Erle Gardner - The Case of the Haunted Husband

“Yes, I understand.”

“You understand,” Olger said irritably, “but you don’t sympathize. You don’t appreciate what it means to a high-strung boy...”

“High-strung, my eye!”

“Well, a boy who thinks as much of you as he does.”

“All right, go call him. Let me talk with Mr. Mason.”

Olger got up, started for the door with quick, nervous steps, turned, looked at Mason, said, “Sorry about that call to Pitcairn, Mason, but Stephane is going to have the best there is. I had to check up on you. See you later.”

He popped through the door and was gone.

Stephane sighed. “Did you ever want to relax and read a paper, with a young Boston bull pup in the room?”

He smiled. “Doesn’t he ever quit?”

“Quit, nothing! He doesn’t even slow up — but tell me about things.”

“What about them?”

She sat up more erect in bed, pulling a light robe around her shoulders. “You said you would have some news?”

“I thought I might have.”

She let her eyes search his face, then turned her glance away hastily. “Oh, well, never mind.”

Mason said, “I am on the right track. I know I am on the right track but the road doesn’t go where I think it should.”

“What is wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. Just when I am sailing right along, I come to a detour sign — ROAD CLOSED — UNDER REPAIRS — and the damn detour never does come back to the road. It just goes wandering away in an entirely different direction.”

“How bad is it?”

“It is not exactly encouraging right now, but it is going to get better. I want every single thing you can give me in the line of description — anything that might prove to be a clue. Go back carefully over everything that happened. See if there isn’t something you forgot to tell me. You can’t remember anything about the name or license number of the man who brought you down to Bakersfield?”

“No. He was in the forties. It was an old Ford — I should say around a thirty-four or thirty-five, somewhere around in there. I don’t know the models well enough to tell, but it had had quite a bit of use. It was still running well, but the upholstery was worn, and there were quite a few rattles. The paint job wasn’t much.

“He didn’t give you his name?”

“Not his last name. He asked me what mine was, and I told him Stephane, so he told me his was Jim, and that is all I know. You know how it is with hitchhikers. A man picks you up. He has never seen you before and you will never see him again. It seems foolish to sit in a car and say ‘Miss’ and ‘Mister.’ You can’t just call each other ‘say.’ So when a man gives me a lift and asks me what my name is, I give him my first name, and then he gives me his and usually is pretty much relieved to think that he can be both intimate and partially anonymous.”

“Don’t they get fresh?”

“Sure. Some of them.”

“Not most of them?”

“No. Taken by and large, they are pretty decent. You know how it is whenever a man comes in contact with a woman anywhere. He puts out little conversational feelers. You can usually tell when a man is just exploring for leads and when he is on the make.”

“All right, now how about this man who picked you up in Bakersfield?”

“Well, there were four cars coming — all going pretty fast — and this car was coming behind them.”

“That was up near the traffic circle?”

“Yes.”

“Then you would have said the car didn’t come from Bakersfield?”

“I don’t think it did, not as I understand the way that traffic circle is laid out.”

Mason said, “Homan is pretty apt to be lying. If he is, the thing to trap him on is the time the car was stolen. Tell me again about the man who was driving the car.”

“He was around thirty-one or thirty-two. He was — he had a lot of brass. I guess some girls fall for that sort. I never could. He went past me first. I guess he was looking me over, then he stopped and made me come all the way to the car. He didn’t back up. He looked at my legs when I got in. He had an air of assurance as though he expected every girl to fall for him. I can’t tell you what it is. It is an impudent lack of recognition of decency. A man of that sort goes through life looking... Oh, you know the kind.”

“I know,” Mason said, “but I want more details. I want to know everything about him. Didn’t his conversation give you some clue to what he was doing for a living?”

“No. He didn’t say. All I know is that he was hell-bent on getting to Los Angeles — he said he had a job to do. His eyes were dark. I don’t think they were a complete black, but some dark shade of brown. I didn’t get a real good look at them. He had a little black mustache. His hat was brown felt with a little green feather in the band. He wore a dinner jacket under a black topcoat. When he grabbed me the first time he got my lipstick smeared on his face. The next time, when I took the keys, he got a streak of lipstick across his shirt front, a red smear from my little finger, and also my face was pressed against the starched shirt, so my lips must have left a mark too.”

“What became of your lipstick pencil?”

“It is back in my purse. You know how a girl puts on lipstick. She touches it to her lips, then applies it with the tip of her finger. A man doesn’t like to get smeared up. This fellow was making passes at me, and I was a little afraid of what he might do, so I smeared the lipstick on just as thick as I could. My little finger was all covered with it.”

“But you had put the lipstick back in your purse at the time of the accident?”

“Just before the accident, yes.”

“Now, you took the ignition keys out of the car?”

“That’s right.”

“And what did you do with them?”

“I... say, I think I dropped them in my purse.”

“Where is your purse?” Mason asked.

“They had it for a while. The nurse brought it back to me yesterday.”

“Have you looked in it?”

“Just for some things I wanted, my compact and...”

“Where is it?”

“In that dresser drawer.”

Mason opened the drawer, took out a worn black purse, and handed it to her. She opened it, groped around in the interior, then, with an exclamation of annoyance, dumped everything out on the counterpane.

“Here you are,” she said, holding up a key ring.

Mason examined the three keys which were on the ring. “This one,” he said, “is a car key. These two look like house keys.”

“That’s right.”

“None of these keys is yours?”

“No.”

“Now, have you told the officers anything about these keys.”

“Not about having them. I told one of the detectives about what had happened, that this man had been making passes at me, and I switched off the ignition, and jerked out the keys.”

“Did he ask you where the keys were?”

She laughed. “No, because he didn’t believe a word I said. He just listened to me to be listening, that’s all.”

Mason said, “How good an actress are you?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“If I take those keys now and turn them in to the police, it’s going to look suspicious. They will wonder why you didn’t tell them about the keys before.”

“My gosh, Mr. Mason, I was pretty badly smashed up.”

“I know,” Mason said. “Now then, do you suppose if you waited until you were on the witness stand, and I got you to relate the events that had taken place that night and pretended I thought you had had these keys in your hand at the time of the accident, and they had been lost somewhere, and asked you casually if that wasn’t the case, and you thought for a moment — then do you suppose you could make your face register just the same puzzled concentration which you did just now, and say that you have a vague recollection of having dropped them in your purse? And then I will ask you about the purse, and you can fish them out in front of a jury?”