Erle Stanley Gardner
The Last Bell on the Street
The clock on the dash shows 7:49. The smudge of smoke ahead will be Robinsvale — county seat, 10.6 miles.
The needle on the gas gauge is jammed over against the E, and has been for the last five miles. The car’s a good-looking heap. Originally, it cost plenty. Now there are two overdue installments on it, and the only reason we’re still driving it is that the finance company doesn’t want it either.
We have four bits between us — and Pete’s got that. He also has a million-dollar front and a line of sales talk that would make the Statue of Liberty drop the lamp to grab a fountain pen.
Pete figures our individual financial depression is because Lady Luck has taken a powder. Pete calls her “The Dame.” He says she runs out on a guy once in a while just to see if he can take it. Just keep your chin up and keep punching doorbells until you come to the last bell on the street, and she’ll come back, Pete claims. Me, I’m not bothering about “Why.” My stomach keeps paging my throat to ask, “When do we eat?”
The old gas hog tops a hill, sputters, coughs and goes dead. Pete kicks her into neutral and starts coasting. He’s promised me we’ll eat on that last four bits, and I’m holding him to it. We’ve poured enough dough through the gas tank.
We round a turn and there’s a service station. You can tell from the way it’s painted that it’s a company service station and the kid in charge won’t have any discretion in the matter of credit. We coast right on past. The grade flattens out and the gas hog slows down. There’s a wide place in the road.
“We can leave it here, Pete.”
The old hog is barely crawling, but Pete shakes his head. “We can get her around that next bend,” he says, “and maybe The Dame will give us a tumble.”
There’s a little more slope here and the hog picks up speed. Then we see the sign, George C. Fox, Reclaimed Tires. To one side is a sheet-iron building with a sign, Mother’s Restaurant, and a couple of gasoline pumps in front.
Pete lifts his hat. “George, my boy, opportunity is about to knock on your door. Poise your index finger over the ‘No Sale’ key on your cash register. Here we come!”
“Save it,” I say, “until you’ve got a customer.”
Pete says reproachfully, “George is our customer. Stick around, Ed. This is going to be good.”
“It has to be,” I tell him.
Pete slips the key to the gas cap into the glove compartment. The gas hog limps up to the pumps.
Pete jumps out, fumbling around in his pockets, his back toward the restaurant. The door opens and a Jane comes out. She’s class, with red hair, blue eyes and a white apron. I breathe easier. Pete’s a riot with dames.
Pete hears the screen door creak. His hands are circulating through his pockets like the vanes on a windmill. “My gosh, Ed! My wallet! It’s got the key to the gas cap in it. I must have left it in that night club.”
I know it’s up to me to get his signals. I say, good and loud, “Was that hundred bucks in it?”
Pete gives me a hurt look. “Hundred bucks! It was five hundred and sixty dollars. We’ll telephone.” Then, apparently, he realizes for the first time someone’s behind him. He turns around with the old Quint smile, and freezes in his tracks.
My stomach feels cold. One look at Pete’s face, and I know the answer. He’d have made the build-up with old George C. Fox, but not with the Jane.
Her eyes are sympathetic. “There’s a telephone in the restaurant.”
Pete gives her a ghostly semblance of the Quint smile.
“That wallet,” he announces with conviction, “is gone forever. In the meantime, the cap is locked tight on my gasoline tank; I’m stalled in front of your pump.”
“Perhaps you could pull over and get a locksmith.”
“Good idea,” Pete says... “Pull her over, Ed.”
I put her in gear and let the starter drag the heap into the shade. The redhead says, “We don’t ordinarily cash checks, but perhaps father—”
Pete laughs. “Oh, we still have money. We’ll eat first and worry about the car afterward.”
I almost pull the door off its hinges getting out. I’m afraid he might grandstand that fifty cents for gas, the way he’s looking at the Jane. Pete sticks a shoulder in front of me and slows me up long enough to hold the screen door open for the girl. We follow her in and sit down at the counter. Pete looks at the menu printed over the mirror.
“Two hamburgers,” he says, “and coffee.”
“With onions,” I tell him, an eye on the price list.
“With onions,” he says.
The girl opens the icebox and starts the hamburgers sizzling. Her eyes keep playing tag with Pete’s.
“Where’s your dad?”
Pete asks.
She laughs. “Dad ducked. He thought you were someone else.” She goes to the back door and calls, “Coast is clear, dad,” and comes back to the hamburgers.
After a minute, the back door opens. The big man who comes in has work-stooped shoulders, and eyes two shades lighter than the girl’s. They match his faded blue work shirt.
The redhead says, “Dad, this man’s had the worst luck.”
The man’s bushy eyebrows crawl together. He says to Pete, “We don’t cash checks.”
“No one’s asking you to,” Pete says, sliding the four bits out on the counter.
The man gets apologetic then. “Sorry, but Arlene is always falling for some hard-luck story. I thought perhaps—”
Pete says, “I never hand out bard-luck stories,” which is the truth. “I’m annoyed over losing the key. I never have any trouble making money.”
The man says dejectedly, “Try making some for me.”
They don’t know Pete. I cross my fingers hard, hoping that what’s coming next isn’t going to interfere with the first meal I’ve had in eighteen hours.
Pete says, “Okay, make you all or any part of a hundred thousand on a fifty-fifty basis. How does that sound?”
The man’s suspicious. He doesn’t say how it sounds, but the girl laughs. “That’d be swell. Make another hundred thousand for me and—”
A car slides up outside. The girl stoops so she can look up under the awning. “Oh, my gosh, dad! It’s him! Duck!”
Fox stands there helpless. Outside I hear a car door slam. It’s half a dozen steps to the back door and “Down behind the counter,” Pete says, and Fox drops as though you’d jerked him with a string.
A guy with knife-edged creases in his trousers, a bright necktie and an off-color diamond scarf pin breezes in, says, “Hello! How’s my little strawberry patch? You’re more beautiful every time I see you. I’ve got a friend in pictures in Hollywood and—”
Pete swings around. “Hi, buddy. Who you with?”
The man stops talking and sizes Pete up. “Dan Preston, Amalgamated Distributors,” he says.
Pete slides from his stool, his right hand stuck out and all of the Quint personality going into action.
“I’m Quint — Peter R. Quint.”
They shake hands.
“Who you with?” Preston asks.
Quint doesn’t bat an eyelash. “I’m taking charge of sales for George C. Fox,” he says.
There’s a second or two of silence, broken only by the sizzling of hamburgers. The redhead’s staring, open-mouthed. I hear a noise back of the counter that could be made by Fox starting to get up, and scrape my foot against the tongue-and-groove to cover up. You got to hand it to Pete. Show him a doorbell, and he’ll punch it.
“That’s fine,” Preston says. “You can give me the order which’ll reinstate Fox under his contract. I wrote him. The factory said he either had to fish or cut bait.”
Pete takes it in his stride. “We’ll fish.”