Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Oh, just one of these strong, silent women! Not a word to say, eh?” I told her. “Well, suppose you give me your name and address just for fun.”

She hoisted herself up and took a quick step away. “I’m going to get a cop!” she burst out.

I side-stepped around and got in front of her. “You’ve got one,” I said, and let the badge slide back into my vest pocket again. “Now are you going to tell me what I asked you?”

“You can’t compel me to give you my name if I don’t want to!” she said hotly. “Who do you think you’re dealing with, some fly-by-night chippy? I don’t care whether you’re a detec—”

Which was true enough, as far as that goes. But she had me steamed up by now. “Either you identify yourself, or you can consider yourself under arrest!” I didn’t have a thing on her, and I knew it. I had no way of proving that what she had told me about the fat man wasn’t so. True, he had mentioned his wife to me sitting on the bench in the statue, but he hadn’t tagged this particular woman or anyone else in the group as being “it.” He hadn’t even made it clear whether his wife had accompanied him on the excursion. For all I knew she might be sitting at home at this very moment, just as my own was.

Meanwhile, “—never so insulted in my life!” she was boiling, but she was going through the motions of coming across, with angrily shaking hands. She threw back the lid of her pocketbook and fished around inside it. “I didn’t expect a third degree like this,” she snapped, “so I didn’t bring my pedigree with me! However, I’m Alice Colman, Van Raalte Apartments, Tarrytown. Take it or leave it!”

I felt like two cents by now, especially as I noticed her eyes growing shiny with tears. Even if the fat man had met with foul play, which there was no proof of so far, she hadn’t been anywhere near him at the time it happened. She had been away up at the top looking dreamy. I was only doing this because I’d seen them together on the trip out, and she needn’t have made me feel like such a lug. I covered it up by going through with what I was doing, taking out my notebook and jotting down the info. “Miss Alice Colman,” I said out loud, squinting down my pencil.

“I didn’t say that!” she flared. “Oh, let me alone, you dog!” And she whisked herself off down the deck as if she couldn’t stand any more. I could see her shoulders shaking as she went. I let her alone after that, didn’t try to follow her up.

“Well, well, well,” I sighed, “I certainly have the light touch with dolls!” Her last crack, I took it, meant that she was a Mrs. and not a Miss.

If I had any doubts that the fat guy might have turned out to be on the ferry after all, hiding behind a cuspidor or something, and that I had simply missed seeing him until now, they were very soon settled once the tub had tied up at the South Ferry landing. I stationed myself on the lower end of the plank ahead of everyone, and stopped them one by one as they tried to go past. “Police headquarters... Name, please... Address. Got anything to back it up?” And I killed the inevitable “What’s this for?” each time it came with a terse “None of your business!”

When I was through I had a line on every one who had made the outing with me — at least if anything turned up now I was no longer in the dark. All but the very guy who was missing. And he was still missing. He had definitely not made the trip back on the boat. The Colman person was the last one off, and came sailing by me head in air with the cold remark: “Be sure you follow me — low-down common bully!” I just stood there and looked after her, scratching my head. It was only after she’d gone that I realized she was the only one of the lot who hadn’t backed up her name and address with documentary proof.

But meanwhile there was something else I wanted to see about.

I went around to the ticket office in the ferry building; it was closed, of course. Ours had been the last trip of the day. I hammered on the wicket, and then I went around and pounded on the door. Luckily they were still in there, counting the day’s receipts or something. I recognized the guy that had sold me my own ticket. “Headquarters, it’s all right, lemme in a minute.” And when he had, “Now look. Do you remember selling a ticket down the bay to a fat guy, puffy cheeks like this, blue suit, brown hat, when the last boatful went out?”

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I do.”

“How many did he buy? One or two?”

“Two,” he said decidedly. “I been selling ’em all day long, but I can remember that all right because he was lamebrained, couldn’t count straight. He wanted to tell me four-forty change was coming to him out of a finn. I says, ‘Buddy,’ I says, ‘in my country two times thirty-five adds up to—’ ”

“Never mind the trailer,” I squelched. “Did she — did anyone come up to the window with him when he bought them?”

“Naw, he come up to the window alone and bought two tickets. I didn’t see who was with him.”

“Being sore at him, you didn’t take a gander out the window after him after he moved on? Most ticket-sellers would.”

“They were all on line,” he explained. “I didn’t have time, had to wait on the next rubberneck.”

Well, if he’d bought two tickets his wife was with him — he hadn’t bought them just because he was overweight himself, that was a cinch. As for his wife, runner-up to himself when it came to staying out of sight, little Alice Colman was elected for the time being. Which added up to this — I was going back to that island. She could hold for awhile. If nothing had happened to him, then it was none of my business whether she was wife, girl-friend, or total stranger to him. But if something had — I wasn’t forgetting that she was the only person outside myself I’d seen him talking to.

I beat it outside to the ferry again. It was still there, but fixing to go wherever it is they go for the night when they’re not in service. Or maybe it was just going to stay put. But not while I knew it.

A couple of tattooed arms tried to bar my way up the gangplank. “One side,” I said, and the badge was getting a high polish just from rubbing against the serge so much, “I gotta see the captain before he slips off his suspenders!”

“He uses safety-pins,” he corrected me dryly, “but go ahead—” He came out of the saloon just then struggling into a lumber-jacket, evidently going ashore to catch up on his suds.

“Say, y’gotta take me back there,” I burst out. “Here’s what—” And I explained all about the hefty passenger that had gone out and hadn’t come back.

He was one person the badge didn’t mean a thing to; he was used to being boss of the roost. “Go ’way, man, you’re out of your head!” he boomed. “This boat’s asleep for tonight, I wouldn’t make another run there for St. Peter himself. If he missed it and got left behind, that’s his tough luck. He’ll just have to wait over until nine in the morning, there are plenty of benches on the island, just like Central P—” and he took the most graceful spiral spit over the rail I had ever seen — and made it.

“But y’ don’t get what I mean!” I howled, shoving the brown felt in his face. “He didn’t just miss it — something’s happened to him. Now give your orders. You know what this means, don’t you? You’re obstructing—”

“I take my orders from the company,” he said surlily, looking longingly in the direction of the dives along South Street. “If that piece of tin means anything why don’t it get you a police launch?”

But I wasn’t going to be a back-room laughing-stock for the rest of the year in case I did get there with a launch and find the fat guy had stayed behind to pick dandelions or something. I went ashore again and had it out with one of the agents in the ferry house, and he in turn had to telephone one of the higher muck-a-mucks and put it up to him, and then sign an order for me to show the captain.