The Dancing Detective

Fur Jacket

His face got pale, standing at the telephone. He was there by himself, talking to someone. It was late at night, and his voice was low. No one in the room to hear him, no one in the room to see him. He lived alone — now.

His name was Colin Hughes.

The conversation had been going for some time. One-way; he’d been doing the listening, mostly. His face had been strained, uneasy, from the very beginning. But it was pale now, at something that was just said.

“No, don’t,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll make good. I’ll pay. I’ve told you that already. Only, I can’t this minute; I haven’t got that much right now. If you’ll only give me a little more time.”

Then he listened some more. He tried to light a cigarette with one hand, but he was too nervous, he dropped it. His hand was shaking.

“I know you’ve given me plenty of time already,” he faltered. “But if you’ll only give me a little more—”

His forehead ridged and twinkled with sweat along the seams between the ridges.

“I haven’t that much, I tell you,” he pleaded. “Give me a break, give me more time.” His voice had the bends in it. “Where am I going to get it?” He looked around him helplessly.

There was a photograph on the dresser. He’d seen it lots before. He must have. It was his dresser. It was even a little faded, the photograph, so it must have been standing on the dresser for a long time, it must have been left over on it from habit.

It said under it: “To Colin from his loving wife Maureen.” The date was three years ago.

He turned back to the phone again. But only after pregnant minutes. His voice was brisker now. It had juice in it now. The ridges had left his forehead; it was smooth again, like stone.

He said, “How much time can I have?”

Then he said, “No, I’m not still stalling, this is on the level. This is the pay-off. I know how I can get it now.”

Then he listened. Then he said, “Yes, I’m sure of getting it. It’s as good as mine now. I’ve already as good as got it, you might say, but I need time to collect it. A certain amount of time. Restrictions covering it. How much can I have?”

The party must have believed him. The ring of his voice must have sold it. The answer must have been a good one. Something he liked hearing. The pallor was all gone now, his color had come up again. Red; which is the color of blood. He was even grinning. So do skulls.

“As long as I’m sure of getting it, I can have as much time as it requires? Well, I am sure.”

He looked over at the photograph again.

“Dead sure.”

He hung up.

He looked over at the photograph some more. He looked at it steadily.

Colin Hughes had stopped in for a minute to see his girl. He didn’t even take his hat off, he told her he wasn’t going to stay. “I just wanted to tell you I’m coming over to see you tomorrow night,” he said to her.

She wasn’t an acutely perceptive type — he didn’t like his girls acutely perceptive — but this struck even her as a little strange.

“But you come over and see me nearly every night,” she said. “Why do you have to come over special the night before to tell me you’ll be here the night after?”

“I just wanted to tell you, that’s all. Have some people here.”

“But you always like it best when we’re by ourselves.”

“This time I feel like having some people around for a change. See that you do it.”

He was looking around the room as though he’d never seen it before.

His eyes stopped one time, as if they’d found something. Then they went on past there again. After a minute he gave his head a hitch back toward that place where they’d stopped.

“How often do you wind that clock?”

“Once every eight days. It’s an eight-day clock.”

“When’s its next winding due?”

“Not for six more days. I did it two days ago.”

After that he didn’t talk any more about it. He had that way of skipping; she never could keep up with him.

“Take a look out, see if I left the lights on, on my car.”

She stepped out into the hall, looked through the glass in the front door. Then when she came back again, he didn’t give her a chance to tell him whether he had left the lights on or not.

“I’m going now,” he said abruptly.

He had her midget radio tucked under his arm; he was winding its aerial wire around it to keep it from trailing.

“Where you taking that?”

“Down to the repair shop; you’ve been saying it needs new tubes.”

“Yeah, but won’t we need it for the party? It plays good enough the way it is.”

“We’ll do without it at the party; we’ll play records or something instead.”

“Who’ll I have?”

“Your sister and her husband, the people next door to them, it don’t much matter who.” Then he added, “Don’t ask that guy Miller, though, from down the street. He’s always looking at his watch, he wants to go home.”

She accompanied him out into the hall. “Don’t forget what I told you now, I’m coming around tomorrow night at eight,” he said.

“I know, you told me that already.”

“At eight, I said.”

“I heard you,” she protested patiently.

He gave her a sort of half-muffed kiss; he’d had her about six weeks already and she was beginning to wear off on him.

She walked to the door with him, and he got in the car and drove away. She came back into the room again, started putting out the lights. As long as he wasn’t going to be around down here, she might as well go up to bed.

Her eyes rested on the clock for a minute in passing.

“That’s funny,” she murmured to herself indifferently. “He wasn’t here a whole hour, he was only here a minute or two. I looked at it just before he got here and I could have sworn it was eight. Now it’s nine already.”

She left it alone. It really didn’t matter to her. When he wasn’t around, she wasn’t going any place, she wasn’t doing anything, so what difference did it make?

She was getting dressed to go out with her husband. She was taking a lot of trouble with her dressing. She always did. She was what they call a well-dressed woman.

And tonight in particular she wanted to look good. She hadn’t seen him in over a year. She hadn’t seen him since that last day in the divorce court, when the final decree was handed down.

Funny he should phone her like that, suddenly, out of nowhere. She’d been glad to hear from him, though. She still had a soft spot left for him, she guessed. He’d remembered it was their anniversary, he said. He’d wondered if she had any objection to seeing him again, going out with him tonight for old times’ sake?

Why not? There hadn’t been any bitterness, any woman trouble between them. It was that most modern of all divorce causes: financial jealousy. She’d begun to make more money than he did, and he couldn’t take it, it got on his nerves. She’d kept going up the scale all the time, while he’d kept going down. Each job she got was a boost, each job he got was a comedown. And between each of his jobs, toward the end, there was a longer and longer wait, while she had to carry him.

All right, let bygones be bygones. One night couldn’t hurt.

She didn’t even mind putting herself out, going all the way out to meet him at that rather out-of-the-way place he’d suggested, instead of having him pick her up here. It was a sort of remote roadhouse, where they’d sometimes gone in their courtship days; sentiment, she supposed, had made him select it tonight. Funny, she’d thought it was no longer in existence, she’d heard it had closed up quite some time ago. But when she’d mentioned that just now, he’d assured her she was mistaken, it was still in operation. Well, he ought to know; he was calling her right from there, he’d said.

She was ready now. She had on black velvet, soft as a kitten’s fur; one of the new wartime evening dresses, to the knees only. There was a silver fox cape on the bed. First she was going to go without it. She didn’t really need it. It was warm tonight.

She got as far as the door, opened it, stepped outside, and was about to close it after her.

Then she changed her mind, went back again, and put the cape on. She didn’t look well-dressed without it. And what was the good of having one if you didn’t wear it? A well-dressed woman doesn’t dress for the weather alone, she dresses mainly for looks.

Now she looked like the finished job, now she was satisfied. And if she was too warm in it, she could take it off in the car; at least she’d have it with her to show.

This time she did leave, for good.

For good was right.

The detective comes into it now. Nothing brilliant or exceptional about him. He worked hard for his thirty-six hundred a year. He never got anything by intuition. He never got anything by brain waves. He only got it by work.

He wasn’t bright even in a general sense. In fact he was dumb, limited, in a rut. He didn’t know anything about hardly anything, except one thing: being a detective. He knew everything there was to know about that. He was a good detective.

His name was Evans.

She was lying dead on a seldom-used road, near a closed-down roadhouse. Her own car was standing not far off. It was easy to see what had happened. She’d got into difficulties with it, stepped incautiously out into the road to try to get help, and something coming along had knocked her down and killed her.

Nothing remarkable about it, except the fact that she was so well-dressed.

Evans went over and looked at her.

“Accident,” one of the men said. “Hit and run.”

Evans took a good long look. Eight years’ worth of a look; that was how long he’d been a detective. Thirty-six hundred dollars’ worth of a look.

“No, it wasn’t,” he said. And that was all he said.

He went away from there and began to work. It wasn’t his job to pick them up. It was just his job to see that they were paid up for.

Within twelve hours he’d already had his first talk with the woman’s husband. That wasn’t anything. A harness cop would have done as much. The woman had been married to this man. She wasn’t at the time of her death. But there was no one else closely related to her. That was all it was.

“You know your former wife is dead?”

“I read it in the papers.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“In the judge’s chambers just about a year ago. The day we were handed down our decree. We shook hands and wished each other luck and that was that.”

“How was she fixed financially?”

“I don’t know. Good, I guess. She had a big department-store job. Vice-president or something.”

The detective became confidential, man to man. “Down there they tell me she was hauling down twenty thousand a year; vice-president of the whole works or something. I suppose you know you were named beneficiary on her insurance.”

The husband pricked up his ears. “No, I didn’t. How much is it for?”

“I don’t know anything about that. You’ll have to take that up with them.”

He must have said something the detective didn’t like. The detective backed up instead of going on forward. This was the first time it had happened in the whole conversation.

“Would you give me the dates of your marriage, from when to when. Just for the record.”

“1940 to 1943.”

“The insurance was taken out in 1942. You were married to her at the time. How is it you didn’t know you were the beneficiary?”

“I did know then. You didn’t understand — what I meant — I didn’t know I was still the beneficiary. I thought she’d changed that since.”

“Oh, I see.”

But that must have been something the detective didn’t like. His flow of questioning wasn’t smooth any more. It had jammed.

It was like grit on a railroad track: it can throw a whole train.

The door closed finally.

Colin Hughes mopped his face.

Anyone would, after talking to a detective. There’s something about them. Anyone would.

Hughes’s girl got frightened. She said, “Is he in trouble? What’d he do?”

“No, he isn’t in trouble. He didn’t do anything. Just a checkup. Doesn’t mean anything, don’t let it bother you. He was over here last night with you, that right?”

“Yes, he was.”

“Just the two of you by yourselves?”

“No, we had some others. A party, like.”

“What was it in celebration of?”

She looked blank, as though this hadn’t occurred to her herself, until now. She looked helpless. “I don’t know.”

“When you have a party, isn’t it usually in celebration of something? What was it, somebody’s birthday, a wedding anniversary?”

“No reason. I guess we just felt like it.”

“Well, who got it up?”

She looked helpless again. “I guess it just got itself up.”

“Who was at it?”

“Oh, nobody much. My sister and her husband, the couple next door to them. That’s about all.”

He drifted toward the door. “I may be back,” he said. “But don’t be frightened. I usually forget things I want to ask the first time, and have to come back again and ask them the second time. I’m not very good that way.”

She wasn’t very perceptive. “I suppose he was doing the best he could,” she thought patronizingly, “but he acted like he didn’t know what it was all about. They must take anybody on the detective division these days.”

Hughes’s girl’s sister said, “Oh, from about seven-thirty until about twelve, I guess. She insisted that we come over. We were going to the movies. Tuesday’s our regular night for the movies. And it was the last night for Jean Arthur, too. But we didn’t have the heart to turn her down, she seemed so set on it, so we went over there instead.”

The couple next door to Hughes’s girl’s sister said, “We turned her down the first time she called; Mike didn’t want to go, he’s pretty tired these days from working. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer, so the second time she called we gave in and went.”

He showed up again, so he must have remembered something he’d forgotten to ask her the first time.

“Who suggested having that party? He or you?”

“It was between the both of us, I guess.”

“What time did you call him, about coming over?”

“I didn’t, he just came.”

“But he brought an armful of records in with him, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did!” She beamed, still pleased in retrospect at this mark of attention.

“Then, if you didn’t call him, how’d he know enough to bring records to the party?”

She would have fallen into a bad silence there, but he pulled her out of it, since this wasn’t an unfriendly questioning, so to speak. He forgot, and asked her one of the same questions over.

“Who first spoke of having the party, he or you?”

There was only one way out, so what could she do, she had to take it, she couldn’t stay there, walled-in by contradictions. “Well, I guess he said something the night before about having some people in. Then I did the calling. So it was like between the two of us, you might say.”

He nodded, satisfied. He was very easy to satisfy, really.

“What time’d he get here?”

“Oh, it was about eight o’clock.”

“How do you know? Excuse me for annoying you, but I’m in a funny business. We have to have everything down to a T.”

“It was on the clock, that’s how I know.”

“What made you look at the clock?”

“He came in and he said, ‘Everybody here already! What am I, late? What time is it?’ So I looked. You know how you look when somebody says something like that.”

“Yes, I know how you look when somebody says something. like that.” Then he said carelessly, more to himself than to her, “I guess he took the other girl home first, and then came over here, that’s what held him up a little getting here—”

“What other girl?” she said sharply.

“You know, the one he had out in the car with him,” he said absent-mindedly, his attention on what he was writing.

She didn’t say very much after that. He didn’t ask her anything more anyway, so there was no compulsion for her to speak.

“Do I have to answer any more of your questions?”

“No, not a one.”

She slammed the door after him.

He started to walk away from the house. Not very fast, but still with every earmark of final departure. He had one hand pocketed. He was holding two of its fingers crossed.

The door-opened again behind him. He uncrossed his fingers, but kept walking.

“Mister,” she called out, “I forgot to tell you—”

He turned and looked back at her. “Yes?”

“That clock was an hour slow. He got here at eight by my clock. But everywhere else it was nine!”

The man at the garage said, “This is it, this one here.”

Evans said, “Has there been any cleaning done on it?”

“No, not a thing. Just bedded-down for the night.”

Evans was bleaching the treads with his flashlight, stroking it as carefully along them as though he were painting them with a brush.

“What is it, mister?”

“I ask them, you answer them.”

Evans even got in and drove it a half-wheel-turn out of place, to uncover the patches of tire that had rested on the garage floor. Then he painted the seats white with his light too, up and down in straight lines, as though he were a typical house-painter.

“You clock them, don’t you?”

“Yeah, we use a time-keeping system.”

“How long has it been in?”

“I can get that for you.” They went down front. “He brought it back here at eleven-forty-five.”

“You sure of that?”

“Mister, it’s right here on this card. They pay by the hour. Why should we cheat ourselves?”

“Before that, when did it go out?”

“Ten to nine.”

“Damn!” Evans said viciously.

“What’s the matter, mister?”

“That was the wrong answer.”

Didn’t use his own car, he said to himself.

He copied out a stiff two-and-a-half columns from the Classified Directory. On the page headed “Auto Rentals.” It started with Acme and it ran down to Zenith. Then the Auto Supplies began. He didn’t want that.

The twenty-ninth listing, at about the two-thirds point, was “Monarch Automobile Rental.” He got down to it finally. He stayed there.

“Yeah, we rented out three cars yesterday,” the man at Monarch said.

“Show them to me.”

He gave them the torchlight treatment, one by one.

He put his torch away. “This car’s impounded. Don’t rent it out any more, and don’t let anyone go near until I can send someone over here.”

“Why, what’s the matter with it? What’d you find on it just now?”

“A silver fox hair on the back of the seat, that was all. Couple of small stains on the tires. I wouldn’t care to say what they are myself. But I’ve got someone who can and will. Who rented this car?”

“A Mr. Joe Miller.”

“Joe Miller. That’s a good enough name. What kind of credentials did he give? Let’s have a look.”

The man hesitated.

“You mean you rent out cars here without security?”

“Ordinarily, no,” the man admitted. “But he left quite a large deposit, more than enough to cover any possible damage, or even outright loss of the whole car, and it was just for a very short time—”

“So you let him drive out of here with it just as was. You’d better tell me what this Joe Miller looked like.”

The man described him, haltingly but painstakingly.

Evans took a hefty kick at a near-by tire. Not of the car in question, but one of the others.

“What’s the matter, mister?”

“That was the wrong answer.”

Got someone else to rent the car for him, he said to himself as he strode out.

He had his cue poised for a trick corner-pocket shot when Evans’s hand landed on his arm and killed the shot for him. He just stayed there, draped over the edge of the pool table, without moving, without even looking around to see who it was, for a solid minute afterwards. The way a small animal, a ferret or a weasel, stands motionless when it feels itself trapped.

A hand with a tin lining came around in front of his face.

“Take off your eyeshade and come outside, I want to talk to you.”

“Can’t I finish the game first?” he said surlily.

“You have already.”

The tin said do it. He did it.

Upstairs on the sidewalk outside the poolroom Evans stopped and told him things. Things he knew already.

“Your name’s Chuck Flynn. Last night you rented a car from Monarch under the name of Joe Miller. What’d you do with it and where’d you go?”

“I don’t have to—” this Flynn began defensively.

“Okay, you don’t have to,” Evans agreed. “You’re under arrest for murder then. Come on.”

Flynn nearly fell to pieces in his hands. “I never murdered anyone — I... I—! Wait—! Don’t, will you?”

“The car’s a murder-car, and you took it out and brought it back, so that makes you It.”

“It wasn’t me! I wasn’t in it! I just took it out for someone else!”

“Now you’re telling it?”

“Now I’m telling it!” He was practically drooling, he was spilling it so fast. “I was cleaned out playing against some of the fellows back there, and I come up on the sidewalk for a breath of air. A fellow goes by while I’m standing there. He kind of looks me over in passing, and all of a sudden he changes his mind, turns and comes back to me. He asks me if I’d care to do him a favor. He says there’s twenty bucks in it for me, if I’m willing.”

“And you were willing?”

“I wanted to get back into the game. And twenty bucks is no mean stake.”

“This is corn right off the cob,” Evans told him with an air of utter disbelief. “But go ahead, what was the favor?”

“He was in a jam. He’d lied to his girl, told her he had a car of his own, and she was waiting somewhere for him to take her out in it. If he didn’t show up in one, she was the kind would quit going around with him, he said. He’d tried two or three car agencies already, but there was too much red tape, and he had no driver’s license or something. He said he’d heard that at this Monarch place, if you greased the mitt of the guy there, he’d let you have a car without all that, as long as you left a deposit to cover loss of the car. But the rub was, he said, he’d already had one of their cars out once before, and he still owed them some money for damages that he’d never paid up. He was afraid they’d recognize him and turn him down if he went there himself, and he asked me if I’d do it for him, under a fake name, not my own, of course.”

“And you fell for that?” Evans said scathingly.

“What did I care, I wasn’t giving my right name. So I took it out for him, and I just drove it around the corner, and picked him up where he was waiting. Then he dropped me off at the poolroom, and I played again for an hour. There was still half of the twenty coming to me, and I wanted to collect it, so about quarter to nine I went outside and met him again like we’d arranged. He showed up right on time. I took the car back for him and reclaimed the deposit.”

“How much was it?”

“It was a hundred bucks, less the rental of the car.”

“And you gave that back to him?”

Flynn’s eyes slanted evasively. “He — wasn’t there any more, when I got back where I’d left him. I don’t know what happened to him. I couldn’t find him.”

Evans chuckled grimly. “You know, the funny part of what you just said is this: You think you’re telling a lie, and you’re trying to get me to believe it’s the truth. But the fact of the matter is, it is the truth, without your knowing it. He wasn’t there any more, he didn’t wait. If you’da gone back looking for him, you wouldn’t have found him, just like you say you didn’t. Only you didn’t go back looking for him. You went the other way, to get as far away from him as you could with that deposit money.” He nodded, said, more to himself than his prisoner, “Smart play. Very smart. He figured you’d do just that, walk off with the money. And he wanted you to. It was the best guarantee in the world that you’d stay out of sight, keep your mouth shut about the whole thing from then on. Cheap, at that price.”

Flynn was shaking all over.

He was also shaking the detective imploringly, with both hands at once. “I know it sounds phony. But you’ve got to believe me! You’ve got too!”

“No, I don’t,” Evans answered mercilessly. He took his time. Then he added, “But it so happens — I do.”

“What’re you looking so glum about, Evans?” somebody on the squad said to him. “Has working on that case about the well-dressed dame lying in the road got you down?”

“Working on it? I’m all finished.”

“Then what’re you wearing your chin down on your wishbone for? You got the guy that did it?”

“Long ago. I’ve got everything but one thing: the actual, life-sized proof.”

“What do you do in a case like that? I guess you just wait until you get it.”

“No, you make it yourself.”

Chuck Flynn was scared when Evans showed up and took him out of his cell. He was even more scared when the detective shoved him onto a bus without a word and rode all the way uptown with him. He was terrified when they got out again and walked along anonymous streets. And by the time his captor had stopped abruptly and turned aside with a muttered, “This is as good a place as any,” he was verging on panic.

“What’d you bring me here for? What’re you going to do with me now?” he quavered.

“Just stand here back inside this store entrance with me,” Evans ordered crisply. “Now keep your eyes on that doorway across the street. See the one I mean? That one.” He scanned his watch. “It’s ten to five now. For the next twenty minutes we’re going to stand here; that ought to be long enough. Between now and ten past five, you watch everyone that goes in that doorway. When you see someone you’ve seen before, no matter who it is, jerk my sleeve.”

They watched and waited.

A man went in. A woman went in. Another man went in. A man and woman came out.

At 5.08 Evans felt a tug on his sleeve.

“That’s him. Didje see that guy that just went in there now, in a tan coat? That’s him. The guy I was telling you about, that come up to me outside the pool hall the other night—”

Evans just stared across at the doorway, empty now.

“Don’tcha believe me?” Flynn was whining in falsetto. “That’s him, I tell ya! I know it; I got good eyes for things like that.”

Evans nodded. “I know it too. I knew it even before. But knowing it and proving it are two different things.”

Flynn was dancing from foot to foot with impatience. “Ain’t you going to go over there and—?”

Evans didn’t budge. “If I bring the two of you face to face, it’s still just your word against his. That’s not good enough. You’ll say he got in the car; he’ll say he didn’t get in the car.” He scratched his chin in leisurely cogitation. “If I could only fix it so I’d have your word and his, against his own—”

Suddenly he slapped the store door open, towed Flynn outside after him. All the latter’s jitters came back, one hundred proof. “What’re you going to do with me now?”

Evans kept walking — down the street away from the doorway they’d been spotting.

“You got twenty bucks for getting out of that car the other night. How’d you like to get another twenty for staying in it? All the way to wherever it went and back?”

“I don’t get you.”

“You don’t have to. You just get the twenty bucks.”

Hughes found a message waiting for him when he came home from work. They had a switchboard operator who took calls for the tenants while they were out. It was short and calamitous. “Call Inspector Evans of the Police Dep’t as soon as you return.” And the Headquarters number was appended.

He stood and looked at it. The operator and switchboard swung all the way around him like a merry-go-round a couple of times.

To the operator, looking at the outside of his face, there was just puzzlement there. “Must be something about your car,” the operator suggested. “That’s all it is, usually, when they call you up like that.”

Yes, it was something about his car, all right, Hughes reflected wryly, without even cracking an inward grin.

He went upstairs like someone who has seen a ghost. When he’d gone inside his own room, the dresser top, in that particular place, was empty; but maybe that was where the ghost emanated from.

He did a lot of walking around inside the room, without going anywhere. It can’t be anything much, kept running through his head. They don’t telephone you and ask you to call them when — they want you for something serious. They come up and get you.

He went over to the phone and he asked for the police-station number. A desk sergeant answered and gave the precinct house designation. He asked for Evans. His face was white again, like that night of the other phone conversation, here in the same room.

Suddenly Evans was on.

“Could you come down here as soon as possible?”

Cluck. Evans had hung up again.

His complexion hadn’t improved any. There should have been pools of water on the floor where he’d been standing.

It’s all right, it’s got to be, he kept telling himself. They don’t do it that way when they really — want you for something. Just routine, probably.

He waited awhile. He couldn’t seem to make up his mind to go. He changed his shirt. He needed to by now. Warm day.

“But if I don’t go, it makes it look — strange.”

It was the worst form of torture. Maybe without knowing it, Evans had invented something new in police methods. A third-degree without the police themselves being present. A softening-up, a breaking-down.

He looked as if he’d been pulled through a wringer, before he’d even moved a step out of the place. It was now fully ten minutes since Evans had spoken to him on the phone. He should be almost arriving there by now. In another five minutes, if he hadn’t got there, it would begin to look as if he were balking...

Suddenly he grabbed his hat and went. He went fast. He slammed out with a jerk and a bang. Almost as though he didn’t trust himself to go any other way but that: blindly headlong.

He was still a little pale, but very straightforward and businesslike when he walked into the room the desk sergeant had indicated. Evans was sitting at a desk. They evidently did paperwork too, these dicks.

“What’d you ask to see me about?”

Evans got up and shook hands with him across the desk, warm and friendly, evidently considering their one previous interview grounds enough for this touch of sociability. He offered him a cigar, and then he pillowed his hands behind his head, cocked his elbows up, and relaxed, like a man taking time off from his official duties for a moment.

“Were holding a suspect,” he said, “and we’d like your help.”

“Suspect in what?”

“The death of your wife, Mr. Hughes. We’ve got the man who ran her down and killed her and then left the scene.”

“Oh, you have,” said Hughes neutrally.

“We’ve been pushing him around all day, and we’ve finally got him ripe enough to break down and confess. He’s run through all the usual stages; first, a complete denial, then a partial denial, then an attempt to involve someone else. Now he’s about ready for the final stage of confession, involving no one but himself. There’s where you come in; we’d like you to help us.”

“How? How can I help? I—”

He was about to say more, but Evans cut him off. “He’s tried to involve you,” he said smoothly, “and that’s how we can get at him, by bringing the two of you face to face. Then his last defense will crumble.”

Hughes found the chair seat a little hard on his pants; he shifted around a little. “How do you mean, involved—?”

Evans put him at his ease immediately. “Please don’t be uncomfortable. If I thought you were going to be uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have asked you to come down here. It’s just that I thought, with your help, we could take a shortcut and put him out of his misery a little quicker. Look, I’ll explain to you what I mean. Your wife met her death at approximately eight-twenty that night. Now, we’ve checked — no offense, Mr. Hughes, but we have to check in cases of this kind — and we know that you were at the house of a young lady friend of yours from about eight that night until well on toward twelve. About six different people saw you arrive there, and they all agree it was eight o’clock. So you’re out of it entirely.”

Again he stopped him. “Now wait, Mr. Hughes, let me finish before you say anything. However, you did do something that night, that for some reason or other, you overlooked mentioning to us before. You accepted a lift from a stranger for several blocks, from Mercer Street, on your way over to your girl’s house.” He began to speak more quickly, as if to prevent Hughes from interrupting. “We checked on that, and we know that you did ride those couple of blocks, you were recognized in the car with him. It’s a ghastly coincidence, and you won’t believe this, but that car and that stranger were actually the ones that, about half an hour after you got out again, hit and killed your wife out near the Rosedale Inn. It’s one of those flukes that only happens maybe once in a hundred years. That gave him the idea for his alibi. Now, to save himself, he’s trying to claim that you rode out with him all the way and back. And that you were at the wheel at the time. In other words, trying to pass the buck to you.”

Again a swift pass of Evans’s hand dammed up Hughes’s brimming protests.

“He doesn’t know we know who you are, of course, or can bring you forward to confound him. And above all, he doesn’t know that we’ve found out to our satisfaction that you couldn’t have been in any car, anywhere, at eight-twenty that night, because you were at a party at a certain young lady’s house from eight on. Now do you see what we’re driving at? All you have to do is tell us at which point you left the car. All we’re trying to establish is at what point, from what point on I should say, he took over the car alone. And is solely responsible for your wife’s death. Have you any objection to helping us steam that out of him?”

“Not at all,” Hughes said pensively. He thought it over. “Not at all,” he said a second time.

“You do that, and I can promise you won’t even be held as a material witness.”

“Market Street,” Hughes snapped.

“All right, bring him in,” Evans said. “This ought to do the trick.”

They brought Flynn in. He looked in bad shape. His eye had discolored in a very peculiar way. It almost looked as though ink had been splashed around it. He had various nicks and marks on him. You couldn’t tell if they were blood or mercuro-chrome.

He was whimpering like someone who’s had the stuffing laced out of him.

“Did you ever see this gentleman before?” Evans asked him tersely.

“He’s... he’s the one got in the car with me, at Mercer Street—”

“And for the last time, where did he get out again?”

“He didn’t,” the victim wailed. “He rode out all the way with me—”

Evans made a friendly signal to Hughes on the side, not to interrupt, to let the miscreant sew himself up in his own lies.

Flynn was babbling like a man who doesn’t know what he’s saying any more, he’s told so many conflicting stories. “He came up to me and gave me some money to hire a car—”

“You’re a liar, Flynn!” Evans said, and took a hefty poke at him. “I thought we knocked that fairy tale out of you! Are you starting that one again? What would he need to hire a car for? He’s got one of his own. Show him your driver’s license, Mr. Hughes.”

Flynn quickly retracted, in the face of this evidence. “I... I mean I gave him a lift, and he rode out in the car with me all the way—”

“You’re still lying!” This time he cuffed him with the back of his hand. Then he turned to Hughes, with polite deference. “At what point did you step out of the car, Mr. Hughes?”

“Market Street,” Hughes said, with a pitying look at the punch-drunk culprit.

“There’s no reason why we should detain you any more. Would you have any objection to signing a statement to the effect that you got into that car at Mercer Street and left it again at Market Street, Mr. Hughes? Then we can use that as a point in evidence. We won’t have to trouble you any further.”

“I have no objection, none whatever,” Hughes condescended.

A police stenographer was summoned, stuck a sheet of paper into a typewriter, and tapped it out then and there. Evans held it up and read it aloud for Hughes’s approval. The wilting Flynn, meanwhile, had been pushed back against the wall.

“ ‘I rode in the car bearing license plate number nine-o-eight, seven-six-one between Mercer Street and Market Street, on the night of April thirtieth.’ That’s all there is to it. Is that satisfactory, Mr. Hughes?”

“Let me see it a minute.”

He read it at first hand. “Yes, that’s perfectly satisfactory.”

“Then if you’ll sign it, in the presence of this witness and myself, we’ll get to work on our friend here.”

Hughes signed it.

Evans took it and blotted it. “You can go now,” he said, scrutinizing it intently without looking up.

Hughes turned and started for the door. The cop who was by it stiff-armed him and sent him kiting back halfway across the room.

“Not you, him I was talking to,” Evans said, with an indifferent jerk of his head toward the sheepishly grinning Flynn. “And see that you stay around until you’re wanted.”

The door closed. Hughes was the only civilian left in the room. He was rocking there like a kingpin that’s just been nicked by a hurtling ball and can’t decide whether to stay up or topple down.

“But you said I wouldn’t even be held as a material witness!” he gasped.

“That’s right, you won’t be. What you’re being held for, as of now on, is something entirely different: murder in the first degree. In case you don’t know your law terms, that doesn’t mean hit-and-run either: that means premeditated murder and it carries the death penalty.”

The cop threw some water on him from the cooler, and they picked him up from the floor.

“You’ve admitted now you were in this particular car,” Evans went ahead, when Hughes could hear him again. “I have your own signed statement to that effect. That was the hard part of it, getting you into the car. We’re going to do it in reverse this time, by subtraction. Flynn can prove he was out of the car, steadily, from almost eight all the way around to nearly nine. He was seen by a whole poolroom full of people, playing away there in the middle of all of them. I worked on that all afternoon. You can’t prove you were out of the car during that time.”

“My girl—”

“You got there at nine. I can prove that clock there was an hour slow, all evening.”

“See, all I had to do was get you into the car at all. The rest is just a matter of subtraction. The car didn’t run out there under its own power and murder her. Two men in a car, from Mercer Street to Market Street. Take one out. The car goes ahead and kills her. What have you got left? The one who stayed in it was the one who killed her. He can prove he got out. You can’t. That leaves you.”

Hughes’s head went all the way over, until he wasn’t looking at anything but floor.

“That’s close enough to a confession for the time being,” Evans remarked contemptuously. “We can wire it for sound later. Take him out.”

Evans turned his chief’s compliment aside. He looked put out. “Fast work?” he repeated. “Fast work? Slow is what you mean, chief, slow as hell! I could have arrested him six hours after her death. I knew it was murder the minute I looked at the body, right where it was, lying on the street. I knew it was he the minute I talked to him. But I had to wait for proof. Worse than that, I had to build my own proof.”

“All my men should be slow like that,” his chief said devoutly. “But what do you mean you knew it was murder the minute you looked at the body?”

Evans turned up his hands expressively. “The body of a well-dressed woman like that, lying out in the street.”

“But I don’t get you. Can’t a well-dressed person be knocked down and killed just as well as a poorly dressed one?”

“Oh, sure. But his trouble was he was too accurate. She was too well-dressed. He’d been married to her, he knew her habits too well. He knew she never would have been caught dead without that silver fox cape on her. No matter what the weather. The only trouble was, she was caught dead without that silver fox cape on her.”

“It was on her when she was found.”

“That’s what I mean exactly. She’d brought it with her, all right. He was right about that, she wouldn’t be seen anywhere without it. Only for a moment, she must have slipped it off her. He got her out of the car on some excuse or other, and it stayed behind on the seat. Then he focused his headlights on her full glare, blinded her, ran her down, and broke her back.” He snapped his fingers. “She died like that.

“They always think they have to be so careful,” he went on. “If he’d been just a little careless, he would have got away with it completely. He was just a little too careful, so he got caught. He wanted her to stay in character down to the last minor detail. Something that nobody but himself could have known about anyway. So, by trying so hard to make what was murder look like an accident, he only managed to make what would have looked like an accident, if he’d let it alone, turn out to look like a murder.

“She had on a black velvet dress. It took the print of the wheels where they went over her like dusting powder almost. There was a tread mark striping it down below, where there was no fur cape to cover it. But there was also a tread mark striping it up above, under the fur cape.”