The Case of the Crooked Candle

Chapter 13

The taxi driver said, “Okay, ma’am, you can bet your bottom dollar there’s no one following you now.”

Della Street, seated on the jump-seat where she could look out through the rear window of the taxicab and at the same time keep an eye on the road in front, said, “I guess we’re all right now.”

“Where to?” the cab driver asked.

“Union Terminal.”

The cab swung around the corner. The driver flashed Della Street a glance of unconcealed approval. “What’s the trouble — husband?”

Della nodded.

“A man married to a girl like you,” the cab driver announced with some feeling, “had ought to know how fortunate he is. If he starts acting up mean on you, someone had ought to punch his snozzle.”

Della Street said, “Perhaps it’s partly my fault.”

“Your fault!” the driver exclaimed. “Where do you get that noise? A man driving hacks gets so he can size people up. Anybody that can’t get along with you is just one of those things.”

“Thank you,” Della said demurely.

The cab driver moved slightly in the seat, squared his shoulders. “You just get right out and go about your business when you get to the station, ma’am. If there’s anybody waiting there that says anything to you, I’ll see that you aren’t annoyed.”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” Della said hastily. “It’s all right now. I know that he won’t be there. He won’t have any idea where I’m going.”

The cabby said, “Well, he didn’t follow us, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean.”

The driver laughed. “If any guy was trying to tag along behind us, he’s in the hospital by this time. You know how it is, us fellows that are driving traffic all the time, we get so we know what we can do and what we can’t do. And we know just how to go about doing what we can do. Shucks, you take some private guy that gets out in a car maybe once in a week, and maybe don’t drive traffic over ten or fifteen hours a month. Why say, he doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Della agreed.

The cab rolled smoothly along, the driver silent for a while, then as it rolled up to the Union Terminal, the driver said, “I’m giving you one of my cards, ma’am. If you have any more places to go where you don’t want to be followed, just get in touch with me. You can usually find me around where you picked me up this afternoon. That’s my stand.”

“Thank you.”

“And remember that no one’s going to push you around any when I’m there.”

“You’re very kind.”

Della Street paid him the meter fare, gave him a twenty five cent tip and a smile.

The driver, a look of dreamy abstraction in his eyes, watched her through the entrance of the depot, and only snapped back to the realities of life and the traffic regulations when the horn of a car behind made raucous protest.

Della found Carol Burbank standing near the telephone booth in the section of the terminal reserved for telephone and telegraph service.

“Hello,” Carol said with a quick smile and an impulsively outstretched hand. “Mr. Mason telephoned that you’d be down and meet me here.”

Della Street nodded. “He’s given me some rather definite instructions,” she said.

“So he told me.”

“He thinks that it’s very important that you do exactly what he says.”

“Naturally,” Carol said laughing, “if I paid an attorney to tell me what to do, I’d be foolish to disregard his advice.”

“Where’s your father?” Della asked.

Carol frowned. “I wish I knew. I’ve been trying to get him on the phone.”

“Did he go to Skinner Hills Friday afternoon and talk with Frank Palermo?”

“Friday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

“Of course not. Friday was the day of the political meeting at the Surf and Sun Motel. Don’t you remember?”

Della Street said very definitely, “Well, you’re to come with me — and you’ll have to stay out of circulation for a while. Those are the boss’s orders.”

“Keeping me away from newspaper reporters?”

“I didn’t ask him,” Della Street said and smiled. “One doesn’t, you know.”

“Yes, I can understand Mr. Mason may be rather impatient if one interrupts his high-speed mental processes to ask why this is done and why that is done. All right, let’s go.”

“I think we’d better take a cab,” Della said.

They started toward the taxi stand.

Carol Burbank said, “I think I’ll put on my coat and gloves. That cold, west wind is blowing again this afternoon. It was so nice up until half an hour ago, too.”

“I’ll hold your purse,” Della offered.

Carol Burbank slipped into her coat, opened her purse and pulled out a pair of gloves. As she did so, a slip of pasteboard fluttered from the purse to the floor.

Della glanced inquiringly at Carol Burbank and saw Carol’s face was a complete blank. Evidently she had failed to notice that bit of pasteboard.

Della Street turned back. A smiling man who had rushed forward to play the gallant raised his hat and extended the printed pasteboard.

Della Street flashed him a smile.

Carol Burbank turned to regard Della Street curiously, and Della, moved by some impulse, pushed the claim check down into the pocket of her coat. Not until they had moved out through the patio to the cab stand, did Della slip the pasteboard out of her pocket and give it a quick inspection.

It was a claim check at the parcel claim stand at the depot.

Abruptly Della said, “Just a minute, Miss Burbank, I want to call the boss about something. Do you mind waiting for just a minute?”

“Not at all. I’ll go back with you.”

“Oh, don’t bother to do that. I’ll just skip along and...”

“No, no. I’ll come along.”

“There’s nothing that you want to get here at the depot, is there?”

“No.”

“No baggage or anything?”

“Heavens, no! I just came down here because it was a good place to telephone and one can always find a cab here. These days it isn’t easy to pick up a cab just when you want one.”

Della said, “Yes, I know how it is. I had to wait so long a few days ago that I missed my appointment at my hair dresser. If you’ll just excuse me a moment, Miss Burbank.”

Della Street popped into a telephone booth, leaving Carol Burbank standing outside.

She dialed the unlisted number of the phone on Mason’s desk. She heard the receiver lifted and Mason’s voice saying cautiously, “Hello, who is this?”

“Della.”

“Hello, Della. You okay?”

“Yes.”

“You weren’t followed?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Not a chance.”

“You have Carol?”

“Yes.”

“You at the hotel now?”

“No, at the terminal. Listen, Chief, she opened her purse to take out her gloves and dropped a claim check. It’s on the parcel checking service here. She must have left that package, or whatever it is, within the last hour or two...”

“Where’s that check now?”

“I have it.”

“Does she know it?”

“No. She hasn’t realized she’s lost it yet.”

“All right, you have an envelope in your purse?”

“Yes.”

“Write my name on it. Put in the claim check. When you get to the hotel, leave the envelope at the desk. I’ll pick it up, go get the parcel and see what’s in it. Got that straight?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself.”

“I will. Bye, Chief.”

“Bye, Della.”

Della hung up, then moved around on the stool so that her shoulder hid what she was doing. She slipped an envelope out of her purse and scribbled Mason’s name and the office address on it, inserted the pasteboard under the flap.

She rejoined Carol, and the two girls retraced their steps to the taxi stand and moved forward as a vacant cab drew up to the curb.

“Where to?” the starter asked.

Della said, “We’re both together. It’s the Woodridge Hotel.”

“Sorry, we’re not putting two people in a cab any more, you’ll have to double up with... Where to, Mister?”

A man’s voice said, “I want to go to Eleventh and Figueroa.”

“All right, get in,” the starter said, and then instructed the driver, “Take the young ladies to the Woodridge Hotel, and the man to Eleventh and Figueroa, Jack. Any baggage?”

It seemed that none of them had baggage.

The man, from the first, seemed definitely interested in his fellow travelers. It was two blocks, however, before he said tentatively, “Cooled off rather suddenly, didn’t it?”

Carol Burbank smiled. “Yes, it did. But after all, one can expect that this time of year. It’s a little early for the warm weather to set in.”

“There certainly is a shortage of taxicabs,” the man observed.

“Yes, isn’t there.”

“Not that I object,” he said with a smile, “when it gives me a break like this. You girls from San Francisco?”

Carol looked inquiringly at Della Street. Della Street gave the man a somewhat vague smile and said simply, “No. I’ve been there, though.”

The man said, “I live there. Swell place. Have to come down here once in a while on business. Always anxious to get back. This place is just a mass of people. San Francisco is a city.”

“Watch out,” Carol Burbank warned, “they shoot people for saying things like that down here.”

“I can’t help it. I think San Francisco... Say, you girls don’t live here in Los Angeles, do you?”

Once more Carol looked to Della Street for guidance.

Della laughed. “What’s the matter, are you afraid to voice your opinion if we do?”

“Well, of course — I don’t want to seem discourteous.”

“Oh, I’m certain the residents of Los Angeles get accustomed to hearing people from San Francisco refer to Los Angeles in terms of disparagement. But don’t they have more sunshine here than they do in San Francisco? Don’t you have lots of fog?”

“Fog!” the man exclaimed. “Why that’s the thing that makes San Francisco. When that fog comes rolling in from the ocean, it peps you up. It’s bracing, stimulating. There’s a lot of rush and bustle in connection with San Francisco. Down here, people seem to have the hookworm. You girls really don’t live here, do you?”

“What makes you think we don’t?” Della said.

“Too much class — too much pep.”

“I thought Hollywood was noted for its beautiful women.”

“Oh, I guess it is, but they’re synthetic. You girls are metropolitan, you don’t act the way they do down here. You don’t wear your clothes that way. You have something about you — something...”

“An air of urban sophistication,” Carol Burbank finished.

The man said with some enthusiasm, “That’s it exactly.”

The girls laughed and, after a moment, the man joined them somewhat half-heartedly. “I’m kidding on the square,” he protested. “You’re stringing me along.”

The cab drew up in front of the Woodridge Hotel.

The man said somewhat ruefully, “I’m sorry your hotel wasn’t nearer Eleventh and Figueroa. Well, good-by.”

They smiled at him, paid the cab driver and Della Street led the way into the hotel.

“Good afternoon,” the clerk said and spun the rack containing the registration card around toward Della Street.

Della picked up the fountain pen, said in a low voice, “I’m from Mr. Mason’s office. I...”

“Oh yes. I have reservations all made. You’re Miss Street?”

“Yes.”

Della registered, said to Carol Burbank, “I’ll register for you. By the way, what’s your middle name?”

“Edith, but I seldom use it.”

“That’s all right,” Della said, and wrote the name C. E. Burbank on the register.

The clerk smacked his palm down on the call bell and called, “Front!”

Della Street slipped the addressed envelope out of her purse, placed it on the counter. “A message for Mr. Mason,” she said. “He may pick it up a little later. Will you...”

“I’ll be glad to see that he gets it. Will he call personally, or do you expect him to send a messenger? We...”

A man who had just entered the lobby walked rapidly toward the desk, cleared his throat importantly.

The clerk broke off to glance over Della Street’s shoulder, said, “Just a moment, I’m busy with these two young ladies. Boy, will you take these ladies to six-twenty-four and six-twenty-six? Open the communicating bath and...”

“Just a minute,” the man said.

Della Street didn’t like the tone of his voice. She turned apprehensively as a big hand pulled back the lapel of a coat. She saw a gold shield incrusted with a number, insignia and lettering. The affable stranger who had been so enthusiastic over the charms of San Francisco was neither affable nor friendly now. He pushed Della slightly to one side, and his big hand clamped down on the envelope the clerk was still holding in open-mouthed amazement.

Della Street said angrily, “Will you kindly explain the meaning of this?”

His eyes were steely, hard and watchful. He said in a tone that rasped with offensive authority, “You two girls have an appointment at Headquarters. The same cab you came in is waiting outside.” He turned to a plain-clothes man who had come up behind him. “Keep an eye on them, Mac, while I see what’s in this envelope.”

Mac moved close while the first officer pulled out the claim check. He gave the other a quick look at it, holding it in such a way that Carol Burbank couldn’t see what it was.

“Okay, Mac, I’ll get it. You take the girls to Headquarters. We’ll meet there.”

Carol Burbank said quite firmly, “I guess perhaps you people don’t know who I am. You just can’t do this to me.”

The man who had been so genial a few minutes before regarded her with unsmiling authority. “Don’t kid yourself we don’t know who you are, Miss Burbank. It’s because we know who you are that we’re doing this. Come on, get in the cab. Or do you want to ride in the wagon?” he asked as Carol held back.

“I want to call my lawyer,” Della Street announced with dignity.

“Sure, sure,” the man said soothingly, “but you can’t do it here. You don’t want the whole hotel to know your business, do you? Come on. There’s a phone at Headquarters. You’ll have all the time in the world to call him when you get there.”

“I want to call him from here,” Della said, starting toward the phone booths, “and I don’t care whether the whole world knows my business.”

The officer’s hand grasped her arm. He jerked her back, spun her around. “All right, if you have to do it the hard way,” he said. “This is a pinch.”