“Damn you, give it!” I yelled at him.
“The sedan belonged to the bumpee — you know, this guy Harry Evans. Imagine being run down and knocked off with your own car! I think I had better phone the sergeant.”
I whirled and walked to the door. Before reaching it I paused long enough to say over my shoulder, “Don’t forget I was in here before midnight about that license.”
He was still contemplating the ceiling with an open mouth. I hoped something would fall in it.
The wind hit me when I reached the bottom of the steps. I grabbed my flopping overcoat and buttoned it. There was something missing, something that should have pressured me but didn’t.
I had left my gun and holster at the barn.
The office is cold, the heat in the building is turned off early in the evening. I wanted to get this off to you before going home to bed, Louise. I’ve discovered that if I mail a letter in the post office slot by one A.M. it is put on the southbound train a couple of hours later and will reach you in the first mail delivery the same morning. Some seven or eight hours from now.
A good many surprising things have happened since I wrote you about Evans’ death yesterday afternoon, but the most surprising is the discovery of myself.
I’ve just realized what a damned fool I am.
Chapter 4
Boone, Ill.
Wednesday, P.M.
Hello, Darling:
It’s another day and another dollar, so some fool once said before he joined the union. For me it’s the very nice sum of five hundred Washington rubles.
I awoke bright and early this morning and thought of me without gun or license. Otherwise the day was brilliant — in the beginning. Mother Hubbard had frozen strawberries for breakfast. Every now and then she makes it a point to ask about you and me; I think she’s as impatient as I am. Sometimes I let her read these letters, or those from you.
It had stopped snowing. The sky was clear, a brisk and delightful blue with summer-looking clouds. The early morning sun was so bright on the snow I had to shut my eyes against the glare, walking downtown. The weather remained so cold that snow crunched underfoot with every step. People in overcoats and mufflers were scooping it off the walks.
When I reached the office I had the fun of discovering the money — or rediscovering it, rather — that Evans had given me as a retainer. It was still lying in the upper drawer of the desk where I had left it yesterday. The sight of it did give me a little jolt. I thought I had put it away. My seven piles of manuscript were still on the floor, the top pages slipping off the stacks. The janitor still hadn’t swept.
The only piece of mail was a postcard teaser from a Chicago insurance company. Insure yourself and all your loved ones (yes, the old folks too!) for a dollar a month — no medical examinations. A very-small-type and restricted clause company. Die somewhere, any old where, and you’ll discover the insurance isn’t collectable because you didn’t die between clean sheets with a hot water bottle at each foot and a featherless pillow under your head. So sorry.
These insurance policies are straight sounding but tricky if you didn’t bother to read them. Take that accidental death stuff. Face value will be doubled if the policy holder dies an accidental death. Few people know what an accidental death is. Harry Evans’ death wasn’t. Premeditated or not, the driver of that sedan saw him and ran him down. Evans’ wife will never collect double on his policy.
First thing off the bat I went downstairs again and paid the girl in the real estate office a month’s rent on the cubbyhole I occupy. The sign on the window read:
The letter “s” in Boost was partly chipped away; no doubt the handiwork of a gentle critic.
I complained to the girl about the great lack of heat in my office.
She gave me a receipt, said thanks chum, and yak, yak, don’t you know there’s a coal shortage? We must conserve heat.
I answered you’re welcome, and yak, yak, according to Scheinfeld there’s a man shortage. Don’t you know you should conserve me? She didn’t get it.
That made me feel good so I walked across the street to deposit four hundred and a half in the big bank. That made me feel better. I kept the remaining thirty in my pocket. That made me feel wonderful.
Considering.
I thought about all the things that had happened since the big stranger walked into my office yesterday, over some hot coffee in Thompson’s. Judy was working the counter. She hasn’t yet learned how to make good coffee; she makes it hot and stops.
About the gun: Louise, I can’t name one worthwhile reason why I should carry a gun. I’ve never fired it in my life except to make a little extra noise on Fourths of July; and I never expect to fire it for any other reason. If the police department had ever asked me why a private detective needed to carry a gun, I couldn’t have answered them.
Those movie sleuths like to pretend to be awfully slick characters, dashing around town arresting culprits and getting tangled up in flaming gun battles — but that’s sham. Pure boloney. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know the truth. A private cop can’t arrest anyone; he has no more authority than a junior G-man. The movie pinkertons get away with murder.
For that matter what does the license do for me? It permits me to hang up a sign saying I’m a licensed investigator.
It doesn’t allow me to do anything an ordinary citizen can’t do, except flash a badge on some befuddled guy and tell him to come across or else. Any man with a little weight to throw around can pry into anything I can.
Just the same I’m going back out to the barn and get my gun. Dammit, Louise, you gave me that gun for Christmas and I want it back.
And then there is Harry Evans and his Studebaker sedan. On the face of it, it looks as if Evans’ girl friend got sick and tired of him and relieved him of the necessity of dying of old age. The ironic touch was the use of his car.
But I think the face is false. A clever girl could think of too many ways to get rid of Harry without running him down herself. There was too much risk involved. That great risk, in view of what actually happened, may prove to be the best key to the puzzle. Maybe one out of a hundred hit-and-run cases safely get away with it. That driver couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have counted on being the one. She probably did count on some other safety device — or was told she could. For it was planned from beginning to Evans’ end. That much is apparent.
My only fear is that the locals will accept it for what it seems to be on the surface: bad girl runs over nice man and ditches the car; case written off (if she is not found) as manslaughter. If she is found it is still manslaughter — only she was naughty to become frightened and drive away. Where did she steal the car?
But don’t you believe it Louise. Reread my letters of yesterday. They, whoever they are, simply waited until they found him crossing a street.
The girl in the car might have been following him all morning at a discreet distance, waiting for a favorable moment to catch him in the street. On the other hand she may never have seen him until he left my office. And bang.
Harry Evans retained me yesterday for a definite purpose: protection. He thought he would need it from the police, which implies that he was engaged in questionable activities of some sort. I don’t understand why he thought that any more than I could understand a frame job upon the part of the police. Not in Boone. But that isn’t the point.
The point is that he was expecting trouble, and trouble found him. That it was not the precise kind of trouble he expected doesn’t alter my suspicions.