“In general,” Asey said, “there are two main an’ leadin’ motives for murder, one of which is love an’ its variations, an’ the other is money an’ its variations. Eloise had forty-one dollars in the bank, an’ ten shares of Tel. an’ Tel. She kept’em in her right-hand bureau drawer, in case you’re int’rested. She owed Doc Cummings nine dollars an’ twenty-five cents, an’ she owed Quimby for four chocolate sodas. Said so on her mem’randum pad. Under the circumstances, I don’t feel she was killed for money or its variations. Mary Randall’s antique stock is good, but it ain’t worth more’n five thousand dollars. The land an’ house is worth four or five, but it’s got a thumpin’ mortgage on it.”
Kay rubbed at the window pane with her handkerchief.
“Who,” she said, “loved or hated Eloise? How could you love or hate Eloise? How could you do anything more than accept her for what she was?”
“As Madame Meaux might say,” Asey remarked, “you can’t love a woman whose teeth click.”
“But you couldn’t hate her,” Kay said, “because her teeth clicked, either. I have a grandmother whose teeth click, but I love her dearly. Can I smoke?”
“If you keep the end hidden?”
Twelve o’clock passed.
“I place my son John in this room,” Kay said suddenly, “and the first thing he saw was a big F and a little f.”
“Big fool an’ little fool,” Ase returned promptly. “What is the one an’ only word you can make out of the word ‘scythe’?”
“Chesty,” Kay said. “I read it in a psych book in Psych sixty-two. Mental Growth and Mental Decline. I never knew which part it belonged in.”
Another half hour went by.
“I must say,” Kay sounded tired, “that for one so teeming with action Wednesday, this man is curiously lassitudinous – is that the word I want? Asey, don’t you suppose he’s shot his bolt for the day? After all, he’s killed someone. Benvenuto Cellini would have considered that ample. It wasn’t before breakfast, but it ought to count.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you brood about?”
“Bertha.”
“Bertha – oh. What for? Do you cherish a secret passion for Bertha, Asey? Do you long for the touch of her hand, or what?”
“I was wonderin’,” Asey said, “if I’d picked her beachplum jelly this afternoon durin’ the judgin’. I sort of gypped on that.”
“For shame, how?”
“I went out to Sara’s preserve closet an’ looked at what was there, an’ what kind of jar, an’ then I picked the one most like it later. After all, Bertha’s a good cook, an’ why not? You get cups an’ things, an’ why shouldn’t Bertha get ’em as well as Mrs. J. Arthur Brinley?”
“Why not?” Kay said. “Ask Mike Slade.”
“An’ b’sides, I r’sent what I call unfair agitation on the part of J. Arthur. He told me in fourteen ways, an’ all underhanded, just exactly what Bessie’s jelly looked like, an’ how she’d won prizes for years an’ years. Told me everythin’ but the number, an’ with a little encouragement on my part, he’d have told me that – Kay, there’s a car slowin’ up. Wonder if it’s Lane – move over, will you?”
“It went on,” Kay said. “Just a lot of merrymakers, didn’t you hear the radio going? Probably they stopped to look at the figures – they’re simply hideous from the other side of the road. By the way, oughtn’t we to bring them in from the rain? They’re haggard and weatherbeaten enough—”
“They’re already soaked through,” Asey pointed out, “an’ so’d we be if we tried any rescue work. Kay, look again. Are you sure that car went? Seems to me I can hear the radio.”
“I thought I did, too,” Kay said, “but I can’t see a tail light, or any light at all. Parkers, I guess. What a night to park in, and what a ghastly place – Asey, aren’t we being silly, watching the front of the house this way? If anyone’s going to come, they’re not going to come and pound on the front door knocker. They’ll creep up from the woods in the rear, shouldn’t you think?”
“I was thinkin’ that, in a way,” Asey said. “S’pose you keep your eyes on the parkers while I wander out back an’ take a look around.”
Kay had moved to another window when he returned.
“The radio’s still going,” she said. “I think the car’s just beyond the house, off the side of the road. Much ribaldry, or else they’re listening to a ribald orchestra – Asey, I thought there were four of those figures.”
“There are.”
“Only three that I can see,” Kay said.
“One’s probably fallen down again. One of the gents has a sort of dropsy. Lane tried to fix it, ’cause he claimed it was unnervin’ to watch it fall. I guess too many tourists pawed it over—”
“There are so only three,” Kay said, “and there’s none on the lawn. Now that’s funny – I wonder if – let me look out of that window. No, I can’t see any on the ground here. Where do you suppose—”
Outside, a car engine raced. “Tourists!” Asey sprang for the door. “I bet those birds pinched one—”
Kay raced along after him.
“There goes the car – Asey! Oh, the pigs! Can’t we do something—”
Asey’s Colt barked.
“Scare ’em, maybe – Kay, let’s give that bunch a chase. Come on. My car’s yonder.”
As Kay fell breathlessly into the roadster’s seat, Asey pulled at her arm.
“Get out – quick—”
“Why?”
“Get out!”
“What for?”
“Is your car here? Where? Hustle? Come on, show me. Quick!”
“But it’s – what’s the matter with yours?”
“Tires slashed,” Asey said as they ran down the road. “Those weren’t any tourist snatchers – that’s our man!”
Chapter 17
Asey jumped in behind the wheel of Kay’s battered coupe, and grabbed at the key she stretched out to him.
“Asey, he’s out of sight!” she said. “I can’t see any tail light – come to think of it, there never was any tail light. Here, I’ll pull the choke—”
The little car bounced off as though someone had given it a swift kick from the rear.
“Asey,” Kay said, “you couldn’t catch a bicycle in this thing! It won’t go over forty. The tires – don’t mind that door, it just seems open. It’s really closed. It’s sprung or warped or – Asey, can you see him?”
“Yup,” Asey said unexpectedly. “See there, way ahead by the school?”
“How’d you know it’s the right car?”
“Headlights, no tail light, an’ the rate he’s goin’. Yessiree, that’s our man!”
“Maybe he is our man, but you’d better give up any idea of catching him, right this minute,” Kay said. “You can’t!”
“Give up nothin’,” Asey said. “At least we can trail him. He’s clever, Kay. Keeps his radio goin’ to mislead us – in fact, he might’s well have brought a brass band, for all I caught on. An’ slashin’ my tires – yes, this’s our man. Now, hang on tight. I got to catch up enough to see which way he turns up at the forks.”
He pressed his foot down on the accelerator, and Kay began to understand that Asey meant exactly what he said when he told her to hang on. The little coupe was hurling itself forward in a series of leaps and bounds, and it quivered tremulously, as though it were frightened to death.
In a daze, Kay watched the speedometer tape jiggle, and then she looked around at the ragged upholstery and at her leather jacket stuffed up behind the seat, and at the paper bag of jelly doughnuts Zeb Chase had bought that after noon from the food sale. It all reassured her. This was indeed her car, going at this clip.
“Right,” Asey said. “So he thinks he can fool me, does he? Huh. Keep hangin’ on. We’re goin’ to have fun—”
The speedometer jiggled past the last figure, kept on jiggling past the zero, and arrived triumphantly at ten on its second trip around. Serenely and
rather proudly, it stuck there.
“Hey!” Kay had to howl to make herself heard above all the noises of the car, “hey – Asey! This – this thing! This car! It was six years old when I inherited it at the office. Six years if a day. And the tires—”
“Just keep hangin’ on,” Asey howled back. “I helped put the first Porter car together, an’ I drove it afterwards. Four weeks from Boston to New York. This has a few improvements on that model—”
“But the tires! Ugh – ow!”
Her knees hit against the dash, and she braced herself to meet the bumps.
They were on some side road or other. To her left was the center of Billingsgate; she could see the yellow star on top of the mast at the midway, and as she watched, it blinked once and went out.
“We ain’t ridin’,” Asey said. “We’re flyin’ – wheel Look out for your head!”
“Red lanterns!” she howled accusingly at him. “Red lanterns! The sign said ‘Road Closed!”’
“We ain’t on the road.”
They weren’t. They were billowing nonchalantly, but at a slightly slower pace, along the edge of a corn field.
After several moments the car lurched back up on the road again. A bayberry twig slatted against the windshield.
“That was just a little bad strip there,” Asey said soothingly. “I knew about it. Honest, I did.”
“Sure,” Kay said. “Of course. Mayo the omniscient. Asey, I hate to bring it up, it withers me, but are you just driving for fun, or do you know where our friend is? I haven’t seen the slightest trace of any car ahead.”
“He ain’t ahead,” Asey told her as he cut around a puddle. “He’s to one side.”
“Indeed!”
“Yup, he’s takin’ the high road, an’ we got the low road, but we’ll get there b’fore him—”
“We’ll get to heaven before him,” Kay said, “if that’s what you mean!”
“Wonder how he missed your car.”
“Probably just had yours in mind,” Kay said. “Jack the Ripper, thinking only of you. Asey, you must understand about the tires – my God!”
They skidded in a puddle, and the coupe turned completely around twice.
“Now there,” Asey said, continuing his unabashed way, “is where this thing beats even my roadster. The Porter’d only of skidded half around, leavin’ us facin’ the wrong d’rection. Kay, your windshield wiper appears to of died. Help, will you?”
“How?” Kay demanded. “Want me to crawl out and sit on the hood with a handkerchief? What do you think I am, I’d—”
“Hold the wheel,” Asey said, “an’ I’ll fix it.”
Somehow with a sudden lurch he managed to clean enough of a space to see through.
A few hundred yards on, he slowed the car down and snapped off the headlights.
“Ahead,” he informed Kay, “is the main road to Boston. An’ just b’low us here to the left is the road where that feller’s got to come out. It’s two miles longer than the thing we come over, bein’ a work r’lief road, an’ it’s kind of windin’—”
“And what are you going to do with this fellow, providing he turns up? Shoot him?”
“I got no d’sire to kill him, I want to find out who he is – aha – there—”
A sedan raced out of the new road and sped past them at a terrific clip.
“That’s it,” Asey swung the coupe over and followed. “License number’s covered up – now, let’s see what he does, an’ where he thinks he’ll go. There – there he turns off. That’s nice. We’ll string along.”
“Where’s he headed?” Kay asked as they left the main road. “Where are we headed?”
“Toward my home town,” Asey said, “an’ I’d like real well to play tag with him on some of them back roads there. I know them roads.”
“You seem to know these.”
“Today, while judgin’,” Asey said, “I read through the whole blessed Old Home Week program, includin’ a map of roads, past an’ present. Looked like a close-up of a perm’nent wave, but I got a lot out of it. Fellow’s slowing down. I don’t like that—”
“Why not?” Kay demanded. “Catch up – find out who he is – it’s your chance to – oh, dear, there he goes again! What are you slowing down for now?”
“Want to see if I can peer through this windshield an’ see – no, I guess he didn’t.” Didn’t what?” Kay asked as Asey’s foot again went down hard on the accelerator.
“I thought he might have tossed a bottle or something for us to run over – the road narrows here, Kay. Hang on.” The speedometer tape jiggled again, but this time the effort was too much. It jumped wildly around and then came to rest at the figure eight, and there it stayed.
“Asey,” Kay shouted in his ear, “give this up! He’s out of sight – I can’t even see a trace of his headlights on—”
“Goin’ to try one more thing,” Asey said, “an’ this time, brace yourself an’ watch that wound of yours. We’re goin’ to bounce considerable.”
He turned the car off the tarred road, apparently into the middle of the woods. Kay thought at first that the coupe was completely out of control.
“Old wagon road,” Asey explained casually. “If I can get through, we got him.”
Kay peered out the side window and automatically ducked. But the tree didn’t break the glass, it ground hard against it,‘and then scratched noisily against the body as the car bounced along.
She looked at Asey in amazement. The branches were actually coming in the car on his side, where the window wouldn’t close. Bushes and trees were scraping the coupe’s underpinning and running boards.
She leaned forward and found a spot on the windshield through which she miraculously could look ahead.
“Road? My God, Asey, it’s a forest! Look at that tree! We can’t – what – what happened to it! It was right there in the middle of the road—”
“We went over it. Couldn’t do this in my car,” Asey said. “Too low slung.” Twice he stopped to wipe the rain off the windshield, and once he got out to pull a fallen tree out of their way.
“This,” Asey said, “used to be the main road to Boston, in the old days. The stage coaches used it. This part we’re goin’ through now, it used to be a big settlement. Tavern an’ store an’ church an’ blacksmith shop. I s’pose the clothes on them figures often visited around here. Maybe b’longed here—”
“Asey, what about that figure? What’s the idea in swiping that, if any?”
“Wait’ll I get out of this mess,” Asey said. “I think – Kay, in about two seconds, we’ll be back on the main road once more. If God’s good to us, we’ll be ahead of that feller. An’ anyway, we can’t be very far b’hind him—”
But the last forty feet of the old road turned out td be the worst part of the entire ride.
Asey swore under his breath as he shifted and gingerly began to pick a way for the little car through the heaps of tin cans and trash which suddenly loomed ahead.
“Some lazy bums,” he said bitterly, “ ’ve been usin’ this for a dump. Back in, dump their junk, an’ drive out—”
The coupe bounced through it bravely.
“My hat’s off to this vehicle,” Asey said. “She can take it. Now, I’ll stop here, an’ we’ll leave our lights on, an’ see—”
“Why not drive the coupe out into the middle of the road,” Kay suggested, “and we’ll get out, and then wait for—”
“For some honest burgher to get killed? Nope. If he goes by, we’ll follow. We ain’t got a chance of catchin’ him, but we can trail to the bitter end. If I can just get the chance of seein’ what he does at the next forks, then I can weave around him like a spider, an’ get him no matter how fast he goes. If – Kay—”
“It’s coming hell bent!” Kay said. “I bet—”
The car flashed by them.
“That’s it – hurry, Asey! Hurry, that’s it – why, what’s the matter? Start—”
“The percolator
,” Asey said, “is through perkin’.”
“Tires? I don’t wonder, after what we’ve been through. I’ve been trying to tell you, even your friends the state cops have been suggesting that new tires would be nice. Asey, why couldn’t they have held out a little longer?”
“Not tires, but rear axle,” Asey said, leaning back and folding his arms. “Kay, did you see anythin’, or recognize the man?”
“It went by so fast, and the windows were wet and drippy. No, I don’t know what kind of car it was, even. I didn’t see anyone. Did you?”
“I know the car. It’s Lane’s. His own car, not his official one. Brownish, with a dented front fender.”
“You don’t mean it was Lane!”
“His car, I said. Not him. It’s got a radio, I know. Huh. The nearest house is about a mile up the road. Feel like walkin’ it?”
“Sure,” Kay said. “Get my brief case, will you? That’s all that’s worth taking. And my leather coat. The doors won’t lock, but it won’t matter, someone’ll just figure it’s an integral part of the dump. And oh, the doughnuts – they’re mussed, but would you like one?”
“We’ll eat’em en route,” Asey said. “I got a desire to get to a phone. Maybe we can hitch a ride back to town—”
The first two cars he hailed merely swerved out and continued on their way.
“Sensible people,” Kay said. “I wouldn’t dream of giving us a ride, myself.”
The next car slowed up, and a woman’s voice came through two inches of open window.
“Asey Mayo, you’d ought to be ashamed of yourself! At your age, too!” Before Asey could answer, the car departed.
Kay chuckled. “What you’ve got to live down, what with me, and Madame Meaux! Who was that?”
“Miss Nickleby,” Asey said. “She believes in sin. I’d like to know what she’s doin’ out, this time of night, herself!” The next car was a truck, and the driver pulled up for them.
“Now,” Asey said ten minutes later, as they stood by the four corners in Billingsgate, “now we’ll go to the drug store an’ phone. So long, feller, an’ thanks!” Before they had a chance to cross the street, a car swerved around the corner and pulled up beside them.
Figure Away Page 21
