Frank Sellers sat there for as much as thirty seconds without saying a word. Then he pressed his foot on the starter button, slammed the car into gear and made a U turn in the middle of the block. The siren started wailing again and the red spotlight blinked on and off.
We swung around the turn from Garden Vista Boulevard into Mantica Street and the broken-nosed cab driver was still at the wheel of his car.
Sellers braked the car to a stop alongside the taxi driver.
Shifty little eyes glittered out from either side of the broken nose.
“What’s eating yuh?” the cab driver asked.
Sellers said, “Yesterday afternoon there was a smashup on Mantica Street and Garden Vista Boulevard. Know anything about it?”
“I heard it.”
“Pick up a fare right afterwards?”
Broken nose frowned, then said, “Yes. What’s it to you?”
“Man or woman?”
“Woman.”
“What did she want?”
The glittering little eyes met Sellers’ for a moment, then shifted.
Sellers suddenly threw open the door of the car, walked around and stood with his broad shoulders hulking against the side of the taxicab. He whipped open the door of the cab. “Come out of that,” he said to the driver.
Broken nose sized him up, hesitated.
Sellers’ hand shot forward, took a good grip on the necktie and shirt of the cab driver. He gave a jerk. “I said come out!”
The cab driver came out and was suddenly respectful. “What is it you want?” he asked.
“Your fare. What about it? Who was it?”
“A woman,” he said. “She wanted me to shadow a couple of cars that she said would be coming around the corner.”
“Keep talking,” Sellers said.
“When the car came around the corner on Mantica Street, we followed along. Then I noticed a second car was tagging after the first. I told my fare about it. She said never mind the second car, to stay with the first one. It was only about three blocks. They stopped down here at an apartment house. A man went in. The woman in the other car drove away. My fare told me to wait. We waited for about ten minutes.”
“Go ahead.”
“Then a jane came out of the apartment, jumped in a car and drove away. My fare got excited. She got out, handed me a five dollar bill and said, ‘That’s for security on the fare.’ She walked into the apartment house and was gone about ten minutes in all. Then she came back, got in the cab and said, ‘Drive to the Rimley Rendezvous.’ ”
“We drove up to the Rimley Rendezvous. Some bastard had parked a car where it took up most of the cab space. I said, ‘Wait a minute and I’ll bust this car out of here!’ But she didn’t wait. She got out. She had to walk clean around the parked car. She walked around it and on into the Rimley Rendezvous. A guy came out and climbed into the parked car. I tried to shake him down for a buck. He wouldn’t shake. I had five bucks for a sixty cent ride, so I let him pull the old stall about having been shoved ahead into the cab space.”
“Notice anything peculiar about this woman’s handbag?” Sellers asked.
The cabbie looked at him with a certain dawning respect in his eyes. “She had something pretty heavy in her handbag. It stuck out. I thought it might have been...”
“A rod?” Sellers asked as the man hesitated.
“Uh huh. Only it wasn’t a rod.”
“Perhaps a hammer or a small hand ax?”
Sudden realization showed in the little eyes. “Hell,” the cabbie said disgustedly, “that’s what it was — and me wondering if it was a rod!”
“What did this woman look like?” Sellers asked.
“Not bad looking,” the driver said appreciatively. “Nice legs, swell hips, nice complexion. Teeth a little too big, that’s all. Horse-toothed when she smiled.”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha exclaimed under her breath.
19
Ellery Crail was pacing back and forth in front of our office when Bertha and I came up in the elevator.
His face lit with relief when he saw us. He came running forward and gripped my hand. “I was hoping you’d be here,” he said. “The elevator operator said you folks frequently came in at night, although you didn’t keep the office open after five o’clock.”
Bertha said belligerently, “Well, we got you a settlement, and...”
“Let’s go inside where we can talk,” Crail said.
Bertha latchkeyed the door and we went into the private office.
Bertha went on, “Just like I told you over the telephone. You owe us three hundred dollars more and...”
Crail looked at her as though she might have been talking a foreign language, then he looked at me.
I shook my head and said, “I didn’t tell her anything.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Bertha asked.
Crail took a checkbook from his pocket, pulled out a fountain pen.
“Three hundred dollars,” Bertha said.
Crail looked up at her and said, “Mrs. Cool, I want to thank you people for the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and I think I owe every bit of my happiness to Donald Lam.”
Bertha’s jaw dropped.
Crail said, “I guess you know what happened — Lam seems to, anyway. I was suspicious of my wife and Stan-berry. I wondered why she was so eager to have me buy the Stanberry Building at a price that my banker said was about three times too high. When she went out yesterday afternoon I — well, I decided to follow her. It was a decision I reached all at once. My car wasn’t there, but I knew that it would be all right with Georgia Rushe if I borrowed her car. I borrowed it.
“I’m not going to tell you all that happened. Lam knows, anyway. I followed my wife. I saw the accident. I saw enough to know that she was deliberately following Stanberry. I went back to the office. Georgia didn’t even know I’d borrowed her car — and then I read about Stanberry being murdered and... well, I put it up to my wife.
“She admitted that Stanberry had been blackmailing her. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Well, you know — I wanted to be a strong silent man. I wanted to be an understanding husband. I didn’t ask any questions. I decided to back my wife to the limit. I knew that she’d be called as a witness in that automobile accident. I decided to have the case settled so that it could never be shown that her car was trailing Stanberry’s. I came to you to get the case settled.
“And then Lam showed me how life can’t be lived that way. You can’t sacrifice yourself to keep from hurting someone if by doing so, you’re hurting someone else a great deal more. And... well, I had a talk with her, and this time I wasn’t just a big sucker. I had in the back of my mind the knowledge of Georgia lying unconscious in a hospital, knowing that she had tried to take her life because of me, and I saw a lot of things in a slightly different light. And then Irma started talking about property settlement and was quite businesslike about the whole thing, and I realized that I’d been trapped into marriage simply as a financial investment. I was never so relieved in my life. I gave her a settlement that made her eyes bulge out and told her to get reservations for Reno, and came up here to find Donald Lam.”
Crail took a deep breath and started writing on the check. He picked up a piece of blotting paper, blotted the check, tore it out and tossed it on the desk. He got up and looked at me and there were tears in his eyes. He pushed out his hand and shook hands. Then he walked around the desk and hugged Bertha, leaned over and kissed her on the lips.
I said, “I’m glad you had your showdown, Crail. Your wife didn’t murder Stanberry. It was another woman Stanberry had been blackmailing over the telephone. And if she hadn’t noticed Stanberry’s wrist watch was an hour fast and set it back the whole case might have been simplified — which doesn’t mean your wife wasn’t playing you for a sucker. She was.