“Are you telling me?” Amelia Jasper interrupted, her eyes blazing with indignation. “I was never so humiliated in all my life. I take it you know about my accident.”
“The general circumstances only,” I said. “I understand you were riding alone.”
She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.”
“And there were three or four other people in the other car?”
“Four people,” she said. “Ignorant boors, people of exactly the type one would expect to find distorting the facts in order to obtain a paltry settlement of a few dollars.”
“It happened at an intersection?”
“Yes. I was coming into the intersection. I looked over on the right and saw no one coming. I glanced hurriedly to the left assuming that I would have the right of way over any vehicle on the left and that I needed to concern myself only with some vehicle on the right.”
“What happened?”
“These insufferable people ran into me. They were coming from the left. They were coming so fast that they entered the intersection long after I got there, but they had the consummate nerve to tell the insurance adjuster that they were already in the intersection when they saw me coming, and that I was driving at such terrific speed I couldn’t stop, that I ran into them.”
“Did you?”
“My car struck theirs, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then they didn’t run into you. You ran into them?”
“They put their car directly in front of mine,” she said.
“I can understand how the insurance company would have looked at it.”
“Well, I can’t,” she flared, “and don’t expect any cooperation from me if you’re going to start sympathizing with that insurance company.”
“I’m not sympathizing,” I told her. “I just was trying to find out what happened.”
I had taken a notebook and pencil from my pocket. Now, without even having opened the notebook, I put book and pencil back in my pocket, and bowed. “I’m very happy to have met you. Mrs. Jasper, and thank you so much for having consented to see me.”
“But I haven’t told you all about the accident.”
I shifted my position uneasily and said, “Well... I think I understand the circumstances.”
She said angrily, “Simply because there are four people on the other side, you’re adopting the position that I must be in the wrong.”
“Not at all,” I told her. “I simply felt it wasn’t a case that would be interesting to the editor of the magazine for which I’m planning to do the writing.”
“Why?”
I said, “What I want to show is the danger inherent in compromising cases, where the insured party is actually in the right but where the insurance company feels that defending the case would involve too much effort. Therefore they let a majority of witnesses on the other side commit perjury and…”
“Well, why isn’t that exactly what happened in my case?”
I hesitated. “Were you seriously injured?”
“My left hip was injured.”
“Is it nearly healed now?”
“Yes. I’m able to walk now, but ever since the accident I’ve had spells of sciatica. I’m having a bad one now — air pillows, aspirin and pain.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically.
“And what’s more, I’m afraid that this accident is going to leave one leg shorter than the other, permanently.”
“That will be all right as soon as the muscles adjust themselves — in time.”
“In time!” she exclaimed scornfully.
I kept quiet.
She studied me for a moment, then said, “My legs have always looked — well, rather nice.”
She hesitated just the proper amount of time to make it appear that the desire to convince me had overcome her modesty, and then raised her skirt, showing me her left leg.
I whistled.
She jerked the skirt back down indignantly. “I didn’t show you that for you to whistle at!”
“No?” I asked.
She said, “I was simply proving a point.”
“Proving a curve, I would say.”
“You’re nice, but think of my other leg so much shorter it will be disfigured.” Tears came to her eyes.
“It won’t be short in the least.”
“It’s shorter now. My hip is pulled up. And it’s getting thinner than the other as I fail to use the muscles. And I’m — well, I’m not as young as I used to be.”
I smiled tolerantly.
“I tell you I’m not. How old do you think am?”
I pursed my lips, went through the motions of disinterested appraisal. “Well,” I said thoughtfully, “you’re probably past thirty-five, but it’s not fair to ask me that question, now, because a woman always looks older in a wheel-chair. If you were walking around I’d... well, I guess perhaps you are around thirty-five, at that.”
She beamed at me. “Do you think so?”
“Right around there.”
She said, “I’m forty-one.”
“What?” I exclaimed incredulously.
She simpered at me. “Forty-one.”
“Well, you certainly don’t look it!”
“I don’t feel it.”
I said, “Well, I’m going to tall on the insurance company and get all of the facts in your case. I think perhaps, after all, it’s something that would go well in an article.”
“I’m satisfied it will, and I do wish you’d write an article like that. I think it needs to be published. Insurance companies are altogether too conceited, too cocksure of themselves.”
“They’re corporations,” I told her. “They tend to wind themselves up in a lot of red tape.”
“I’ll say they do.”
I motioned towards the morning paper which was lying on a reading table near her wheel-chair. “Read about the murder?” I asked.
“What murder?”
“The one out in the COZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”
“Oh,” she said casually, “that’s one of those love, murder and suicide things. I remember seeing the headlines.”
“You didn’t read the article?”
“No.”
“Some folks from Colorado,” I said. “I believe the man’s name was Stanwick Carlton — no, wait a minute, the man who was killed was Dover Fulton. He’s from San Robles. Stanwick Carlton is the husband of the girl who was killed in the tragedy — Minerva, I believe her name was.”
Mrs. Jasper nodded absently and said, “I’d like very much to have you get in touch with the insurance company. Ask for Mr. Smith and get him to give you his version of what happened. Then I’d like to know just what he tells you. Do you suppose you could get in touch with me and let me know?”
“I might.”
“I’d really appreciate it. So you’re a writer. What do you write?”
“Oh, all sorts of things.”
“Under your own name?”
“No, mostly under pen names and sometimes anonymously.”
“Why do you do that?”
I grinned. “I write lots of true confession stories, and…”
“You mean to tell me those things aren’t true?”
“The ones I write aren’t.”
“But I thought they were.”
“Oh, I get facts out of real life and then I dress them up and tell them in first person. I’m always interested in divorces and murders, and things of that sort.”
“That’s why you asked about that murder?”
“I guess so, yes.”
She said, “I’ve always wanted to do some writing. Is it difficult?”
“Not in the least. You just’ put yourself on paper. It’s surprising how easy the words come.”
“But if it’s easy, why aren’t more people writing?”
“They are,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “you know what I mean — selling things to the magazines.”