Эрл Гарднер - The Case of the Crooked Candle

“ Friday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Of course not. Friday was the day of the political meeting at the Surf and Sun Motel. Don’t you remember?”

Della Street said very definitely, “Well, you’re to come with me — and you’ll have to stay out of circulation for a while. Those are the boss’s orders.”

“Keeping me away from newspaper reporters?”

“I didn’t ask him,” Della Street said and smiled. “One doesn’t, you know.”

“Yes, I can understand Mr. Mason may be rather impatient if one interrupts his high-speed mental processes to ask why this is done and why that is done. All right, let’s go.”

“I think we’d better take a cab,” Della said.

They started toward the taxi stand.

Carol Burbank said, “I think I’ll put on my coat and gloves. That cold, west wind is blowing again this afternoon. It was so nice up until half an hour ago, too.”

“I’ll hold your purse,” Della offered.

Carol Burbank slipped into her coat, opened her purse and pulled out a pair of gloves. As she did so, a slip of pasteboard fluttered from the purse to the floor.

Della glanced inquiringly at Carol Burbank and saw Carol’s face was a complete blank. Evidently she had failed to notice that bit of pasteboard.

Della Street turned back. A smiling man who had rushed forward to play the gallant raised his hat and extended the printed pasteboard.

Della Street flashed him a smile.

Carol Burbank turned to regard Della Street curiously, and Della, moved by some impulse, pushed the claim check down into the pocket of her coat. Not until they had moved out through the patio to the cab stand, did Della slip the pasteboard out of her pocket and give it a quick inspection.

It was a claim check at the parcel claim stand at the depot.

Abruptly Della said, “Just a minute, Miss Burbank, I want to call the boss about something. Do you mind waiting for just a minute?”

“Not at all. I’ll go back with you.”

“Oh, don’t bother to do that. I’ll just skip along and...”

“No, no. I’ll come along.”

“There’s nothing that you want to get here at the depot, is there?”

“No.”

“No baggage or anything?”

“Heavens, no! I just came down here because it was a good place to telephone and one can always find a cab here. These days it isn’t easy to pick up a cab just when you want one.”

Della said, “Yes, I know how it is. I had to wait so long a few days ago that I missed my appointment at my hair dresser. If you’ll just excuse me a moment, Miss Burbank.”

Della Street popped into a telephone booth, leaving Carol Burbank standing outside.

She dialed the unlisted number of the phone on Mason’s desk. She heard the receiver lifted and Mason’s voice saying cautiously, “Hello, who is this?”

“Della.”

“Hello, Della. You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t followed?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Not a chance.”

“You have Carol?”

“Yes.”

“You at the hotel now?”

“No, at the terminal. Listen, Chief, she opened her purse to take out her gloves and dropped a claim check. It’s on the parcel checking service here. She must have left that package, or whatever it is, within the last hour or two...”

“Where’s that check now?”

“I have it.”

“Does she know it?”

“No. She hasn’t realized she’s lost it yet.”

“All right, you have an envelope in your purse?”

“Yes.”

“Write my name on it. Put in the claim check. When you get to the hotel, leave the envelope at the desk. I’ll pick it up, go get the parcel and see what’s in it. Got that straight?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself.”

“I will. Bye, Chief.”

“Bye, Della.”

Della hung up, then moved around on the stool so that her shoulder hid what she was doing. She slipped an envelope out of her purse and scribbled Mason’s name and the office address on it, inserted the pasteboard under the flap.

She rejoined Carol, and the two girls retraced their steps to the taxi stand and moved forward as a vacant cab drew up to the curb.

“Where to?” the starter asked.

Della said, “We’re both together. It’s the Woodridge Hotel.”

“Sorry, we’re not putting two people in a cab any more, you’ll have to double up with... Where to, Mister?”

A man’s voice said, “I want to go to Eleventh and Figueroa.”

“All right, get in,” the starter said, and then instructed the driver, “Take the young ladies to the Woodridge Hotel, and the man to Eleventh and Figueroa, Jack. Any baggage?”

It seemed that none of them had baggage.

The man, from the first, seemed definitely interested in his fellow travelers. It was two blocks, however, before he said tentatively, “Cooled off rather suddenly, didn’t it?”

Carol Burbank smiled. “Yes, it did. But after all, one can expect that this time of year. It’s a little early for the warm weather to set in.”

“There certainly is a shortage of taxicabs,” the man observed.

“Yes, isn’t there.”

“Not that I object,” he said with a smile, “when it gives me a break like this. You girls from San Francisco?”

Carol looked inquiringly at Della Street. Della Street gave the man a somewhat vague smile and said simply, “No. I’ve been there, though.”

The man said, “I live there. Swell place. Have to come down here once in a while on business. Always anxious to get back. This place is just a mass of people. San Francisco is a city.”

“Watch out,” Carol Burbank warned, “they shoot people for saying things like that down here.”

“I can’t help it. I think San Francisco... Say, you girls don’t live here in Los Angeles, do you?”

Once more Carol looked to Della Street for guidance.

Della laughed. “What’s the matter, are you afraid to voice your opinion if we do?”

“Well, of course — I don’t want to seem discourteous.”

“Oh, I’m certain the residents of Los Angeles get accustomed to hearing people from San Francisco refer to Los Angeles in terms of disparagement. But don’t they have more sunshine here than they do in San Francisco? Don’t you have lots of fog?”

“Fog!” the man exclaimed. “Why that’s the thing that makes San Francisco. When that fog comes rolling in from the ocean, it peps you up. It’s bracing, stimulating. There’s a lot of rush and bustle in connection with San Francisco. Down here, people seem to have the hookworm. You girls really don’t live here, do you?”

“What makes you think we don’t?” Della said.

“Too much class — too much pep.”

“I thought Hollywood was noted for its beautiful women.”

“Oh, I guess it is, but they’re synthetic. You girls are metropolitan, you don’t act the way they do down here. You don’t wear your clothes that way. You have something about you — something...”

“An air of urban sophistication,” Carol Burbank finished.

The man said with some enthusiasm, “That’s it exactly.”

The girls laughed and, after a moment, the man joined them somewhat half-heartedly. “ I’m kidding on the square,” he protested. “You’re stringing me along.”

The cab drew up in front of the Woodridge Hotel.

The man said somewhat ruefully, “I’m sorry your hotel wasn’t nearer Eleventh and Figueroa. Well, good-by.”

They smiled at him, paid the cab driver and Della Street led the way into the hotel.

“Good afternoon,” the clerk said and spun the rack containing the registration card around toward Della Street.

Della picked up the fountain pen, said in a low voice, “I’m from Mr. Mason’s office. I...”