He sat back for awhile and coughed until he thought his lungs would burst; too much exertion. The spasm wore itself out and he edged forward, watching the road ahead across the driver’s shoulder.
It occurred to him he didn’t even know the guy’s name, had forgotten to ask them — just “Fred,” that was all.
The houses had petered out long ago; they were in open country already.
“That it?” said the driver suddenly. A Ford was running along meekly in front of them, hugging the outside of the road.
“Get up next to ’em,” said Eddie, “and I’ll find out.”
The taxi drew abreast, swerved in, hubs nearly interlocking with those of the other car.
Eddie leaned his head out, shouted, “Fred? Your name Fred?”
The Ford, two wheels off the concrete, began to wobble crazily. Its five occupants all squalled in alarm.
“Iss no Fred,” the man at the wheel jabbered excitably, “iss Antonio! What you make?”
The taxi veered off again, shot ahead.
The suburb of Westbury showed up, in clumps of little bungalows.
“Palmer Road,” the driver said, and turned down a side thoroughfare. It had arc lights only every half mile or so.
“Take that side and I’ll take this!” Eddie ordered. “43–41 — 39— Wait a minute, you’re passing it!”
The brakes squealed like stuck pigs. The house was back from the road and there wasn’t a light showing. But in the split-second it took him to jump out, the porch light suddenly went on and outlined a Ford standing there still pulsing in the driveway in front of the entrance.
“I think I hear our telephone ringing,” a woman’s voice said. “Got your key?”
Eddie began to run across the lawn yelling: “Hold it! Hold it! Fred!”
They froze where they were standing, in a sort of tableau. The woman was up on the porch, her hand on the door knob. The man was standing beside the machine with the door still open, holding his hands cupped to a cigarette; they showed up transparent, salmon-color against the match flame they shielded. It went out while he was staring, but Eddie could see the haze already coming from his lips.
“Drop that cigarette!” he shrieked. “Get that out of your mouth!” And almost colliding with the man, he tore the little white cylinder from his face, threw it smoldering on the grass over his shoulder.
“I just came from the Adamses’ — been trying to warn you — that cigarette he gave you — something the matter with it — another half-minute, and it woulda been all up!” Eddie gasped it all out and stopped breathless.
Fred didn’t wait to hear any more; he began to spit all over the place like an infuriated cat and brush his sleeve across his mouth.
The wife suddenly came running down off the porch and over to them. “That isn’t the one Ad gave you, Fred,” she proclaimed. “Don’t you remember, you stopped off just now and bought a pack at that lunch-wagon just as we got into Westbury? The one Ad gave you fell in between the seats when you were trying to fish it out with one hand, don’t you remember, and you said never mind, let it go—”
“That’s right, I did, didn’t I?” Fred said doubtfully and wiped his perspiring face, then “Wait, I better make sure—” He took out a freshly-opened pack and examined it; only an edge of the foil had been torn off, only one hole showed in its tightly-pressed contents. “Yep,” he said elatedly, “it came out of this new deck. Wow, what a close shave!”
“Then the bad cigarette is somewhere in your car,” Eddie summed up, and reached for the latch.
“Oh, no,” the wife answered simply, “I felt for it and found it while he was in the lunch wagon — I like to keep the car as tidy as possible — I threw it out of the car—”
Chapter IV
Death’s Victim
Eddie closed his eyes, reeled slightly; there didn’t seem to be any end to this thing. It was like a game of tag gotten up by a playful devil. He pulled himself together again.
“That was only a minute or two ago, wasn’t it? And right in front of the lunch wagon, you sure about that?” He was already starting away as he spoke.
“Yes, just before we got to the door here. It’s around the turn, on the main highway — you can’t miss it. I even saw it, it landed on the sidewalk right in front of the two little steps going into the wagon—”
Eddie was back in the taxi again, which had turned and was standing waiting.
“Back to the grub wagon we passed!” he yelped to the driver. The long chase had blunted some of the edge off his terror, but he was still worried and plenty scared. He was no longer at the pitch of frenzy in which he’d torn from the hotel to the Adams flat. But he had to get that cigarette back to the Boss.
He vaulted out of the cab before it had even stopped and began to hop all over the sidewalk in front of the lunch wagon, bent double like a frog, chin nearly touching the ground. The windows of the wagon threw big bright yellow squares across the pavement, and if it was there he would have seen it. It was gone! It wasn’t in front of the steps where she said she’d seen it land, and it wasn’t under them, and it wasn’t out near the curbing, and it wasn’t beyond in the gutter.
He lit matches borrowed from the driver in places where the reflection wasn’t strong enough. He straightened up, pulled open the screen door, and stuck his head inside the wagon.
“When was the last you swept that walk outside?” he asked the counterman. There was no one else in the place.
“I never do that till six — just before the day man comes on,” the man answered.
Eddie said, “Do you remember a guy in a Ford stopping in for a pack of cigarettes about ten minutes ago?”
“Sure.”
“Anyone been in or out of here since?”
“There was a big coon in here at the time,” said the counterman, “nursing along a cup of Java. He left just before you showed up—”
“I gotta find him!” said Eddie. “Which way’d he go?”
“Got me,” the counterman said.
Eddie was back alongside the driver again. “See anyone up or down the street?” he asked.
“What am I, an eagle?” the latter asked wearily, sick of all the shenanigans by now. “Do we ever get finished?”
Eddie got on the running-board without getting in. “Drive slow, follow the highway down a block or two, we may pick him up — if not we’ll have to beat it back up the other way!”
They went a couple of blocks, then Eddie gave up.
“All right, turn. He couldn’ta come this far. The guy said he just left before I showed up.”
The driver executed an about-face, muttering audibly. As they swept up toward the lighted wagon again a slow-moving figure came in sight around the corner of it, pausing to peer cautiously in at the windows.
Eddie pointed. “That’s him now, as big as life! He musta been skulking in back of it the whole time we were here!”
Eddie left the side of the machine with a swoop. The impetus of the moving cab carried him across the sidewalk, face to face with the big vagrant, who towered above him. The latter whirled, crouched a little; his first impulse was evidently to duck and run, but Eddie had him crowded too close to the side of the lunch wagon.
“You picked up a cig’ret when you came out just now — let’s have it,” Eddie said briefly. He had at last come across someone whom he felt he could dominate mentally, if not physically.
“Who did?” said the big fellow surlily. “Whut you talking about?”
“I can see it sticking outa your shirt-pocket right now; I’m telling you to come across with it.”