“Is that what you’ve been doing all week?”
“Since you ask, I don’t mind saying that I have.”
“Listen, Pearl. I said I have something important to tell you, and I have. It’s the strict truth.”
“What you think is important might not be what I think is important at all. Can’t you be a little more definite?”
“It’s about Senorita Fogarty.”
“And the will?”
“Yes.”
“Does it improve your prospects for getting all that money away from her?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“I don’t know, Lester. The last time I saw you, you were planning to get her run over in the traffic, and so far as I know nothing has been done about it yet.”
“That plan has been abandoned. It ran into complications.”
“What makes you think this one will be any simpler?”
“Wait and see if it isn’t. Damn it. Pearl, the least you can do is let me tell you about it.”
“Well, all right, Lester. You may come over, although it’s against my better judgment! I’ll meet you at the curb out front.”
“You needn’t do that. I haven’t forgotten the way up.”
“Sweetie, you aren’t coming up. I haven’t seen you for a week, as you know, and I don’t intend to expose myself to excessive temptation. It wouldn’t be safe or sensible.”
Chances for a drink at Pearl’s looking dim, he had a quick one before leaving, and it was fortunate that he did, for sure enough, when he arrived there, she was waiting for him by the curb in front. She crawled in beside him with a casual display of knees, and they peeled off in the MG with a rush that was less an expression of Lester’s eagerness to leave in a hurry than of his reluctance to leave at all.
“I hope, sweetie, for your sake,” she said, “that this doesn’t turn out to be another one of your deceptions. You had better tell me at once whatever it is about Senorita Fogarty.”
“Give me a little time, Pearl. I’ve just got here.”
“It seems to me that you have already had ample time. I don’t see why it should take a week or longer to murder a Chihuahua.”
“That’s because you were not assigned the job of doing it. I tell you there are complications that make it very difficult, if not impossible. It’s easy enough for you to be superior and critical, but for me it’s another matter entirely.”
“What happened to the original plan, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“Well, you can hardly get Senorita Fogarty run over in traffic when you can’t even get close to her. Anyone should be able to understand that.”
“That may be true, but I still can’t understand why you can’t get close to her. What’s to prevent you?”
“Not what. Who. Mrs. Crump, that’s who.”
“Have you even tried to get around Mrs. Crump? I’ll bet you haven’t.”
“I’ll bet I have. Pearl, I wish you’d try to have a little more confidence in me.”
“You haven’t done anything yet to inspire confidence, sweetie. You’ll have to admit that yourself. What happened with Mrs. Crump?”
“Never mind what happened. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s sufficient to say that she has necessitated a change of plan.”
“Now we have come back to it, and it had better be good. What change?”
“It is now the plan to put arsenic in Senorita Fogarty’s oatmeal.”
“Oatmeal! Does the damn dog eat oatmeal?”
“She’s been off her feed. Mrs. Crump thinks oatmeal will be good for her.”
“I doubt it. I can’t imagine oatmeal’s being good for anyone, even Senorita Fogarty.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Anyhow, Mrs. Crump has decided that Senorita Fogarty needs oatmeal and sex.”
“Well, I can see sex. Sex might be helpful.”
“Have you lost your mind? Damn it, Pearl, the moment that dog gets introduced to sex we’re finished. We can kiss Grandfather’s money goodbye.”
“You can also kiss me goodbye. On second thought, we’ll skip the kiss.”
“I know. You don’t have to say it. However, I’m sure we will be able to load Senorita Fogarty’s oatmeal with arsenic in time. Luck has been so bad lately, it’s bound to start getting a little better.”
He’d had a vague notion of driving somewhere in the country, but some kind of morbid attraction seemed to be working against it, and he was suddenly aware that he was on the street that ran in front of Grandfather’s house. As he approached, the front door opened, and Crump appeared, walking down between the cast-iron deer from the house to the street. Senorita Fogarty’s guardian was dressed to the teeth in his Sunday best, a rusty black suit and stiff shoes. He turned, after coming out the gate, and headed for the corner at the other end of the block from the one where Lester, reflexively, had stopped to watch.
“What’s the matter?” said Pearl. “Lester, why have you stopped the car?”
“There’s Crump,” Lester said.
“That little man with the bowed legs? What of it?”
“I wonder where the little devil is going?”
“What difference does it make? Lester, you have been brooding and brooding over this matter until you have become a mental case or something. It is much more to the point, in my opinion, where we are going, and back to my apartment is where it had better be, if you don’t mind.”
“I believe I’ll follow him and find out.”
“Not with me, sweetie. Following a bow-legged man is not quite my idea of how to spend an afternoon, even an afternoon as dull as this one.”
“Oh, come on, Pearl. Do try to cooperate a little. It wouldn’t hurt you to come with me. After all, you have as much to gain or lose as I do.”
“Well, there’s something to that, I guess. I’ve admitted that I would like to keep you at hand, provided that you can arrange to get your share of your grandfather’s money. I’ll come along. Probably he’s only going to the market or somewhere.”
But it soon became apparent that Crump, wherever he was going, wasn’t going to the market. At the corner he waited for several minutes until a bus came along, which he boarded. With Lester and Pearl trailing in the MG, he rode the bus across town for about two miles, then descending and waiting for a trolley bus, which he also boarded, clutching his transfer. The trolley bus took him about three miles farther on his way, by which time it had become apparent that Crump’s errand was a long one, and then, after waiting again on a corner, he was picked up by another bus that took him well beyond the city limits and deposited him at a terminal.
“Wherever can he be going?” Pearl said.
“I don’t know,” said Lester, “but I’ll lay ten to one that he’s up to something tricky.”
“I must say,” Pearl said, “that I am becoming more and more interested all the time. I’m glad I came along.”
And there was still farther to go. The rest of the way had to be made by Crump on foot, and he started off briskly down the asphalt road. It was now essential to secrecy to trail him at a greater distance, and Crump, ascending and descending the elevations of the road, was sometimes briefly out of sight. About a mile had been covered when Lester and Pearl, reaching the crest of an elevation behind him, were startled to find that he had disappeared completely.
“My God,” said Lester, “where has Crump gone?”
“Drive a little faster,” Pearl said. “Surely he didn’t simply vanish.”
Half a minute later, the mysterious disappearance was solved. Crump had merely turned off onto a long, curving drive that went up a slope to a remote house. Pearl saw him and pointed him out.
“There he is,” she said.
“I see him,” Lester said. “I’ll drive down the road and turn around. While we’re waiting for him to come out, we must decide what must be done.”