“Well, I’ll ask you the same question myself,” Sellers said. “Why did you increase the ante?”
“Because I wanted to find a witness.”
“Why?”
“So there wouldn’t be any question about what had happened.”
“You knew the insurance company had hired a detective agency?”
“Hell, no. I was just trying to get things straightened out.”
“Your partner know you put the ad in the paper?”
“Of course he— Well, I don’t know that he knew, no. We pull together all the time. It was a close partnership, and Carter knew that I would help him any way possible.”
“You know where Holgate is now?” Sellers asked.
“No. He hasn’t been in the office and police have been out there looking the place over. It was robbed last night but I don’t think that had anything to do with this— Or did it?”
Maxton whirled to look at me.
Sellers jerked his thumb at the officer and said, “Take him out. Don’t tell him anything for a while.”
“Say, what’s all this about?” Maxton asked. “What — I came up here to prosecute a crook for obtaining money under false pretenses. You’re acting as though I might be charged with something.”
Sellers simply jerked his thumb at the officer.
“This way,” the officer said to Maxton, and took him by the arm.
Maxton started to hold back. The officer increased the pressure and Maxton went out.
Sellers chewed on his cigar.
“This is the damnedest case,” Hawley said irritably.
Sellers said, “Come on, Pint Size. We’re going places.”
Chapter Ten
Captain William Andover of Traffic went with us to call on Mrs. Eloise Troy. He said she was the only witness whose testimony would be worth anything in connection with that hit-run traffic accident.
Sellers said to Andover, “Would it be all right if I did the questioning, Bill? I’m working on something a lot bigger than this traffic I’m working on a murder case.”
“Go right ahead,” Captain Andover said. “I’m working on a hot lead in this case, but I’m not ready to tip my hand yet. You go ahead.”
Sergeant Sellers rang the bell.
Mrs. Eloise Troy turned out to be a straightforward, rather fleshy widow, around fifty-two or fifty-three. She wore glasses, seemed poised and sensible.
Captain Andover identified himself and introduced us.
“We wanted to talk about that hit-run accident last August,” Sellers said.
“Heavens, I’ve told everything I know about that half a dozen times.”
“Would you mind going over it just once more?” Sellers said* “because I want to hear it first hand. I’m working on a lead which just might pan out.”
“Well, I certainly hope it does,” she said. “That was the most callous, brutal thing I have ever seen. It just made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t sleep for a long while without having nightmares about what happened.”
“Would you mind telling us?”
“I can go over it again all right,” she said. “Come in and sit down.”
Her flat was a comfortable, homey place, with the aroma of good cooking coming from the kitchen.
She closed the kitchen door and said, “I’m cooking some chicken in a rotisserie and it gives a perfectly ravishing aroma, but very penetrating. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“It’s all right, we’ll only be a minute,” Sellers said.
“Oh, I don’t mind that at all. I just thought the flat was a little, well a little odoriferous.”
We took chairs and Mrs. Troy said, “Well, it was about six-thirty in the afternoon, I guess, right after the rush hour. I was driving toward Los Angeles and this car was coming behind me.
“I always make it a point to look at my rearview mirror from time to time, just to keep a line on what’s coming behind. Driving in traffic, if you have to stop, it always makes a great deal of difference about the car that’s right behind you. You want to know whether it’s a driver who has his car under control or whether he’s one that might bang into the rear end.
“Heaven knows, I’ve had that happen.”
Sellers nodded sympathetically.
“Well, I saw this car quite a ways back and the man was drunk. Now, there’s no question about that. The man was drunk.”
“Could you describe the car?”
“Now, that is the thing I can’t do,” she said. “I can tell you that it was a big car, a dark car, a modern, shiny car — you know, it wasn’t an old beat-up model. It was new and it was a pretty big car.”
“He was weaving around?” Sellers asked.
“I’ll say he was. He almost sideswiped a car as he went around it, and then he cut in on another car and crowded it clean off the road and then I just said to myself, Heavens, that man is drunk and the Lord knows what he’s going to do. I’m going to slow down and get over to the side of the road.
“So I slowed and got over to the side of the road and he just came tearing along right up behind me and I thought he was going to run right into my rear end. Then he swerved out abruptly, swerved too far and then swung back. The hind end of his car just sideswiped the front part of mine, and that seemed to put him entirely out of control. He swung over way to the left and then back to the right and went right through this group of people who were waiting for the bus.”
“You didn’t get his license number or anything?” Sellers asked.
“Heavens, no. I was too busy fighting my own car trying to get it stopped and keep it under control. He hit the front end and pushed it off the side of the road and then when I tried to get back, the shoulder of the highway jerked on my steering wheel and I had to stop — and I guess I was shaken up a bit.”
“You don’t need to say anything about that,” Captain Andover said. “In case you ever have to give your testimony, Mrs. Troy, don’t say anything about being shaken up because some lawyer would grab hold of that and make it appear you were too hysterical to know what you were talking about.”
“I wasn’t hysterical,” she said. “I was shaken up a bit and I was annoyed and... well, I certainly wasn’t hysterical — not what I’d call hysterical.”
“You don’t know anything about this car, what kind it was, other than that it was big?”
“That’s all.”
“And he sideswiped your car?”
“Yes.”
Captain Andover said, “We took the paint that had been rubbed on her fender and gave it a microscopic examination and a spectroscopic examination. It came from a late model Buick.”
“That’s Holgate’s car,” I said. “That is, his was a late model Buick.”
Sellers’ eyes narrowed. “Did you get anything — any look at the car that would give you a clue? Just think carefully. Was there anything about the car — anything that seemed distinctive?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t remember so much about the car. I did get a good look at the driver.”
Sellers straightened. “You got a good look at him?”
“Yes.”
“What can you tell about him?”
“Well, he looked sort of... well, he was a big man with a western hat and he had a mustache, I remember that, one of these close-clipped mustaches and he was wearing one of these sort off whipcord suits. You know, the kind that officers and cowboys and some forest rangers and outdoor people wear.”
Sellers and Andover exchanged glances.
“Do you think you’d know his picture if you saw it?” Sellers asked.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s awfully hard to identify people from pictures. Perhaps if I saw a profile I might.”
“Suppose you looked at the man, do you think you could identify him?”