I thought it significant that he didn’t say that too was correct. Instead he settled back in his chair, apparently having no more to say.
But I did.
“Well, that brings us to the meat of the matter. What are you going to do with me?”
He stared at me, silently, for a long time. Not just minutes but a long time. There was a small electric clock on his desk, an expensive timepiece set in dark walnut that matched the furniture of the room. It made a soft whirring noise as the second hand sped around and around. He wanted me to be uncomfortable. I was. I fidgeted.
“What do you suggest I do with you?” he asked at last.
I knocked the fine white ash of the cigar into my trouser cuff. “You might drive me back to town. Or if that doesn’t appeal to you, I’ll go down to the road and thumb a ride.”
The swiftly moving sweep hand spun around the circle of the clock face several times before he answered me. I couldn’t tell whether he was still needling me, or was actually considering my proposal. It did seem unlikely that he hadn’t yet made up his mind.
“I’ll have someone drive you in, sir.”
Get that “sir” on the end. It revealed a lot. I said thanks and stood up.
The shadow who had been waiting outside the office door came in instantly. My host across the desk had neither signaled nor called. He spoke to the shadow character.
“This gentleman is returning to the city. You will drive.”
The character said, “Yes sir.”
Tuxedo turned to me. “Any place in particular you wish to go?”
“I want to go to the City Hall,” I stated.
Their eyebrows shot up in perfect unison.
“Believe it or not,” I continued, “my detective license expires at midnight. Tonight. It suddenly came to me. I want to have it renewed of course.”
“Of course.” The insurance agent or whatever he was came from behind the desk. “To the City Hall.”
We didn’t leave by way of the gambling room downstairs. The tuxedo-clad gentleman opened a paneled door I hadn’t seen until now to reveal an enclosed landing, with still another door and a swift flight of steps to the ground. It was on the offside of the barn from the shack by which I had entered. The character handed me my hat and coat.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to wave good-bye to the chilly personage standing in the office. He returned it without a trace of humor.
“By the way—” I called back through the partly closed inner door, “I didn’t get your name.”
The door closed. Doors were forever closing on answers I wanted.
The self-attached bodyguard followed me down the steps. There was a car waiting at the bottom. In the darkness I thought it was an Olds but I couldn’t be sure. The overcast sky was breaking in spots and a cold, brilliant moon was trying to get through. Now and then a vagrant flurry of snow swept down out of nowhere. I climbed into the front seat without a word. It was an Olds.
The car was warm; the heater hot against my legs. The key was in the ignition and the silent driver twisted it, pushing on the starter at the same time. The motor caught instantly. We drove to the highway without lights.
The moon broke through then, lighting up a large patch of white snow and black lake.
Someone on ice skates cut across the lake in a long slow glide. The someone wasn’t doing very well. It looked like a girl but I couldn’t be sure at that distance.
The skater was small and slim. She handled her footing in a feminine way and seemed to be wearing slacks or pants, fastened tightly at the ankles, as girls often do. But she wobbled.
If this was my Chinese doll of early evening she was not the skater she had let on to be. The figure behaved on the ice about the way I do on roller skates, which wasn’t anything to inspire confidence in the other skaters. The girl careened across the ice and disappeared in blackness as the moon vanished again. It was like skating into an opaque curtain.
Our car turned onto the Main street road and the driver snapped on the lights. We didn’t speak to each other all the way down to the City Hall. Downtown, most of the neon lights were blinking off for the night. The street sweeping machine had been at work, piling up loose snow along the curbs. The weather held cold.
I said goodnight when the bodyguard let me out in front of the City Hall steps. He drove away without answering. I stood there and watched the twin taillights recede in the distance, knowing that he was watching me in the rearview mirror.
Inside, the redheaded patrolman seated at the sergeant’s desk looked at me entirely without interest.
“Hello, Wiedenbeck.”
“Hullo.”
He’s a quaint character you must meet sometime, Louise. His name is Philip Wiedenbeck, and he’s afraid of women. He’s also an accomplished artist and he substitutes that for the real thing. He likes to draw pictures of girls, half-clad girls who are knockouts until you look at — their faces. Every face is a thing of evil. That’s his inner nature coming out, his revenge on them because he’s afraid.
Wiedenbeck changed his disinterested attitude when I opened my wallet and pushed it across the desk to him. It was open to the identification leaves. He bent over them eagerly.
“Oh, shoot!” he exclaimed in the next second. “I thought you had joined the FBI, or something.”
“Not yet,” I returned pleasantly. “They’ve got their eye on me though.” The department was empty but for the two of us. “Where’s the sergeant?”
He scratched his head. “Gone home. His wife’s expecting. I’m in charge. What do you want?”
“I want this license renewed. It expires at midnight.” To emphasize that I tapped the date with my finger.
“Your nails are dirty,” he responded without interest. “Nothing I can do about it. I can’t sign the thing.”
“You can forge the chief’s name, can’t you?”
“And get ten years for it? Oh, no!”
“Wiedenbeck, you’re no good. You’d rather see a guy starve than forge an old name. What will my kids think when I tell them about you? What will they say?”
“You ain’t got no kids. You live by yourself.”
I changed tactics. “What’s come in on that hit-and-run case?”
“What hit-and-run case?”
“The one that happened in front of my office today, hot-shot. A girl was driving a Studebaker sedan with a supercharger on the hood. That ought to be easy.”
“We ain’t found her.”
“That’s not news. Look here—” I dug around in my wallet and produced a long pink and gray slip of paper. There were some pictures on it, scenes of soldiers riding horses into battle. Wiedenbeck stared down at it.
I continued, “This is a Confederate ten-dollar bill. I’ll bet you this ten bucks some sheriff’s office around the state will find that car. Ten bucks against your signature on my renewal. Some sheriff will find that Studebaker in a ditch somewhere, maybe wrecked, and somebody else will pop in and claim it was stolen in Croyden or someplace.”
The red-haired policeman searched my face.
“How did you know that?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Know what?” But I felt another kick in the teeth coming my way.
“About that sedan being stolen in Croyden. It was ditched just inside our county line. Sheriff’s deputy found it an hour or so ago. How’d you know?”
I stared at him in disgust. That wasn’t what I was waiting for: the belly-blow was coming in low and fast. Finally I asked him, “Who did it belong to?”
“Some big shot over there by the name of — hell.”
This was it.
He frowned, pushed aside some sketches and ran a bony finger down the page of his record book. Then he looked up at me, or rather at a spot in space some feet over my head.
“Can you imagine that?” he asked me, awed. “Maybe I’d better phone the sergeant.”