We get outside. Pete’s walking on air. He claps me on the back. “Ed, The Dame’s back!”
I’m not so sure. “Did you notice,” I ask him, “the names of the boys in that scout troop?”
“What about ’em?” Pete wants to know.
“One of ’em is Burt Hooker, Jr. If—”
“Forget it,” Pete interrupts. “You’re a good wheel horse, Ed, but you don’t have the mental agility which—”
“And there’s just one other thing,” I break in, “that I think we should find out about.”
“What’s that?” Pete asks.
I turn back to push open the door of the printing establishment. The man behind the counter is writing figures on a piece of paper. He looks up, and I say, “Would you mind telling me if the concern that felt it couldn’t afford that all-rag bond is a borrower from the Smith National?”
He’s puzzled. “Why,” he says, “the Smith National was the customer.”
The Dame back? Phooey! From where I stand it looks like our visitor is Old Man Trouble.
Nothing much happens for three or four days except that Pete runs my legs off on a lot of detail work. The local paper gives us a ton of free publicity. Pete Quint is a big sales engineer and advertising expert. There’s a lot said about reclaimed tires and about the strategic location of Robinsvale as a Potential jobbing center, particularly for the tire industry.
Pete sends the factory marked copies of the paper. He says it won’t hurt to let ’em know there’s a live wire on the job.
Then the tires come.
Pete has all the shrinking modesty of a steam calliope in a circus parade. He decorates the sides of the truck with posters. Then he sticks more posters on the gas hog and we start through Robinsvale’s business district. Pete won’t let me sit in the front seat. He claims Lady Luck’s there. He says The Dame’s back to stay now.
It turns out to be a two-car parade. Pete keeps driving back and forth through town. I see a guy scowling at us, and remember I’ve seen him in the cashier’s cage at the Smith National. I try to tell Pete, but Pete can’t hear me because of the noise he’s making with the horn on the gas hog.
When we finally wind up at the Fox Tire Company, Pete comes cakewalking in the door and makes a ceremony out of dusting off one of the stools.
The redhead looks at him with puzzled eyes, and Pete says, “Arlene, meet The Dame.”
“The Dame?” she asks.
“Lady Luck herself,” Pete says, bowing low. “And this is Arlene, the little girl I’ve been telling you about who—” He breaks off at the look in Arlene’s eyes and turns around.
A big man is walking in, pulling papers from his pocket. “Which one of you guys is Quint?” he asks.
Quint pushes out the old right hand. “I’m Quint. This is Ed Felton, my assistant, and over here on the stool is The Dame.”
The guy hands Pete the papers. “Warrant for your arrest,” he says, “on three counts. Unlicensed parade, antinoise-ordinance violation and blocking traffic... I don’t see no dame.”
Pete sits down.
“The reason you don’t see no dame,” I say to the law, “is because she ain’t there.”
I take a look at the beak who handles the traffic cases and don’t like him. He keeps sizing Pete up when Pete ain’t looking. When Pete looks, the judge paw’s around through the papers on his desk, looking for something that ain’t there.
I pull Pete off to one side and tell him to remember to call the guy “your honor,” and not to plead guilty until he knows what the rap is. I’ve never seen a bird so completely immune to the Quint personality as this guy.
“Now, this here complaint,” the judge says, frowning at Pete, “is on three counts.”
“I know, your honor. Let’s consider Count One. Suppose I should plead not guilty? What would happen?”
The judge paws through papers. “Cash bail one hundred dollars.”
Pete says, “Suppose I should plead guilty?”
“The fine’ll be one dollar.”
Pete’s smiling now. “I’m guilty.” He puts a buck on the desk.
“How about Count Two?” the judge asks.
“Guilty.”
“One dollar.”
Pete plunks down another buck.
“Count Three,” the judge says.
“Guilty.” I cough, and Pete adds hastily, “your honor.”
The judge says, “Ten days,” just like that.
I beat it up to the bank. Burton G. Hooker has left on his vacation. C. Ragswall Duncan, the cashier, is in charge. Mr. Duncan is very, very sorry, but the bank can do absolutely nothing. I explain that the bank’s money is tied up in those tires, that with Pete in jail, Fox can’t sell ’em.
C. Ragswall Duncan gives me the cold eye and tells me Pete has been running up bills in Fox’s name which the bank will eventually have to pay, that he thinks it’s a good thing to have Pete locked up for a while. I gather he thinks it would be a swell idea if I joined Pete in jail, and that the chief of police and the city judge have notes at his bank. The guy’s waiting for me to start something. His hand’s on the telephone. I say, “Yes, Mr. Duncan,” and tiptoe out.
It takes me two days to find out where Hooker is. I load the gas hog at Fox’s pump and start out. Halfway there, I’m following a woman in a coupé up a steep grade. I’m eating her dust when her left rear tire goes “bang.” She skids all over the road and winds up over against the edge.
She’s all alone, so I pull out the jack and make myself useful. She’s good-looking, quietly dressed, and grateful. Pete would have got her name, given her his card, talked reclaimed tires, and made a customer. I just say, “That’s all right, ma’am,” and get her on her way. I eat her dust to the top of the grade. She waves as I go by.
It’s fifteen miles on to the inn. Hooker’s out fishing when I get there. The clerk tells me where he thinks I can find him, down a steep trail to the creek.
It’s no dice.
When I get back up to the inn, sweaty and dusty, the clerk tells me Hooker fished upstream instead of down, that he came in just after I’d left, that his wife has joined him, and he’s in his room now. I get the clerk to give him a ring, and I get on the line.
It takes Hooker a minute to place me. When he does he hangs up, and the interview is over. I go out on the porch and stand there feeling as though I could walk under a snake’s belly with stilts. Then I look down and see the woman’s coupé that had the flat tire parked under a tree.
For a minute I realize how Pete feels when he says The Dame has come back, then it leaves me cold. I know it’s just The Dame’s way of kidding a guy along. But I stick around.
After a while, Hooker comes out on the porch. The woman’s with him. She recognizes me and comes over, all smiles, dragging her husband along and telling him how nice I was.
Hooker looks me over. He looks more dyspeptic than ever. “I refuse to be bothered with business when I’m on vacation, but since you’re here, sit down and tell me what it’s all about,” he says.
I feel like a guy in the death cell visiting with the executioner. There’s no use trying to put on gilt paint. I hand him cold, raw facts. Hooker listens. There’s no expression on his face. I can see his wife’s eyes twinkle. Once she looks at the old buzzard and smiles. I can’t see anything to smile about.
When I’m finished, Hooker says, “My wife brought me the local papers. I read something about the Reclaimed Tire Company selecting Robinsvale as a jobbing center. Do you know where that rumor originated, young man?”
I’m tired of trying to be diplomatic. “It’s a line Pete Quint handed the newspaper.”