So Sehnert, Forrest, wasn’t the man in the tuxedo.
“Did you see the accident yesterday?”
“I sure did, big boy. Gruesome, wasn’t it?”
“Oh well, women are bumping guys off all the time. They’re old hands at the game.”
“Sometimes they have good reason!” she snapped.
“Yeah, sometimes. Maybe this one was worried about the price of eggs and couldn’t bother to stop.”
“Oh, they’ll find her,” little talkie declared. “Them snappy cars ain’t so thick in Boone.”
“They’ve already found the car, ditched. It was from Croyden. Did you get a good look at the driver?”
“Sure. Saw her as plain as day. She didn’t look like so much; not good enough to rate a car like that one.”
“The sedan belonged to the man she ran down.”
“You don’t say!” She paused and chewed on it. “Jilted huh?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Funny boy. The coppers said I was smart.”
“They would. They don’t know you like I do. When did they say so?”
“When they asked me to describe her — but you know, I’m not so sure she had red hair after all. I told them it was kinda auburn. But it seems to me now she was a brownette.”
“You’re a good girl. I’m sure you helped them.” And I beat it back upstairs to the office.
My next phone call was to the public library. I asked the librarian if she kept files of the papers published by the amateur journalism society.
She said they did not — but which society in particular did I have reference to? She thought perhaps she could find some information on it. I admitted that I didn’t know there was more than one. She said, oh my yes, there were at least three to her knowledge: three large national and international organizations, and there were probably other, smaller societies.
I then asked her if anybody in town had papers published in them. She replied no one did to her knowledge, but she was sure there were members in both Chicago and St. Louis. So I asked her if she could give me a line on the general slant of these amateur magazines — what did they write about and so forth.
She was very patient and informative, that librarian. For the better part of twenty minutes she explained to me in some detail how the amateurs, men and women and kids, put out the papers just for the sheer hell of publishing them. Some of them, she said, were little pamphlets and mimeographed pages stapled together; while others were large professional-appearing magazines. There was one common denominator: the owners loved to write, type, edit and print the things by hand and give them away free for the privilege of receiving still other papers.
I asked if any of them were concerned with table-top photography. She replied no. although they sometimes included photographs in the contents. She said the two largest organizations were almost solely concerned with producing beautiful typography and formats, vying with each other in bringing out the best-looking magazines and papers. The third outfit, the smallest of the three but the only one having international membership, specialized in fantasy and weird books.
“That’s it!” I yelled over the wire. She must have jumped. I apologized. “I’m sorry. That’s the outfit I’ve been searching for. Can you put me in touch with any of the members?”
She asked me to call her back in half an hour. She believed that The Saturday Review had printed some names and addresses of the fantasy fans in an issue of several months ago, and that she would check her files. I thanked her.
Librarians are wonderful people. They should be in the detective business.
Chapter 5
There is usually an idle cab or two parked in front of Milkshake Mike’s place, but this time I had to wait for one.
Maybe the heavy snow and the cold weather were responsible. Alike himself was nowhere in sight, so to kill time I first went to the City Hall and filed an application for the renewal of my license, and then walked over to the library to see what the woman had found.
She had a south-side Chicago address for me, the name of the recruiting chairman of the Fantasy Amateur Journalism Society. I thanked her again and hit her up for a penny postcard. The expression on her face told me she expected a penny for it.
On the card I scribbled a short note to the recruiter, telling him I had recently acquired an interest in amateur journalism, that I expected to be in Chicago the next day, and that I wanted very much to drop in on him. I used my office as the return address but didn’t mention my line of business. The bloke at the General Delivery window in the postoffice said it would go out on the afternoon train and be delivered in Chicago tomorrow morning.
Then I walked back to Mike’s for a cab. A checkered one was just pulling into one of the two parking spaces reserved for them. The driver, a weazened, runtish man in a black cap and glasses whom I knew only slightly as “the Sultan,” was out of his cab and half way across the sidewalk before I could stop him.
“Sure bud, be gladda run you, but not’ll I have a cuppa coffee see?”
I hadda cuppa with him. He paid both our checks and left the waitress a nickel tip but he didn’t fool me: I’d pay it all back when he counted up the fare.
“Wheretobud?”
I described the old barn standing out behind the lake. He squinted up at me.
“Joint’s closed up untildarkbud,” he counseled.
“Someone will be in the office.”
I sat in the front seat with him. It was warmer there. We followed the same route the Chinese babe had driven the night before. The Sultan had no more to say.
When we reached the park he pulled the cab around in an easy curve into the rutty path I had traversed last night in the darkness. In broad daylight the Sultan was less sure of himself than the babe had been. The fender tips flirted with the edge of the frozen lake.
Down at the far end of the lake a sluggish knot of men were cutting ice. They were using a team of horses and as I watched the team hauled a huge slab up out of the water and pulled it to the shore line. We drove on past the lake to the barn and stopped on the shack side.
I got out and told the Sultan to wait. I tried the little shack first but five minutes of insistent pounding brought no response. Around on the other side of the barn I found a push button at the bottom of the railing that ran down alongside the steps. Five minutes of that brought nothing.
Feeling damned uncertain and uncomfortable, I climbed the stairs and banged on the outside door. They let me wait for several more minutes. Finally it opened.
The character with the knife scar peered out at me. He didn’t seem pleased at my appearance.
“You said you wouldn’t come back,” he pointed out.
“—unless I was invited,” I reminded him.
“You haven’t been.” The voice was flat, unfriendly.
“And I have no intention of coming in. You have something of mine.”
He raised his eyebrows mutely. It made him resemble a “wanted-dead-or-alive” picture I had seen in the postoffice.
“My gun. The Judge has it. He said he would return it to me when I left last night. He didn’t.”
The character glared at me and abruptly shut the door in my face. I waited. When it opened again the gun and holster were in his hand. He seemed as happy as a dead fish. Undoubtedly he was wishing I was anywhere on earth but at the top of those stairs, in his company.
“Thanks,” I said, and pulled the gun from the holster to examine it. The chamber was empty.
I tried to make my voice flat, “Well?”
He dropped a half a dozen cartridges in my outstretched hand. I put them in my pocket, pushed the gun down in the holster and turned to go. On the second step I thought of something and turned back.