Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 6, No. 12, December 1961

The Vapor Clue by James Holding

One might think the title of this story a contradiction in terms, since vapor is essentially an intangible, evanescent thing, while a clue, in order to fulfill its function, is essentially tangible.

If you want to go to Washingtonville, Pennsylvania, you go east from Pittsburgh on Route 78 for about twenty miles toward the Riverton entrance to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. As you approach Washingtonville, you dip down past a big new shopping center and run along the bottom of a shallow valley past seven gas stations, three roadside markets, two branch banks, a yard full of trailer rigs waiting for assignment, and several fairly clean cafes that cater largely to truck drivers.

Just before you lift out of this shallow valley over the western ridge, you can quickly look to your left and see the huddle of houses just off the highway that is Washingtonville itself. And because the accident happened on Highway 78 within shouting distance, almost, of Washingtonville City Hall, it was the Washingtonville Police who had jurisdiction and Lieutenant Randall who was largely responsible for handling the case. Randall would never have caught up with the killer without the help of a waitress named Sarah Benson.

At 5:30 A.M. on December 16th, a 1954 Plymouth sedan, following Route 78 east, labored heavily up the slope of the ridge that formed the western boundary of Washingtonville’s little valley. The car had engine trouble; the motor was running very unevenly and the car jerked and hesitated in its progress. The road had been plowed clean of yesterday’s 5-inch snowfall, but piles of snow edged the highway and the still-dark morning was bitter cold.

Inside the sedan, Hub Grant said to his wife, “If I can coax her up this hill and over, maybe we can find a gas station or garage open on the other side. We’ve sure got to get something done to this baby before we can make Connecticut in it.”

His wife nodded anxiously. “It’s so early, Hub. I’m afraid nothing will be open yet. We should have stopped at one of those motels back there.”

“I wish we had,” Hub admitted.

The car topped the ridge. Washingtonville’s valley lay before them, snow-covered, silent, and marked by only a few lonesome-looking lights along the highway ahead.

Hub said, “There’s a gas station. Let’s try it.”

He urged the reluctant car toward Amos White’s gas station half way down the gentle slope of the hill. And the Plymouth’s engine chose that moment to conk out completely.

Hub took advantage of his downhill momentum to pull to the edge of the highway where the car buried its right wheels in a bank of plow-piled snow and came to a cushioned stop. Hub opened his door and got out into the chilly darkness. No sign of dawn showed yet. He walked into Amos White’s service station and saw that it was deserted. Amos didn’t open up until seven o’clock these winter mornings.

Hub came back to the car. “Nobody there.” He looked down the road toward Washingtonville’s sparse lights. “Guess I’ll try down in the valley. Looks like something might be open.” He beat his arms against his sides. “Boy, it’s cold out here! You sit there and wait for me, honey, and keep the doors locked. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”

“I won’t be long, I hope.” He slammed the car door and walked down the road toward the shopping center.

It was 5:41.

At that moment, Sarah Benson was walking from her home on Washingtonville’s outskirts toward the concrete ribbon of Highway 78 where it touched the periphery of the town at the shopping center. Sarah was bundled up in a heavy plaid coat and wore a green scarf over her Titian hair. It was her week to open up Wright’s Truckers’ Rest and prepare the first enormous urn of coffee for the sleepy, chilled truck drivers who would soon begin arriving. They were regular customers, most of them; they knew that Wright’s opened at six A.M. sharp, that Wright’s coffee was good and hot, and that Sarah Benson was the best-looking waitress between New York and Chicago.

When she reached the highway, Sarah walked toward Wright’s cafe, a hundred yards down the road from the shopping center parking lot. It was awfully cold, must be near zero, she thought. And still dark. No one was about. Only an occasional car or truck swished past her on the concrete. She was reaching into her bag for the key to Wright’s Cafe when she heard a man’s footsteps on the road behind her.

She turned in surprise and saw a dark form approaching from the west, his lanky figure silhouetted for her against the snow bank that edged the highway. He saw her at the same time, apparently. For he lifted an arm and called, “Hey, there...!”

Whatever he intended to say, he never finished it. A car rocketed down the highway toward him, coming fast on the outside right-hand lane of Route 78, the one he was walking in. He was suddenly caught in the beam of the approaching car’s headlights. Sarah could see him make a startled move toward the snow bank beside him to avoid the on-rushing vehicle. But he was too late.

Transfixed by horror, Sarah watched the car swerve wildly as the driver applied his brakes with a scream of rubber against the road; she saw in slow-motion detail the heavy, pinwheeling arc described by the pedestrian’s body after the sickening sound of its impact against the car’s bumper; she saw the body come to rest in grotesque, spread-eagled limpness on the snow bank not twenty yards from where she stood.

It was only as a dazed afterthought that she looked at the car again. It slowed almost to a halt, its stoplights glowing red, and Sarah thought it would stop. But then, with a snarl of desperately applied power, it gathered speed and made off down the highway toward the eastern ridge of the valley.

Sarah couldn’t believe her eyes. “Stop!” she shrieked after the vanishing car. “Stop!” She thought she was going to be ill. “You hit a man!” Even while she screamed, the tail-lights of the murder car winked out over the eastern ridge.

Sarah tried to control the trembling of her legs and the heaving of her stomach. She ran to the motionless man in the snow bank. When she saw that nothing could be done for him, she returned to the cafe, opened the door with her key, switched on the lights inside, and telephoned the Washingtonville police.

It was 5:55.

Lieutenant Randall and the police ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident at 6:05, just as the first faint glimmer of daylight showed. By then, a lot of cars and a truck had stopped beside the snow bank, drawn by the sight of the spread-eagled body and the bloodied snow, and by Sarah Benson’s slim figure standing beside it, waiting for the law.

When Randall arrived, he detailed a policeman to send the curious on their way when it was certain none of them had witnessed the accident, and dispatched the hit-run victim to Washingtonville Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival of multiple external and internal injuries, including a smashed skull.

Randall sat clown at the counter of Wright’s Truckers’ Rest and talked earnestly with the only witness to the accident, Miss Sarah Benson. She was being as helpful as she could, though she was still pale from shock and wisely sipping a cup of her own coffee, black, to settle her nerves.

Randall was full of driving urge to get a description of the murder car as quickly as possible, but even so, he couldn’t help noticing with approval how pretty Sarah Benson was — how well her Titian hair set off her creamy skin and level blue eyes.

“What kind of a car was it?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. It was dark. And coming toward me, the headlights blinded me. I couldn’t tell anything about it.”

He sighed. “I was afraid of that. But after you saw the car hit the man, you looked at the car again, you say... as it was going away from you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you didn’t recognize its make?”

“No. It seemed to be a dark-colored sedan, all one tone. That’s all I can be sure of. And that it’s stoplights were on, bright red, before the driver decided to run away.”

“Those stoplights,” Randall said. “What shape were they?”

“Round, I guess,” Sarah said.

“You guess? Don’t you know?”

“No, I can’t be sure.”

“Big and round, or small and round?” Randall insisted.

“Medium and round, I guess,” said Sarah. “I didn’t really notice. I was so shocked...”

“You saw the back of the car,” Randall interrupted her rudely, “with the stoplights on and nothing between you and the car. Surely you saw the license number or at least the license plate. Think hard, please.”

“I’m thinking, Lieutenant.”

“Well, was it a Pennsylvania license? Or New York?” He was still hopeful. “Did you see it?”

She shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not.”

“Damn it,” Randall said, “you must have!”

She smiled at him sympathetically, conscious of how anxious he was to elicit a description of the car from her. “No,” she said very quietly, “I didn’t see any license plate.”

He flushed. “I’m sorry, Miss Benson. But a description of the car, some description, is essential if we’re to have any chance at all of catching this man. You understand that, don’t you? If you didn’t see the license plate, did you notice anything else about the car? A dent in the rear fender, maybe, a cracked back window, luminous tape on the bumper, anything at all?”

She closed her eyes and conjured up the horror of fifteen minutes ago. She was silent for a long time. Then she opened her eyes and said, “I can’t remember anything more. There was this cloud of white steam coming out of the car’s exhaust pipe and it sort of hid the back of the car, I guess.”

Randall stood up. “Well, thanks very much. We’ll have to do the best we can with a general description. There is evidence of damage to the front end of the car. We found a piece of metal in the road that broke off the grill.” He turned to go, then paused. “Could you come down to headquarters sometime today and sign a statement? It will be helpful to have an official eyewitness record.”

Sarah finished the last of her coffee and reached for her coat on a hook behind the counter. “I’ll come now,” she said. “Jenny can handle things here until I get back.” Jenny was a sallow-complexioned bottle blonde already serving coffee and doughnuts to four drivers at the far end of Wright’s long counter.

“Good,” said Randall, “I’ll drive you in. Come along.”

It was 6:24.

When Amos White arrived at 6:45 to open up his gas station for the day, he found a Plymouth sedan stuck in the snow right beside the apron to his place with a young woman sitting alone in the front seat, her chin in her upturned coat collar for warmth and a very worried look in her eyes.

Amos unlocked his service room. The young lady climbed out of the car and came in and asked in a timid voice if she could use his telephone. Amos said yes, and heard her call the police. And he kindly helped her over the first awful moments when she discovered from the police that she was a widow... that Hub Grant, her husband, had been killed by a hit-run driver, identity so far unknown.

Amos’ watch said seven o’clock.

All these events occurred in a little more than an hour in Washingtonville on the morning of December 16th. Then, for the subsequent six hours until one o’clock, nothing happened at all.

At least, it seemed that way to Lieutenant Randall. Of course, he flashed his meager description of the wanted car to State, County and Turnpike Police and asked their cooperation in spotting and holding the car and driver. And he fine-tooth-combed the stretch of Highway 78 between the shopping center and the eastern ridge in the forlorn hope of locating another witness who could come up with a better description of the hit-run car than Sarah Benson had been able to supply.

But he had no luck.

That is, he had no luck until one o’clock, at which time he was eating a ham-on-rye at his desk at headquarters waiting for some word on the car. The desk sergeant downstairs called him and said there was a woman to see him. When she came into his office, it was Sarah Benson.

He hastily swallowed the bite of sandwich he was working on and stood up awkwardly. “Well,” he said. “You again, Sarah.”

She raised smooth brows at his use of her first name but didn’t comment on it. She sat in a straight chair across from his desk. “Me again, Lieutenant. I’ve thought of something that may prove helpful.”

“Good for you,” he said. “What is it?”

“You remember my statement about the car...” she began tentatively.

“Sure.” He took the typed statement off his desk and handed it to her. “What about it?”

She read slowly from the statement: “A cloud of white steam was coming out of the car’s exhaust and I couldn’t see the license plate or any other identifying marks.”

Randall stared at her. “So what? You told me that this morning. The car smoked. Probably needs a ring job. I’ve already given the boys that information.”

A lively animation marked her manner now. “That cloud of steam,” she said, leaning forward in her chair, “wasn’t an oily kind of smoke. It was whiter, like mist, as I told you. Or the white vapor that your breath makes on a cold morning.”

Randall said, “Yes? And what about this white vapor?”

She replied indirectly. “You know Wright’s, where I work? It’s right across the highway from Jensen’s trucking depot, where all his trucks stand waiting for loads.”

He nodded.

“Well, I’ve watched those trucks go out on cold days. And it occurred to me that after they’ve sat in the yard all night in the cold, their exhaust smoke looks just like what the hit-run car was giving out this morning.”

Randall merely stared at her in puzzlement.

“And when trucks drive into our place after running all night, they never give out that white exhaust vapor.”

Randall’s eyes widened and he sat bolt upright in his chair. “Hey!” he exclaimed.

She smiled at him. “That’s right,” she said. “I called my brother on the phone to check it. He’s a mechanic in a garage in Pittsburgh. And he says that’s right.”

Randall swung around in his chair, grabbing for his phone. Over his shoulder he said, dismissing her, “Thanks a million, Sarah. I’ll call you.”

When he called her later, at her home, she answered herself. “Oh, hello, Lieutenant Randall,” she greeted him. “Any news?”

“Plenty,” he said with satisfaction. “The State Police picked him up outside of Allentown an hour ago, thanks to you, Sarah. His car has a dented front end, a broken grill that ought to match up with the piece of metal we found in the road, and traces of blood and hair. We’ve got the whole thing lined out.” He hesitated in unaccustomed embarrassment. “I’d like to tell you about it, Sarah.”

“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” she answered. “I’m listening.”

“Well, I mean...” he rubbed a hand over his hair irritably. “Personally.”

She ignored that. “Then the clue of the white vapor did help?” He thought he detected a teasing note.

“Sure it helped.” His own voice was laced with chagrin. “Until you called it to my attention, it never occurred to me that white steam from an exhaust pipe in cold weather usually means that the car motor has only very recently been started. I kept thinking of the hit-run car as one from a distance, passing through here without stopping. But the white exhaust vapor made it clear that the guilty driver was either a local, or somebody who had stayed here all night. Because it showed that his car engine had just been started before the accident... and had been sitting in the cold for some time quite close to the accident scene, I tried the simplest thing first, and hit pay dirt right away.”

“Where did the car start from?” she asked.

“The Buena Vista Motel. The fellow pulled in there at three yesterday afternoon from the west, slept till five this morning and started out again. His was the only car that left any of our local motels or hotels that early this morning. He was driving a dark blue Ford sedan, Pennsylvania license number VN 167. It was all on the record at the Buena Vista. After I fed that information to the boys, they had him in twenty minutes.”

“Good,” she said.

He changed the subject abruptly. “Why did you go to all that trouble — to telephone your brother and so on — just to be helpful to the police?”

“Because I wanted to help you catch that hit-run driver.” Remembered horror was in her voice. Then she laughed a little. “And besides,” she added, “I took a liking to you, Lieutenant.”

“Good,” said Randall. “Fine. I hoped that might be part of it. I’ve got another idea I’d like to check with you now.”

“If it’s the same idea that my truck drivers get about me, you can forget it,” she said.

He cleared his throat. “I think you have a flair for police work, Sarah. Can’t I take you to dinner tonight so we can talk it over?”

She hesitated only long enough to worry him slightly. Then she said softly, “That would be lovely.”

Randall cradled his phone and glanced at the round, discolored police clock on his office wall. It said 5:45.