The Chinese Doll

Chapter 4

  Boone, Ill.

  Wednesday, P.M.

Hello, Darling:

It’s another day and another dollar, so some fool once said before he joined the union. For me it’s the very nice sum of five hundred Washington rubles.

I awoke bright and early this morning and thought of me without gun or license. Otherwise the day was brilliant — in the beginning. Mother Hubbard had frozen strawberries for breakfast. Every now and then she makes it a point to ask about you and me; I think she’s as impatient as I am. Sometimes I let her read these letters, or those from you.

It had stopped snowing. The sky was clear, a brisk and delightful blue with summer-looking clouds. The early morning sun was so bright on the snow I had to shut my eyes against the glare, walking downtown. The weather remained so cold that snow crunched underfoot with every step. People in overcoats and mufflers were scooping it off the walks.

When I reached the office I had the fun of discovering the money — or rediscovering it, rather — that Evans had given me as a retainer. It was still lying in the upper drawer of the desk where I had left it yesterday. The sight of it did give me a little jolt. I thought I had put it away. My seven piles of manuscript were still on the floor, the top pages slipping off the stacks. The janitor still hadn’t swept.

The only piece of mail was a postcard teaser from a Chicago insurance company. Insure yourself and all your loved ones (yes, the old folks too!) for a dollar a month — no medical examinations. A very-small-type and restricted clause company. Die somewhere, any old where, and you’ll discover the insurance isn’t collectable because you didn’t die between clean sheets with a hot water bottle at each foot and a featherless pillow under your head. So sorry.

These insurance policies are straight sounding but tricky if you didn’t bother to read them. Take that accidental death stuff. Face value will be doubled if the policy holder dies an accidental death. Few people know what an accidental death is. Harry Evans’ death wasn’t. Premeditated or not, the driver of that sedan saw him and ran him down. Evans’ wife will never collect double on his policy.

First thing off the bat I went downstairs again and paid the girl in the real estate office a month’s rent on the cubbyhole I occupy. The sign on the window read:

The letter “s” in Boost was partly chipped away; no doubt the handiwork of a gentle critic.

I complained to the girl about the great lack of heat in my office.

She gave me a receipt, said thanks chum, and yak, yak, don’t you know there’s a coal shortage? We must conserve heat.

I answered you’re welcome, and yak, yak, according to Scheinfeld there’s a man shortage. Don’t you know you should conserve me? She didn’t get it.

That made me feel good so I walked across the street to deposit four hundred and a half in the big bank. That made me feel better. I kept the remaining thirty in my pocket. That made me feel wonderful.

Considering.

I thought about all the things that had happened since the big stranger walked into my office yesterday, over some hot coffee in Thompson’s. Judy was working the counter. She hasn’t yet learned how to make good coffee; she makes it hot and stops.

About the gun: Louise, I can’t name one worthwhile reason why I should carry a gun. I’ve never fired it in my life except to make a little extra noise on Fourths of July; and I never expect to fire it for any other reason. If the police department had ever asked me why a private detective needed to carry a gun, I couldn’t have answered them.

Those movie sleuths like to pretend to be awfully slick characters, dashing around town arresting culprits and getting tangled up in flaming gun battles — but that’s sham. Pure boloney. You’d be surprised at the number of people who don’t know the truth. A private cop can’t arrest anyone; he has no more authority than a junior G-man. The movie pinkertons get away with murder.

For that matter what does the license do for me? It permits me to hang up a sign saying I’m a licensed investigator.

It doesn’t allow me to do anything an ordinary citizen can’t do, except flash a badge on some befuddled guy and tell him to come across or else. Any man with a little weight to throw around can pry into anything I can.

Just the same I’m going back out to the barn and get my gun. Dammit, Louise, you gave me that gun for Christmas and I want it back.

And then there is Harry Evans and his Studebaker sedan. On the face of it, it looks as if Evans’ girl friend got sick and tired of him and relieved him of the necessity of dying of old age. The ironic touch was the use of his car.

But I think the face is false. A clever girl could think of too many ways to get rid of Harry without running him down herself. There was too much risk involved. That great risk, in view of what actually happened, may prove to be the best key to the puzzle. Maybe one out of a hundred hit-and-run cases safely get away with it. That driver couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have counted on being the one. She probably did count on some other safety device — or was told she could. For it was planned from beginning to Evans’ end. That much is apparent.

My only fear is that the locals will accept it for what it seems to be on the surface: bad girl runs over nice man and ditches the car; case written off (if she is not found) as manslaughter. If she is found it is still manslaughter — only she was naughty to become frightened and drive away. Where did she steal the car?

But don’t you believe it Louise. Reread my letters of yesterday. They, whoever they are, simply waited until they found him crossing a street.

The girl in the car might have been following him all morning at a discreet distance, waiting for a favorable moment to catch him in the street. On the other hand she may never have seen him until he left my office. And bang.

Harry Evans retained me yesterday for a definite purpose: protection. He thought he would need it from the police, which implies that he was engaged in questionable activities of some sort. I don’t understand why he thought that any more than I could understand a frame job upon the part of the police. Not in Boone. But that isn’t the point.

The point is that he was expecting trouble, and trouble found him. That it was not the precise kind of trouble he expected doesn’t alter my suspicions.

People seldom believe they are going to die, despite all the Biblical evidence to the contrary that only two men in recorded history escaped death. Evans found himself in a spot and his reasoning told him someone was framing him. His reasoning failed him in that it did not warn him the spot might be a fatal one. The girl in the sedan. That girl has to turn up somewhere, sometime, but when she does, it will be as tough as hell to pin anything on her.

They — the other people behind Evans’ fears — will have seen to that.

I telephoned the Groyden attorney.

His receptionist accepted my reversed charges without hesitation, so I was still on the right side of the ledger. I had decided to repeat one of yesterday’s questions and listen to the man deny knowledge of the answer.

“Good morning,” he greeted me gravely.

“Hello. What was Evans’ occupation?”

“I think I’ve told you.” There had been the barest hesitation. I was hoping he would trip up.

“All right, let me put it another way. What was his hobby?”

“Hobby? Oh, he had several. Collecting first editions of fantasy literature, dabbling in table-top photography, publishing a paper in some amateur journalism society.”

I cut in on him.

“Aw, now look” and had to fumble for his name. It was forgotten again. The little card was still in my pocket, “—now look, Ashley. You know damned well what I mean!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why stall around? You’re supposed to be his lawyer. I want to know the particular pie which felt the prodding finger of Harry W. Evans. How do you expect me to find who did it, and why? I have to know the motives. I have to know why he expected to be arrested.”

“I’m quite sure I couldn’t tell you,” he said in polite coolness.

That brought me to a full stop. His tone as well as his words betrayed him. I was talking to a changed man this morning, a man who had not only recovered from the shock of Evans’ death, but had in some manner erased the fear that had followed the shock.

What could have happened overnight?

I gave up trying to talk to him and hung up.

What could have happened overnight?

The attorney, in his fear, could have immediately telephoned someone else after talking with me yesterday. That someone held sufficient authority or respect to ease the fears of Ashley, to calm him down and give him that cool, so-what? attitude he had just displayed to me. The attorney, therefore, was a man to keep an eye on.

You have to play all the angles in this game, Louise, but hell, I should tell you. You’re a reporter and a clever one. You know how one shred of evidence or suspicion of evidence leads to the next. I’m suspicious of Ashley, now.

Look at the shreds: they’re tattered, I admit, but consider them. First, a man from Croyden who wants protection from somebody or something and fails to get it — from me. And a girl with a Studebaker sedan having a supercharger attachment. The victim’s own sedan. And then later on, another girl with a Studebaker — a coupe-having a similar attachment. Both cars geared for speed. And a gambler. And an attorney.

My telephone rang.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked the mouthpiece.

“Hello, Horne.” It was the voice of the day sergeant on the police desk. “Heard you were in about your license?”

“That’s right. And before midnight.”

“You shouldn’t have waited so long.”

“I forgot it, honest. I’m coming down for it.”

“Don’t bother yourself, Horne. It ain’t being renewed.”

“What!”

“I can’t make it any plainer, I don’t talk Esperanto. Tough luck, Horne. This is between you and me, see? We get along; I like you Horne. But the Chief said no. Somebody made a squawk. You got enemies Horne. The Chief said to hold it up thirty days for investigation. The squawk will fall apart Home, but thirty days is thirty days— Aw, now Home, wait a minute. Don’t say things like that over the phone. Somebody might be listening. Anyway, you come down and ask for a renewal today.”

“You’re damned right I’ll come down! And when I net there I’m going to talk to that fatheaded yes-man!”

“You can’t Horne. He left town about half an hour ago for St. Louis. The FBI school you know.”

“How that dimwitted s-o-b ever got out of grammar school is a mystery to me!”

But there it was. He would be in St. Louis for several days. Old Yancey was playing around with the bathing beauties in Florida. The acting mayor was the senior alderman, a halfwit from the third ward and totally impossible. All of which left me in a hell of a fix. And a short while ago I was asking myself what a license did for me.

“All right fellah,” I told the desk sergeant. “I give in. I’m lucky my gun permit doesn’t expire for several months yet. Somebody I think I can name would try to queer that too. He’d probably say I fired it outside his bedroom window every morning at five-thirty and woke up his dog. Hell.

“By the way — how’d that baby business turn out last night?”

“A seven pound girl. They named her Marie.” His voice faded from the phone. “Keep your eyes open, Horne. So long.”

“Hey! Hold on a minute. Do you know who made the gripe?”

“Nope, Chief didn’t say. So long, Horne.” He rang off.

I immediately thought of something else and called him back. The line was busy; I waited two or three minutes and he came on. “You again?”

“Me again. Listen sergeant, has anybody in this town ever been pinched for spitting on the sidewalk?”

“Not since I’ve been on the force. Want to try it?”

“But somebody could be, couldn’t they?”

“If they was a complaint signed, yeah I guess so. And there’d have to be an eyewitness. But it wouldn’t go very far in the J.P. court. It’s kinda silly, come to think of it; I probably do it every day myself.”

“All right. How about cross against a red light?”

“Horne, have you shot your bolt? If you wanna get in jail go out and beat up somebody, kick some nice old grandmother’s face in. ’Sault and battery is always good for a coupla months. So long Horne.”

“Hold it — I’m not finished.”

“Maybe you are but you don’t know it yet.”

“Who else have gun permits? Besides mine? And skip the night watchmen, I know them.”

“Not many. Two or three maybe.”

“Name them.”

“Well, there’s that gas station fellah out on the highway who’s always getting jacked; and a truck driver for Ackerman’s fur store; lessee — yeah, and a dentist. Yours makes four.”

“A dentist? Who? And why?”

“The guv’s name is Sehnert. He’s got an office in the little bank building. Held up once and some gold stuff taken. Personally I think he’s a blamed fool. He’ll get shot as sure as hell if he tries to use a gun the next time it happens. So long Horne. I mean it this time.” And he did.

I was already on the stairs leading to the street.

The girl in the real estate office grinned at me and said yak, yak, how’s the heat now big boy?

I answered yak, yak, it’s getting warmer toots and loan me your city directory. She did, and I looked up the dentist.

He had one line, same as everyone else. Sehnert, Forrest, DDS., had two kids and a wife named Myrtle. A fine guy to be toting a gun. A little bell symbol indicated they had a phone and a small o in parenthesis meant they owned their home.

The office girl was watching me.

“What do you know about a dentist named Sehnert, Forrest?” I asked her.

She grimaced. “He’s high, big boy.”

“Good looking?”

She repeated the grimace. “Fat and forty. His tummy pushes against you when he leans over to yank a tooth. He should wear a girdle.”

So Sehnert, Forrest, wasn’t the man in the tuxedo.

“Did you see the accident yesterday?”

“I sure did, big boy. Gruesome, wasn’t it?”

“Oh well, women are bumping guys off all the time. They’re old hands at the game.”

“Sometimes they have good reason!” she snapped.

“Yeah, sometimes. Maybe this one was worried about the price of eggs and couldn’t bother to stop.”

“Oh, they’ll find her,” little talkie declared. “Them snappy cars ain’t so thick in Boone.”

“They’ve already found the car, ditched. It was from Croyden. Did you get a good look at the driver?”

“Sure. Saw her as plain as day. She didn’t look like so much; not good enough to rate a car like that one.”

“The sedan belonged to the man she ran down.”

“You don’t say!” She paused and chewed on it. “Jilted huh?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t asked her yet.”

“Funny boy. The coppers said I was smart.”

“They would. They don’t know you like I do. When did they say so?”

“When they asked me to describe her — but you know, I’m not so sure she had red hair after all. I told them it was kinda auburn. But it seems to me now she was a brownette.”

“You’re a good girl. I’m sure you helped them.” And I beat it back upstairs to the office.

My next phone call was to the public library. I asked the librarian if she kept files of the papers published by the amateur journalism society.

She said they did not — but which society in particular did I have reference to? She thought perhaps she could find some information on it. I admitted that I didn’t know there was more than one. She said, oh my yes, there were at least three to her knowledge: three large national and international organizations, and there were probably other, smaller societies.

I then asked her if anybody in town had papers published in them. She replied no one did to her knowledge, but she was sure there were members in both Chicago and St. Louis. So I asked her if she could give me a line on the general slant of these amateur magazines — what did they write about and so forth.

She was very patient and informative, that librarian. For the better part of twenty minutes she explained to me in some detail how the amateurs, men and women and kids, put out the papers just for the sheer hell of publishing them. Some of them, she said, were little pamphlets and mimeographed pages stapled together; while others were large professional-appearing magazines. There was one common denominator: the owners loved to write, type, edit and print the things by hand and give them away free for the privilege of receiving still other papers.

I asked if any of them were concerned with table-top photography. She replied no. although they sometimes included photographs in the contents. She said the two largest organizations were almost solely concerned with producing beautiful typography and formats, vying with each other in bringing out the best-looking magazines and papers. The third outfit, the smallest of the three but the only one having international membership, specialized in fantasy and weird books.

“That’s it!” I yelled over the wire. She must have jumped. I apologized. “I’m sorry. That’s the outfit I’ve been searching for. Can you put me in touch with any of the members?”

She asked me to call her back in half an hour. She believed that The Saturday Review had printed some names and addresses of the fantasy fans in an issue of several months ago, and that she would check her files. I thanked her.

Librarians are wonderful people. They should be in the detective business.