but her voice was hard.
The man said, “That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. He was right ahead of us, wasn’t he, Babe?”
“Yes. It must have been this car. He can’t have gone far. How about those freight cars?”
“Why the hell would he jump out of his automobile and crawl in a freight car?” the man asked irritably. “Naturally he’d do what anyone else does when he runs out of petrol. He’d have stood by the car and waited for someone to come along. When he saw our car coming he should have flagged us down and asked for help.”
“Well, he didn’t do what he should have done,” the woman said, and then added, “Guess why?”
“We weren’t close enough to him for him to get frightened.”
“Then he’s still in the car,” the woman said sarcastically.
I could hear the man climbing up the iron rungs on the freight cars. Then I heard his steps along the runway on the roofs. The woman went along the ground, looking in between the cars.
I slid out from my place of concealment, kept close to the shadows and sprinted forward along the cars.
I could hear the motor on their automobile purring away with a sound that was smoothly reassuring.
From behind me. I heard the man say, “Well, let’s start looking under the cars. He isn’t on top.”
“He has to be around here somewhere,” the woman said angrily. “He couldn’t have climbed one of the fences, and... Hey, there he is!”
The man yelled, then both of them started to run.
I jumped in the other car, slammed the car door shut, snapped the car in gear, and started moving.
I’d gone almost fifty yards before I saw a series of luminous pin-pricks in the darkness behind me. Then suddenly the window in the rear radiated into myriad cracks and the rear-view mirror didn’t do me any good.
I slowed down when I first hit the crossroad, turned to the left, then turned to the right on the next crossroad. I wound up in a residential district and located a tram before I abandoned the car. Then I took the precaution of looking at the licence number and the registration certificate which was attached to the steering column.
The car was registered in the name of Samuel Lowry and the address of the certificate of registration was 968 Rippling Avenue.
I flagged the tram and rode on it until I saw a taxi standing by the kerb. I got off the car and picked up the taxi. I gave the taxi driver the number of 1810 Mono Drive.