Mr. Steems drove. As he drove, he muttered. Susie was breaking a date. Maybe she was going out with someone else. There was a cop named Cassidy who always looked wistfully at Susie, even in the cab of her affianced boy friend. Mr. Steems muttered anathemas upon all cops.
He drew up before Susie’s house; Susie wouldn’t be home yet. He turned to let Susie’s mother out.
His eyes practically popped out of his head.
The back of the cab was empty. On the seat there was seventeen cents in pennies, one nickel, a slightly greenish wedding ring, an empty lipstick container, several straight steel springs, twelve bobbie pins, assorted safety pins, and a very glittering dress ornament. On the floor Mrs. Blepp’s shoes remained—size ten and a half.
Mr. Steems cried out hoarsely. He stared about him, gulped several times for air, and then drove rapidly away. Something was wrong. He did not know what, but it was instinct to get away from there. Mr. Steems did not want trouble. He especially did not want trouble with Susie. But here it was.
This was bad business! Presently he stopped and inspected his cab with infinite care. Nothing. The deerskin made a good-looking seat-cover. That was all. There was no opening anywhere through which Susie’s mother could have fallen. She could not have gone out through the door. Under no circumstances would she have abandoned her shoes. Something untoward and upsetting had come into Mr. Steems’s life.
Mr. Steems retired to a bar and had several beers. There was a situation to be faced—to be thought out. But Mr. Steems was not an intellectual type. Thinking made his head hurt. He could not ask advice, because nobody would believe what he had to say. Apprehension developed into desperation and then into defiance.
“I didn’t do nothing,” muttered Mr. Steems truculently. “I don’t know nothing about it!” Would Susie not be willing to believe that? “I never seen her!” said Mr. Steems in firm resolve. “I never set eyes on that old battle-ax today! The hell with her!”
He had another beer. Then he realized that to stay encloistered, drinking beer after beer, might suggest to someone that he was upset. So he set out to act in so conspicuously normal a manner that nobody could suspect him of anything. He had lost considerable time in his meditation, however. It was nearly nine o’clock when he resumed his cruising. It was half-past nine when he stopped behind a jam of other vehicles at a red light on Evers Avenue. He waited. He brooded. Somebody wrenched open the door of the cab and crawled in. Mr. Steems reacted normally. “Hey! What’s the idea? Howya know I want a fare now?”
Something cold and hard touched his spine and a hoarse voice snarled, “Get goin’, buddy. Keep your mouth shut an’ don’t turn around!”
The red light changed. Shouting broke out half a block behind. Mr. Steems—with cold metal urging him—shifted gears with great celerity. He drove with all the enthusiasm of a man with no desire to be mixed up in gunplay. The shouting died away in the distance. Mr. Steems drove on and drove on. Presently he dared to say meekly, “Where you want me to drive you or let you out?”
Behind him there was silence.
Resting on the deerskin seat cover there was a very nasty-looking automatic pistol, a black-jack, $1.25 in coins, seventeen watches, thirty-four rings, a sterling silver gravy bowl, and a garnet necklace. There were also two large gold teeth.
Mr. Steems, trembling, went home and put the cab away. Then, unable to stay alone, he went out and drank more beers as he tried to figure things out. He did not succeed.
After a long time he muttered bitterly, “It ain’t my fault! I don’t know nothing about it!” Still later he said more bitterly still, “I can’t do nothing about it, anyways!” Both statements were true. They gave Mr. Steems some pleasure. He was innocent. He was blameless. Whatever might turn up, he could stridently and truthfully insist upon his complete rectitude. So he had some more beers.
Came the dawn, and Susie babbling frantically on a telephone. Her mother hadn’t come home or called, and it was raining terribly and—
Mr. Steems said indignantly, “I ain’t seen her. What’s the idea of missing that date with me?”
Susie wept. She repeated that her mother had not come home. The police—Patrolman Cassidy—had checked, and she hadn’t been in any accident. Susie wanted Mr. Steems to do something to find out what had become of her mother.
“Huh!” said Mr. Steems. “Nobody ain’t going to kidnap her! I don’t know nothing about it. What you want me to do?”
Susie, sniffling, wanted him to help find her mother. But Mr. Steems knew better than to try it. It hurt his head even to think about it. Besides, he didn’t want to get mixed up in anything.
“Look,” he said firmly, “it’s rainin’ cats and dogs outside. I got to make some money so we can get married, Susie. The old dame’ll turn up. Maybe she’s just kickin’ up her heels. G’by.”
He went out to his cab. Rain fell heavily. It should have brought joy to Mr. Steems’s heart, but he regarded his cab uneasily. It wore a look of battered innocence. Mr. Steems grimly climbed into the front seat. He set forth to act innocent. It seemed necessary. That was about nine o’clock in the morning.
By half-past ten, cold chills were practically a permanent fixture along his spine. He had had passengers. They had vanished. Unanimously. Inexplicably. They left behind them extraordinary things as mementos. Financially, Mr. Steems was not doing badly. He averaged half a dollar or better in cash from every fare. But otherwise he was doing very badly indeed. At eleven, driving in teeming rain, he saw Patrolman Cassidy—and Cassidy saw him. At Cassidy’s gesture Mr. Steems pointed to the back of his cab, implying that he had a fare, and drove on through the rain. His teeth chattered. He drove hastily to his lodgings. Business had been good. Far too good to have allowed Cassidy a look into the cab. Mr. Steems furtively carried into his lodgings:
4 suitcases
1 brief case
3 pairs women’s shoes (assorted sizes)
½ dozen red roses
1 plucked chicken, ready for the oven
2 quarts milk
1 imitation-leather-covered wallpaper catalogue
From his pockets he dumped into a bureau drawer not less than eight watches—men’s and women’s—four rings, eleven bracelets, and nine scatter pins. He had brushed out of the cab at least a double handful of small nails, practically all of them bent at the end, and many of them rusted.
Mr. Steems was in a deplorable mental state. Once he had stashed his loot, however, indignation took the place of uneasiness.
“What’s that guy Cassidy want to see me for, huh?” he demanded of the air. “What’s he tryin’ to do? Figure I done somethin’ to that old bag?”
He drove back indignantly in search of Cassidy. He scowled at the raincoated cop when he found him. Cassidy explained that Susie was upset. Did Mr. Steems, by any chance—
“I told her I didn’t know nothing about the old dame!” said Mr. Steems stridently. “Sure, she grafts a ride every time she gets a chance! But I didn’t see her yesterday. What’s Susie think I done to her, anyway?”
Patrolman Cassidy did not know. Naturally.
And then a passenger with two suitcases and a brief case stepped up beside Cassidy and said, “Is this taxi taken?”
There was nothing for Mr. Steems to do but accept him as a fare. To refuse would have been suspicious.
Two blocks away the cab somehow felt empty—Mr. Steems was acquiring an uncanny ability to feel this—and he turned around and saw a cigarette case and a monogrammed lighter on the back-seat cushion, with $1.25 in change, pants buttons, metal eyelets suitable for shoes, a gold-barreled ball-point pen, and other miscellany.