“There’s no question in my mind.” Clytemnestra helped him lovingly. “You did it for me.”
“Did what for you?”
“Stole the money from Fuller’s safe. I never dreamed you’d go that far. I thought you were just going to juggle the books a little. But you actually stole. Ahh, Penny, you shouldn’t have done it!”
“I probably shouldn’t,” Penny agreed.
“You did it for me. I know you did!”
“I did?” Penny wondered.
“Yes. And I’m going to show you how much I appreciate it. You just wait right here. Stay in the stall. I’ll be right back.” Clytemnestra kissed Penny on the cheek and slipped out of the ladies’ room.
Penny sat with head between knees and thought. This must be the answer to just what it was that Pennington P. Potter had done that was so despicable as to drive him to kill himself. Sure! He’d stolen from his employer and committed suicide to keep from facing the consequences. And it looked like the blonde bombshell was the “she” responsible!
Having reached this conclusion, Penny felt two emotions, one after the other. The first was fear because Penny realized that the punishment for the crime Pennington P. Potter had committed would be inflicted upon the body of Pennington P. Potter regardless of the fact that he no longer inhabited it. It was bad enough having to adjust to life as a man. Having to adjust to life as a man in prison was more than Penny wanted to face. The second emotion was a desire for revenge against the woman responsible for Potter’s suicide. She should be made to pay for driving him to such lengths! Experience as a woman made Penny sure of her ability to wreak revenge. Female cunning in a man’s body would teach that conniving blonde a lesson she’d never forget.
Penny was smiling with grim determination over this decision when the door squeaked open once again. It was Clytemnestra. “The place is crawling with cops,” she reported. “They’re looking for you.”
“Where have you been?” Penny wanted to know.
“Fuller’s office.” Clytemnestra waved a stack of green-backs. “I went back, found the safe still open, and cleaned out the rest of the money. That’ll teach him a lesson!” Clytemnestra gritted her teeth. “The broom closet indeed! I figure I earned that money standing on my feet!”
“The Perpendicular Theory of Economics,” Penny mused. Then, with bitterness—“Just how many payments do you intend to extract for the pleasure?”
“I don’t follow you. But there’s no time to go into it now anyway. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“How?”
“The freight elevator. I checked. They forgot to station a cop there. Come on, before they realize.”
Penny followed Clytemnestra out of the ladies’ room. They dashed down the rear hall to the freight elevator. Clytemnestra had pushed the button before, and so it was standing there waiting. Just as they boarded it, two men rounded a bend in the hallway. One of them was A. K. Fuller “There he goes!” he exclaimed. “That’s Potter! And my secretary’s with him!”
The other man pulled a gun. Before he could shoot, however, the elevator doors clanged shut. Slowly—too slowly for Penny’s comfort — the elevator moved downward.
At the bottom, Clytemnestra grabbed Penny’s hand and led the way through the basement at a dogtrot. Outside, she dashed to the curb and opened the door of a parked car. “No keys!” She cursed and moved onto the next car. “No luck!” She tried a third vehicle, an antique auto -- Model A Ford, vintage early l930’s. “Aha!” Clytemnestra spotted the keys in the ignition. “Here’s our getaway car!”
“Car theft too!” Penny groaned as Fuller and the man with the gun appeared at the building exit.
“No choice,” Clytemnestra pointed out as bullets began pinging off the side of the car. She gunned the motor and they shot away from the curb.
“Since it looks like we’re going to die together,” Penny observed, crouching down in the seat as a stray slug shattered a side window, “it would be nice if I knew your name.”
“Are you kidding? You know my name.” Clytemnestra took the corner on two wheels. There was the siren sound of a police car giving chase.
“Call it temporary amnesia. I seem to have forgotten it."
“Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra Hodgkiss.” She pushed the accelerator to the floorboard. More sirens testified to other police cars joining the pursuit.
“Clytemnestra. My name is Penny.”
“I know that. You don’t have to be so formal. Call me Cly.” She laughed wildly and zigzagged the car through traffic with brakes squealing. “Penny and Cly!” She chortled again. “Penny and Cly-—we rob safes!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Model A Ford careened up the avenue at top speed, several howling police cars in hot pursuit. Cly pushed the buggy like a speedway driver with diarrhea. Her urgency was color-blind to the traffic lights, wildly careless of other vehicles, and indifferent to the terror of the pedestrians scattering as if they were straws in the wind of the Tin Lizzie’s progress.
Beside Cly on the front seat, Penny expected each moment to be the last. From behind them came an increasing hail of police bullets. Penny’s eyes opened on the front windshield framing a phantasmagoria of cars, people and lamp posts scrambling to get out of their way. They took another turn on two wheels and -—
Cly hit the brakes hard. Suddenly they were surrounded by other cars, packed solidly in their midst. A block or so behind them, the squad cars were in the same predicament.
“Damn ol’ traffic jam to the Holland Tunnel,” Cly said disgustedly. “Happens ev’ry dang time. Jes’ look! It’s no wondah folks here’bouts call Canal Street the Dust Bowl of the Nawth.”
“You’re slurring your vowels,” Penny pointed out.
“Ah cain’t help it.” Cly flushed a bit. “Mah stomach’s been a mite queasy lately.”
“I don’t mean—What I mean is that you’re drawling.”
“Ah ain’t!” Cly wiped her chin self-consciously.
“Drawling! Not drooling!”
“Oh. Yew mean the way Ah tawk! Well, it jes’ naturally comes ovah me when Ah go south. Ah revert, is what it is.”
“South?” Penny looked blank.
“This heah’s ’most as fah south as a body can go on Manhattan Island, sugah.”
“Sho’ nuff,” Penny granted. “Hot damn! It’s catchin’!”
“An y’all ain’t even from the South,” Cly chortled.
“Are yew?”
“Ah am. South Jersey. Tom’s Rivah. That’s Wheah Ah’m takin’ yew now. Ah got kin theah. We’ll hole up with ’em ’til the heat’s off.”
“Iffen we make it,” Penny said, ducking as a fresh spate of police bullets ricocheted around the car.
“Jes’ ’cause the traffic’s startin’ to move, them ding-dongs get the call to start shootin’ again,” Cly grumbled.
“Well, we ain’t no sittin’ ducks. Open up that theah glove compartment.”
Penny obeyed and found a dismantled tommy gun there.
“Put it togethah an’ shoot back,” Cly instructed.
“How’d yew know it’d be heah?” Penny wondered. “We jes’ stole this buggy.”
“A choppah’s bound to be optional ’quipment on a car like this. Sort o’ fellah’d buy this fliwah couldn’t resist the accessories. Now put that gun togethah and show ’em we can give as good as we git!”
Penny assembled the tommy gun and fired a few bursts back at the police. The dialogue of shots continued until they entered the tunnel and lost their pursuers around the curves. Luck stayed with them. An auto behind them stalled and the squad cars were caught in the jam it caused. By the time Penny and Cly reached the toll booth, they’d shaken the police altogether.
“I can’t change this.” The guard at the toll booth stared at the hundred dollar bill Cly handed him. “I'm not supposed to change anything larger than a twenty.”