Lieutenant Johnson shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“All right, Mr. Stillwell, who was the first man in American history to win the Republican nomination for president?”
“What the hell!” snorted Lieutenant Johnson angrily. “You playing games?”
“No, I’m interested in history and I thought I’d ask—”
“I don’t mind answering,” said Jim Stillwell. “John C. Fremont, in 1856, was the first Republican nominee. Right?”
“Surprisingly, yes.”
“You got any more questions?” the detective lieutenant asked, sarcastically.
“Yes, who was vice-president during Lincoln’s first term?”
“Get out of here!” cried Johnson.
“In one minute. Did you find out what poison was on the dart?”
“Well, the doc says it was dipped in some hydrocyanic acid. But where the devil would they get that stuff?”
Quade said: “In a drugstore — or if a fellow was real smart he could go out into a cornfield where there was some Indian corn. He could pick out a stunted stalk, and in some crotch find enough hydrocyanic acid to kill fifty people. It forms in stunted Indian corn and—”
The lieutenant sawed the air. “Yeah, I know you’re a smart guy. But get out of here!”
Quade left the room. On his way out, he picked up, from a desk, a copy of Arnold’s American History.
At the grease joint operated by the girls from the church, he found Charlie Boston in command of the situation. He was leaning against the counter, twirling his new cane and chatting with a dark-haired girl.
“Hi, pal,” he greeted Quade. “It’s all fixed. This is Mildred Rogers. She’s mine. Yours is the blonde. Her name’s Linda Starr.”
The blonde was the girl who had repelled Quade’s advances a while ago. He shook his head at her. “So you’d accept a blind date — after turning down my own noble advances.”
“You beat about the bush instead of getting down to business,” she retorted. “Anyway, I’d seen you and I hadn’t the blind date.”
“Where’ll we pick you up at seven-thirty?” he asked.
She gave him a number on South Lindell. “And if you don’t show up, I’m knitting some ear muffs for my regular boy friend who’s at West Point and I’d like to stay home an evening and finish them.”
“Ear muffs are against army regulations,” he replied. “So we’ll be around at seven-thirty.”
They moved away from the lunch stand and Quade whispered to Boston. “Well, what’d you find out?”
“Why, nothing. They didn’t see a thing. But they are real nice girls and we didn’t have anything to do this evening, anyway.”
Quade swore softly. “Nothing except earn money. Do you realize that the four bucks you threw away trying to win that cane was our grub money? I had to shell out all of mine to pay for the Fair privileges.”
“But it’s only three o’clock. You can still make a pitch or two and get some money.”
“I’m not in the mood, now.”
Boston groaned. “So that’s coming on again. You weren’t in the mood all summer. That’s why we’re away up here in Minnesota at the last fair of the season and without a dollar of get-away money.”
“Stop it, you’re breaking my heart. All right, I guess I’ll have to make a pitch. We can’t stand up the dear girls!”
He made the pitch, but his heart wasn’t in it. He sold four books at $2.95 each, working to a crowd of four hundred. Ordinarily, he would have disposed of twenty books to a crowd that size.
It was six o’clock when they climbed into the heap of tin and wheels they had parked in a parking lot outside the Fairgrounds.
On the eight-mile drive to Fourth and Hennepin in Minneapolis, Quade passed two red lights and almost ran over a traffic cop.
Charlie Boston groaned when the last blasts of the cop’s whistle died out. “I think he got your number!”
“Is that so?” Quade asked, absent-mindedly.
Boston snarled. “If you’re going to daydream, let me take the wheel. You know damn well our insurance lapsed on this buggy three months ago.”
Quade roused himself. He grinned crookedly at Boston. “Charlie, tell me — who was Thomas Hart Benton?”
“I don’t know. There was a Doc Benton in my home town of What Cheer, Iowa, but I don’t think he had any relative by the name of Thomas Hart Benton.”
Quade sighed. “Your abysmal ignorance is sometimes appalling, Charlie. Thomas Hart Benton was senator from Missouri from 1821 to 1851.”
“If you knew, why did you ask me? I only carry your books. I don’t read ’em.”
“You’ll read one this winter, in Florida, if I have the strength to make you. Now here’s an American history I picked up today. A very interesting subject. Americans don’t study it enough. Would you believe there were people who didn’t know who won the War of 1812?”
“I’m one of them,” said Boston, sarcastically. “But there’s things I know you don’t know. One of them is the swingeroo. We’ve got a date with a couple of jitterbugs tonight and you’re going to be an awful disappointment to them.”
“Why, Charlie, I’m sure that nice Linda girl would rather discuss cultural subjects than jump around a crowded dance floor.”
“Nuts!” said Charlie Boston.
At Fourth and Hennepin, Quade made a left turn and drove the flivver two blocks south. Then he squeezed it in between a taxi and a fireplug.
They climbed out and went into the Eagle Hotel, a fourth-rate firetrap, that was patronized by lumberjacks, farm hands and traveling citizens who could not pay more than a dollar a day for a hotel room.
Quade called for his key and when the clerk handed it to him, he said jokingly: “Julius, in what year was fought the Battle of Hastings?”
Julius said: “1066. It established the supremacy of the Normans in England.”
Quade gasped. “Why, Julius!”
The hotel clerk grinned. “Try me on Ancient history. I’m particularly good on Phoenician and Chaldean.”
Quade fled to the elevators.
Up in their room, Quade took a quick shower, then brushed his suit and touched up his shoes with a towel. Boston went into the bathroom and when he came out, Quade was sprawled on the bed, reading Arnold’s American History.
Boston scowled. “Why don’t you take it along tonight?” he asked.
“A very good idea, Charlie.” Quade rose and tucked the book under his arm. “Let’s go.”
Quade followed Hennepin to Lindell, then turned into the south boulevard and cruised along for more than a half-hour.
Finally he pulled up before a two-story frame house. “Here’s the number.”
He blew the horn and the girls, Mildred Rogers and Linda Starr, came out. They were dressed in semi-formal evening dresses. “Ha,” said Quade, “you should have told us and we’d have got our dinner jackets out of the mothballs.”
The girls were looking dubiously at the ancient flivver. Linda said, “I suppose your chauffeur has the limousine tonight?”
“Never judge a man by the car he drives,” retorted Quade. “Climb in and we’ll be off to a nice Greasy Spoon and a quiet country road.”
“The road’s all right,” retorted Linda Starr, “as long as you don’t stop on it before we get to The Poplars, which is halfway between here and Lake Excelsior. And if you don’t have at least three gallons of gasoline in the car and ten dollars, we don’t step into this pile of junk.”
“By a coincidence,” laughed Quade, “we have just that much money. So climb in.”
They arranged themselves in the flivver. Boston and Mildred in front and Quade with Linda in the rear. Linda saw the book in Quade’s hands.
“Your homework?”
“My history lesson. D’you know, Linda, who won the Battle of Gettysburg?”