“Can you add anything to the occasion?” I asked her.
She smiled very sweetly at me and shook her head.
“All right, bum,” I said. “You’re pinched. Let’s go.”
Then it seemed she could add something to the occasion. She had something to say, quite a few things to say, and they were all about me. They weren’t nice things. In anger her voice was shrill, and just now she was madder than you’d think anybody could get on short notice. I was sorry for that. This job had run along peacefully and gently so far, hadn’t been marred by any rough stuff, had been almost ladylike in every particular; and I had hoped it would go that way to the end. But the more she screamed at me the nastier she got. She didn’t have any words I hadn’t heard before, but she fitted them together in combinations that were new to me. I stood as much of it as I could.
Then I knocked her over with a punch in the mouth.
“Here! Here!” Bill Garren yelled, grabbing my arm.
“Save your strength, Bill,” I advised him, shaking his hand off and going over to yank the Eveleth person up from the floor. “Your gallantry does you credit, but I think you’ll find Blanche’s real name is Tom, Dick, or Harry.”
I hauled her (or him, whichever you like) to his or her feet and asked it: “Feel like telling us about it?”
For answer I got a snarl.
“All right,” I said to the others, “in the absence of authoritative information I’ll give you my dope. If Blanche Eveleth could have been the robber except for the beard and the difficulty of a woman passing for a man, why couldn’t the robber have been Blanche Eveleth before and after the robbery by using a – what do you call it? – strong depilatory on his face, and a wig? It’s hard for a woman to masquerade as a man, but there are lots of men who can get away with the feminine role. Couldn’t this bird, after renting his apartment as Blanche Eveleth and getting everything lined up, have stayed in his apartment for a couple of days letting his beard grow? Come down and knock the job over? Beat it upstairs, get the hair off his face, and get into his female rig in, say, fifteen minutes? My guess is that he could. And he had fifteen minutes. I don’t know about the smashed nose. Maybe he stumbled going up the stairs and had to twist his plans to account for it – or maybe he smacked himself intentionally.”
My guesses weren’t far off, though his name was Fred – Frederick Agnew Rudd. He was known in Toronto, having done a stretch in the Ontario Reformatory as a boy of nineteen, caught shoplifting in his she-make-up. He wouldn’t come through, and we never turned up his gun or the blue suit, cap, and black gloves, although we found a cavity in his mattress where he had stuffed them out of the police’s sight until later that night, when he could get rid of them. But the Toplin sparklers came to light piece by piece when we had plumbers take apart the drains and radiators in apartment 702.
ONE HOUR
One
This is Mr. Chrostwaite,” Vance Richmond said.
Chrostwaite, wedged between the arms of one of the attorney’s large chairs, grunted what was perhaps meant for an acknowledgment of the introduction. I grunted back at him, and found myself a chair.
He was a big balloon of a man – this Chrostwaite – in a green plaid suit that didn’t make him look any smaller than he was. His tie was a gaudy thing, mostly of yellow, with a big diamond set in the centre of it, and there were more stones on his pudgy hands. Spongy fat blurred his features, making it impossible for his round purplish face to even hold any other expression than the discontented hoggishness that was habitual to it. He reeked of gin.
“Mr. Chrostwaite is the Pacific Coast agent for the Mutual Fire Extinguisher Manufacturing Company,” Vance Richmond began, as soon as I had got myself seated. “His office is on Kearny Street, near California. Yesterday, at about two forty-five in the afternoon, he went to his office, leaving his machine – a Hudson touring car – standing in front, with the engine running. Then minutes later, he came out. The car was gone.”
I looked at Chrostwaite. He was looking at his fat knees, showing not the least interest in what his attorney was saying. I looked quickly back at Vance Richmond; his clean gray face and lean figure were downright beautiful beside his bloated client.
“A man named Newhouse,” the lawyer was saying, “who was the proprietor of a printing establishment on California Street, just around the corner from Mr. Chrostwaite’s office, was run down and killed by Mr. Chrostwaite’s car at the corner of Clay and Kearny Streets, five minutes after Mr. Chrostwaite had left the car to go into his office. The police found the car shortly afterward, only a block away from the scene of the accident – on Montgomery near Clay.
“The thing is fairly obvious. Someone stole the car immediately after Mr. Chrostwaite left it; and in driving rapidly away, ran down Newhouse; and then, in fright, abandoned the car. But here is Mr. Chrostwaite’s position; three nights ago, while driving perhaps a little recklessly out -“
“Drunk,” Chrostwaite said, not looking up from his plaid knees; and though his voice was hoarse, husky – it was the hoarseness of a whisky-burned throat – there was no emotion in his voice.
“While driving perhaps a little recklessly out Van Ness Avenue,” Vance Richmond went on, ignoring the interruption, “Mr. Chrostwaite knocked a pedestrian down. The man wasn’t badly hurt, and he is being compensated very generously for his injuries. But we are to appear in court next Monday to face a charge of reckless driving, and I am afraid that this accident of yesterday, in which the printer was killed, may hurt us.
“No one thinks that Mr. Chrostwaite was in his car when it killed the printer – we have a world of evidence that he wasn’t. But I am afraid that the printer’s death may be made a weapon against us when we appear on the Van Ness Avenue charge. Being an attorney, I know just how much capital the prosecuting attorney – if he so chooses – can make out of the really, insignificant fact that the same car that knocked down the man on Van Ness Avenue killed another man yesterday. And, being an attorney, I know how likely the prosecuting attorney is to so choose. And he can handle it in such a way that we will be given little or no opportunity to tell our side.
“The worst that can happen, of course, is that, instead of the usual fine, Mr. Chrostwaite will be sent to the city jail for thirty or sixty days. That is bad enough, however, and that is what we wish to -“
Chrostwaite spoke again, still regarding his knees.
“Damned nuisance!” he said.
“That is what we wish to avoid,” the attorney continued. “We are willing to pay a stiff fine, and expect to, for the accident on Van Ness Avenue was clearly Mr. Chrostwaite’s fault. But we -“
“Drunk as a lord!” Chrostwaite said.
“But we don’t want to have this other accident, with which we had nothing to do, given a false weight in connection with the slighter accident. What we want then, is to find the man or men who stole the car and ran down John Newhouse. If they are apprehended before we go to court, we won’t be in danger of suffering for their act. Think you can find them before Monday?”
“I’ll try,” I promised; “though it isn’t -“
The human balloon interrupted me by heaving himself to his feet, fumbling with his fat jewelled fingers for his watch.
“Three o’clock,” he said. “Got a game of golf for three-thirty.” He picked up his hat and gloves from the desk. “Find ‘em, will you? Damned nuisance going to jail!”
And he waddled out.
Two
From the attorney’s office, I went down to the Hall of Justice, and, after hunting around a few minutes, found a policeman who had arrived at the corner of Clay and Kearny Streets a few seconds after Newhonse had been knocked down.