The Case of the Haunted Husband

Chapter 15

Hortense Zitkousky stood in the doorway of the ladies’ restroom until she heard the pound of quick steps in the corridor. She stepped out of the cross corridor just in time to confront Ernest A. Tanner as he came striding toward the elevator. She received a quick glance, and only a quick glance. He seemed very determined, very much engrossed.

Hortense followed him to the elevator, rode down in the same cage with him. Still Tanner made no effort to speak, hardly seemed to notice her.

On the ground floor, Tanner loitered near the elevators. Hortense walked as far as the door, then turned, came back, and suddenly placed her band on Tanner’s elbow.

Tanner whirled. His eyes, cold and determined, looked down into the jovial countenance of a buxom young woman who very apparently derived much enjoyment from life.

“Don’t do it,” she counseled. “He isn’t worth it.”

Tanner’s eyes softened somewhat. He said, “He has got it coming.”

“Oh, don’t, please! I don’t blame you for being mad, but I certainly wouldn’t play right into his bands.”

“I am not. I am playing right into his face.”

Her good-natured laugh came welling up from her diaphragm. “Forget it. I work for a lawyer. I know what they can do.”

“What has that got to do with me?”

“Homan,” she said. “Why do you suppose he is staying behind? He wants a bodyguard, and protection.”

Tanner said, “I can lick ten times my weight in bodyguards.”

“There is no percentage in it,” she said. “Come on. Let us get out of here.”

“What’s your tie-in with this?” he asked suspiciously.

“I knew a Stephane Claire in San Francisco. I read about the case in the paper and thought she might be the girl I knew. I came up here to find out.”

“Was she?”

She avoided the question. “I had the afternoon off and saw no reason why I should run back to pound a typewriter. The work was all caught up anyway, and then I got interested in the case. Come on. Be a sport and get started for home. Then I can go about my business and forget you.”

“What do you care what happens to me?”

She considered the question for a moment, then smiled and said, “Darned if I know. I just do. Perhaps it’s a maternal instinct.”

“Maternal!” he said. His eyes studied her with more interest. “Tell you what. Come on to dinner with me, and I shall call it off.”

“Oh-oh,” she said. “Fast like that.”

“Is it a deal?”

“Come on outside, and we shall talk it over.”

“You are trying to decoy me away from here and then...”

A descending cage came to a stop. The big door smoothly slid back, and Homan stepped out. Two broad-shouldered men were with him.

Hortense Zitkousky moved so that she was between Tanner and the elevator, raised her voice slightly, and said, “... and I says to her, ‘That may be your way of doing things, but it ain’t mine.’ Well, you know Gertie, and you know how she would take a thing like that. She...”

One of the men escorted Homan toward the door. The other paused belligerently. Tanner started to move around past Hortense.

Her finger traced a design on the lapel of Tanner’s coat. “Well,” she said, “that floored her. Gertie just sat and looked at me and...”

The officer hesitated a moment, then followed Homan and the other plainclothes man out of the door.

Tanner let his breath go in a deep sigh. “I guess,” he said, “I owe you one for that.”

“Can’t you see? They have got you, coming and going. There is nothing you can do with a setup like that. Come on. Forget it. If you feel that way about it, and really want to do something, why don’t you go to the girl’s lawyer?”

“Not me,” Tanner said. “I don’t rat.”

“But there is nothing to rat about... is there?”

He said shortly, “Homan is a liar. It is all right by me. I am not squealing on him, but I am not going to be the goat.”

“Oh, forget him. He is just a stuffed shirt.”

“I shall say he is. Just another one of those guys who graduated from nothing into big money, and puff out like a circus balloon. Someday somebody will stick a pin into him, and he will go pop and be just a fistful of limp rubber.”

Hortenze Zitkousky was talking easily now. “I used to work for one of those Hollywood writers. My gosh, did he take himself seriously. And the stuff he turned out! Why, say, when he was working, he couldn’t be disturbed, and he had to have coffee at just the right temperature, and a whole carton of cigarettes at his elbow, and ashtrays and matches. You would think he was turning out the world’s greatest masterpiece, and when you saw it on the screen, it made you gag. The only thing that held the audience through to the end was the dishes and groceries.”

Tanner laughed. “Don’t blame it on the writer,” he said. “It was probably one of Homan’s pictures. After it was half filmed, he pitched the script out of the window, and tried to imitate a current success over at MGM.”

“Is he like that?” Hortense asked.

“Is he like that? Come on, let us eat. What do I call you besides — Say?”

“My name’s Hortense. My friends call me Horty. Oh, well, why not? Say, listen, you have just lost your job. You probably haven’t got a heck of a lot of money, and even if you have. You have no business spending it on me. Let’s go to some cheap place.”

“I shall take you to the best. What do I care about dough?”

“No. I am a working girl myself, and I hate to see a man shell it out to some snooty waiter who wants the price of an hour’s work for a cup of bum coffee, and then expects a tip on top of that. Come on. I know a swell place.”

“No, you don’t,” Tanner said, smiling now. “Homan canned me, but I didn’t need his job anyway. I have got dough, and I know where I can get more.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“All right, come on over. We will get a taxi.”

“No. A streetcar.”

“A taxi.”

“Say, you aren’t one of the Rockefeller boys in disguise, are you? Or are you an international spy getting paid to sabotage motion pictures?”

“Oh, come on, Horty. Quit worrying about it. It’s okay.”

“There’s a swell Chinese restaurant down here. We can walk that far.”

“We can’t dance there. I like to dance.”

“So do I.”

“Come on. You are going with me. Taxi! Oh taxi!”

The cab swung around to glide up to the curb. Tanner said, “Straight on down the street. I shall tell you where to go after a while.” He assisted Hortense into the car, said, “Listen, I am in the dumps tonight, but you are cheering me up. There is something comfortable and homey about you. What do you say we just have a sandwich and a bottle of beer now, go to a show, and then have a real dinner, and make a lot of whoopee afterwards?”

“I have got to work tomorrow.”

“Forget tomorrow. I shall have you home early enough to get a little shuteye.”

“Okay.”

“I know a swell place that specializes in liverwurst sandwiches on rye bread, and has the best beer in the city.”

Hortense settled back against the cushions of the cab. “Evidently,” she observed, “you know your way around.”

Tanner laughed, a laugh of masculine vanity. “If you want to really see the town some night — well, take a Saturday night when you don’t have to get home. How about it? A date?”

“We will see. Only promise you won’t have any more trouble with Homan. I don’t want to go out with a man who has a black eye.”

“Homan,” Tanner said, “had better leave me alone. Once I get a chance to talk with Homan privately, he will sing a different tune.”

“Not him,” Hortense said with the positive assurance of one who has some definite knowledge. “A big windbag like that always keeps up his bluff. Nothing you could say would change him.”

“You don’t know what I could say.”

“No, but I know the sort of man Homan is. I worked for a fellow just like that one. And say, I am going to tell you something. I wouldn’t take Homan’s word for anything. This man I used to work for — well, I wouldn’t trust him.”

“Oh, Homan is all right. But he is lying about that car.”

She let her face show surprise.

“What makes you think so?”

“I don’t think. I know. Look here.”

Tanner took a leather-backed notebook from his pocket, opened the book to thumb through the pages. “Here we are,” he said. “Homan called me on the morning of the eighteenth, said he had an important job to do and didn’t want to be disturbed, that I could get out. Well, I had just serviced the car, and filled the tank with gas. I keep track of the mileage. Here is the mileage on the speedometer. Thirteen thousand, four hundred and twenty-six miles. Now, I got the mileage after they brought the car back. They towed it in. Homan was going to junk it. He told me to get the tools out of it. Here is the mileage. Fourteen thousand one hundred and fifty-eight. Get it? Seven hundred and thirty-two miles between the morning of the eighteenth and the night of the nineteenth. I can prove Homan is lying.”

“Well?” Hortense asked, her eyes puzzled. “What is wrong with that? That isn’t too much, is it? You can drive five or six hundred miles in a day...”

“I will tell you what’s wrong with it. Everything’s wrong with it. Sure, you can drive a bus like that seven or eight hundred miles a day if you want to, but remember Homan says he had the car sticking around until about noon on the nineteenth. You can’t drive a car seven hundred and thirty-two miles between noon and ten o’clock at night, not to save your life.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake!” Horty exclaimed. “How do you figure it out, Ernest?”

“I don’t figure it out... not right here and now,” he said, “but you can believe me, sister, I am going to let Homan do some explaining to me — privately. And I know the answer.”

“Say,” she said with enthusiasm, “let me know how you come out. That man looks so much like the guy I used to work for that I would sure like to see him taken down a peg or two.”

“Oh, well,” Tanner said, sliding his arm around her waist and drawing her close to him, “let’s forget Homan — if we can. Did you notice a car has been following us? Oh, well, let him follow. Hey, driver, pull down this side street, and stop at the café in the middle of the block.”

Tanner paid the cab fare, gave the driver a half-dollar tip, and piloted Hortense into a small restaurant which had a distinctly individual atmosphere. They had sandwiches and beer. Tanner kept feeding nickels into the machine which played the latest records, and they danced to the music. After an hour, he took her to one of the best picture theaters, bought lodge seats, settled down beside her, and twisted his fingers around hers. “I should be grateful to you,” he whispered. “If it wasn’t for you, I would probably be in the can right now. As it is, I am feeling like a million. Here’s where I relax and enjoy life.”

The sound tracks blared forth impressive music. On the flickering screen appeared a cast of characters, a list of names. As the cast of characters gave place to writers, technicians, and costumers, Tanner said, “They are having a big battle out in Hollywood. The manicurists for each star insist on having screen credit.”

She giggled.

A blaze of light hit the screen. In huge, black letters appeared the legend, “A JULES HOMAN PRODUCTION.”

“Oh, cripes,” Tanner said, grabbing her arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”