Cats Prowl at Night

4 The Vanihsing Auto

The fog was lifting and the sun was beginning to break through as Everett Belder parked his wife’s car in front of his house, glanced surreptitiously back to where Bertha Cool was ensconced in a parked automobile in the middle of the next block. He got out of the car, buttoned his overcoat, and reached up to adjust the brim of his hat, making a furtive signal out of the motion.

Bertha Cool, watching him through the windshield of the agency car, snorted and said disgustedly to herself, “Now what the hell does he think he’s gaining by that?”

Belder looked at his watch, glanced toward the house, reached through the open window in the left front door of the car, pressed his palm on the horn button, then walked briskly down the street.

Bertha Cool, settling herself in the car cushions with philosophic patience, lit a cigarette and waited, her shrewd little eyes taking in everything that went on.

There was but little automobile traffic on the quiet residential street. The main boulevard at which Belder was waiting for a downtown bus had enough activity to give forth a faint hum — not the continuous snarl which would have sounded a few months earlier before automobile traffic had been restricted, but nevertheless a faintly audible noise of traffic.

A bus pulled in to the corner, stopped and let Belder aboard and rolled on. The sun had not yet burned away the high fog clouds that had drifted in from the ocean, but the cloud-bank was getting thin, with patches of blue sky beginning to appear.

Bertha Cool finished her cigarette. Her watch said that it was ten minutes past eleven.

Once or twice during the next ten minutes, cars passed along the residential street. None of them seemed to have any business in the immediate locality and none of the drivers paid any attention to Bertha Cool.

At eleven-twenty-two the door of the Belder house opened.

Bertha snapped on her ignition switch, pushed on the starter, gunned the motor into life, all the time studying her quarry — a woman who was walking toward the car with the quick steps of a person who is determined to reach some destination in a hurry. Beneath the distinctive plaid coat, Bertha could see that the woman had a good figure. She wore a close-fitting light-green hat, and Bertha had a glimpse of the oval of the smooth, youngish face, dark glasses, and a vivid red mouth. She was carrying a half-grown cat in the crook of her left arm, and the cat’s tail was switching nervously back and forth.

Bertha snapped the gearshift over to second, held her foot down on the clutch, waiting for the car ahead to move away from the kerb.

The shadowing job was routine.

The other machine proceeded at ordinary driving speed, waited conservatively at crossings, faithfully observed all boulevard stops, but somewhat to Bertha’s surprise, didn’t head for the downtown business district. Instead, the machine zigzagged off, hit Crenshaw Boulevard, and turned toward Inglewood. The cat, climbing up to the back of the front seat, made it possible for Bertha to keep the car spotted for a long distance ahead.

Diminished traffic which in one way made it easier to follow the car ahead also made it much more difficult to stay close behind without exciting suspicion. Had the driver ahead given any indication of being aware that she was being shadowed, Bertha would have closed the gap between the cars, preferring discovery to failure. As matters stood, however, Bertha loafed a comfortable distance behind and, for the moment, neglected the axiomatic rules which detectives have worked out for shadowing automobiles.

The signal at an important intersection a full block ahead flashed red. Bertha took her foot off the throttle, kicked out the clutch so that she could coast along at a relatively low speed, timing the signal so that— Sudden surprise snapped Bertha’s left foot back and her right down on the throttle.

Mrs. Belder’s car hadn’t even paused at that red signal, nor had it speeded up. With the calm courage of sublime ignorance, the driver merely ignored the red signal and blithely continued on her way.

Bertha, charging up to the intersection, was met with a closed signal and a stream of cross traffic.

A quick searching glance convinced Bertha no traffic cop was in the immediate vicinity. She snapped the car into second gear, watched her opportunity, and after the first rush had subsided, took advantage of an opening to shoot across the street to the accompaniment of screaming brakes, raucous horns, and some verbiage which, while it was intended to be scathing, bounced off Bertha’s heedless ears like hailstones from a barn roof.

The car ahead now had a lead of a good hundred and fifty yards but was still crawling along. Bertha, slamming her gearshift back into high, keeping a heavy foot on the throttle, swiftly shortened the lead to a hundred yards. Then her quarry turned left, making the turn with exasperating slowness, the driver giving a perfect full-arm signal.

Bertha came charging up to the intersection, glanced down a vacant street, lost time with her brakes.

It hardly seemed possible the car could have gained the other corner and disappeared, yet there seemed no other explanation. The driver must then have speeded up the car.

Bertha reached a swift decision. The car had turned either to the left or to the right at the next intersection. A turn to the left would mean that the car was doubling back; that would be the reaction of a driver who was trying to avoid a shadow, hardly compatible with her previous sedate course or the full-armed left-hand signal at the previous intersection. The logical thing, therefore, was to turn to the right.

Bertha, floorboarding the throttle, spun over to the left so that she would have more room for a screaming right turn at the intersection.

She felt the springs of the car sway as she slammed the machine into the turn.

Midway in the turn, Bertha jerked her head for a surprised glance over her shoulder, then she was fighting the brake and the steering-wheel.

The car she wanted wasn’t on the road ahead, all but precluding Bertha’s theory of a right-hand turn, making it now seem possible the driver had discovered she was being followed.

Bertha had too much speed to make the left turn without bringing the car to a complete stop against the kerb, backing it part way around, and then charging ahead.

The next intersection offered no more encouraging results than had the first; but the car could conceivably have made another left-hand turn. That would have brought it back to the boulevard.

Bertha swore under her breath.

It was an old trick, and a clever trick when you knew you were being followed, just to blunder along at a slow and even pace, give careful full-arm signals, trap the other car into a crowded intersection, and then loop the loop.

Back on the boulevard, driving as though she were a police official headed home for lunch five minutes later than usual, Bertha passed everything on the highway, only to realize, with that sickening feeling of futility that comes to a fisherman when the line suddenly goes dead, that her quarry had escaped her.

Just by way of checking up, Bertha went back to the place where she had first lost the automobile.

It was the seven-hundred block on North Harkington Avenue, a block of bungalows enjoying the luxury of spacious driveways leading to private garages.

Bertha carefully checked all of the driveways. They were deserted. The garage doors were all closed.

Bertha groped for a cigarette, accepted the situation with profane philosophy, and turned her automobile back toward the business district.