The Galton Case

Chapter 5

I MET the doctor’s daughter on the stairs. She gave me a tentative smile. “Are you the detective?”

“I’m the detective. My name is Archer.”

“Mine’s Sheila Howell. Do you think you can find him for her?”

“I can try, Miss Howell.”

“That doesn’t sound too hopeful.”

“It wasn’t meant to.”

“But you will do your best, won’t you?”

“Is it important to you? You’re too young to have known Anthony Galton.”

“It’s important to Aunt Maria.” She added in a rush of feeling: “She needs somebody to love her. I try, honestly, but I just can’t do it.”

“Is she a relative of yours?”

“Not exactly. She’s my godmother. I call her aunt because she likes me to. But I’ve never succeeded in feeling like a niece to her.”

“I imagine she makes it hard.”

“She doesn’t mean to, but she simply doesn’t know how to treat people. She’s had her own way for so long.” The girl colored, and compressed her lips. “I don’t mean to be critical. You must think I’m an awful person, talking about her to a stranger like this. I really do wish her well, in spite of what Dad thinks. And if she wants me to read Pendennis to her, I will.”

“Good for you. I was on my way to make a phone call. Is there a telephone handy?”

She showed me the telephone under the stairs. It was an ancient wall telephone which nobody had ever bothered to change for a modern one. The Santa Teresa directory lay on a table under it. I looked up Sable’s number.

He was a long time answering. Finally, I heard the receiver being lifted at the other end of the line. After another wait, I heard his voice. I hardly recognized it. It had a blurred quality, almost as if Sable had been crying:

“This is Gordon Sable.”

“Archer speaking. You took off before we could make definite arrangements. On a case like this I need an advance, and expense money, at least three hundred.”

There was a click, and then a whirring on the wire. Someone was dialing. A woman’s voice said: “Operator! I want the police.”

“Get off the line,” Sable said.

“I’m calling the police.” It was his wife’s voice, shrill with hysteria.

“I’ve already called them. Now get off the line. It’s in use.”

A receiver was fumbled into place. I said: “You still there, Sable?”

“Yes. There’s been an accident, as you must have gathered.” He paused. I could hear his breathing.

“To Mrs. Sable?”

“No, though she’s badly upset. My houseman, Peter, has been stabbed. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Who stabbed him?”

“It isn’t clear. I can’t get much out of my wife. Apparently some goon came to the door. When Peter opened it, he was knifed.”

“You want me to come out?”

“If you think it will do any good. Peter is past help.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

But it took me longer than that. The Arroyo Park suburb was new to me. I took a wrong turning and got lost in its system of winding roads. The roads all looked alike, with flat-roofed houses, white and gray and adobe, scattered along the terraced hillsides.

I went around in circles for a while, and came out on top of the wrong hill. The road dwindled into a pair of ruts in a field where nothing stood but a water tower. I turned, and stopped to get my bearings.

On a hilltop a mile or more to my left, I could make out a flat pale green roof which looked like the Arizona gravel roof of Sable’s house. On my right, far below, a narrow asphalt road ran like a dark stream along the floor of the valley. Between the road and a clump of scrub oaks an orange rag of flame came and went. Black smoke trickled up from it into the still blue air. When I moved I caught a flash of sunlight on metal. It was a car, nose down in the ditch, and burning.

I drove down the long grade and turned right along the asphalt road. A fire siren was ululating in the distance. The smoke above the burning car was twisting higher and spreading like a slow stain over the trees. Watching it, I almost ran down a man.

He was walking toward me with his head bent, as if in meditation, a thick young man with shoulders like a bull. I honked at him and applied the brakes. He came on doggedly. One of his arms swung slack, dripping red from the fingers. The other arm was cradled in the front of his sharp flannel jacket.

He came up to the door on my side and leaned against it. “Can you gimme a lift?” Oily black curls tumbled over his hot black eyes. The bright blood on his mouth gave him an obscene look, like a painted girl.

“Smash up your car?”

He grunted.

“Come around to the other side if you can make it.”

“Negative. This side.”

I caught the glint of larceny in his eyes, and something worse. I reached for my car keys. He was ahead of me. The short blue gun in his right hand peered at the corner of the open window:

“Leave the keys where they are. Open the door and get out.”

Curlyhead talked and acted like a pro, or at least a gifted amateur with a vocation. I opened the door and got out.

He waved me away from the car. “Start walking.”

I hesitated, weighing my chances of taking him.

He used his gun to point toward the city. “Get going, Bud. You don’t want a calldown with me.”

I started walking. The engine of my car roared behind me. I got off the road. But Curlyhead turned in a driveway, and drove off in the other direction, away from the sirens.

The fire was out when I got to it. The county firemen were coiling their hose, replacing it on the side of the long red truck. I went up to the cab and asked the man at the wheel:

“Do you have two-way radio?”

“What’s it to you?”

“My car was stolen. I think the character who took it was driving the one in the ditch there. The Highway Patrol should be notified.”

“Give me the details, I’ll shoot them in.”

I gave him the license number and description of my car, and a thumbnail sketch of Curlyhead. He started feeding them into his mike. I climbed down the bank to look at the car I’d traded mine in on. It was a black Jaguar sedan, about five years old. It had slewed off the road, gouging deep tracks in the dirt, and crumpled its nose against a boulder. One of the front tires had blown out. The windshield was starred, and the finish blistered by fire. Both doors were sprung.

I made a note of the license number, and moved up closer to look at the steering-post. The registration was missing. I got in and opened the dash compartment. It was clean.

In the road above, another car shrieked to a halt. Two sheriffs men got out on opposite sides and came down the bank in a double cloud of dust. They had guns in their hands, no-nonsense looks on their brown faces.

“This your car?” the first one snapped at me.

“No.”

I started to tell him what had happened to mine, but he didn’t want to hear about it:

“Out of there! Keep your hands in sight, shoulder-high.”

I got out, feeling that all this had happened before. The first deputy held his gun on me while the second deputy shook me down. He was very thorough. He even investigated the fuzz in my pockets. I commented on this.

“This is no joke. What’s your name?”

The firemen had begun to gather around us. I was angry and sweating. I opened my mouth and put both feet in, all the way up to the knee.

“I’m Captain Nemo,” I said. “I just came ashore from a hostile submarine. Curiously enough, we fuel our subs with seaweed. The hull itself is formed from highly compressed seaweed. So take me to your wisest man. There is no time to be lost.”

“He’s a hophead,” the first deputy said. “I kind of figured the slasher was a hophead. You heard me say so, Barney.”

“Yeah.” Barney was reading the contents of my wallet. “He’s got a driver’s license made out to somebody name of Archer, West Hollywood. And a statewide private-eye ducat, same name. But it’s probably a phony.”

“It’s no phony.” Vaudeville had got me nowhere except into deeper trouble. “My name is Archer. I’m a private investigator, employed by Mr. Sable, the lawyer.”

“Sable, he says.” The deputies exchanged significant looks. “Give him his wallet, Barney.”

Barney held it out to me. I reached for it. The cuffs clinked snug on my wrist.

“Other wrist now,” he said in a soothing voice. I was a hophead. “Let’s have the other wrist now.”

I hesitated. But rough stuff not only wouldn’t work. It would put me in the wrong. I wanted them to be in the wrong, falling on their faces with foolishness.

I surrendered the other wrist without a struggle. Looking down at my trapped hands, I saw the dab of blood on one of my fingers.

“Let’s go,” the first deputy said. He dropped my wallet in the side pocket of my jacket.

They herded me up the bank and into the back of their car. The driver of the fire truck leaned from his cab:

“Keep a close eye on him, fellows. He’s a cool customer. He gave me a story about his car getting stolen, took me in completely.”

“Not us,” the first deputy said. “We’re trained to spot these phonies, the way you’re trained to put out fires. Don’t let anybody else near the Jag. Leave a guard on it, eh? I’ll send a man as soon as we can spare one.”

“What did he do?”

“Knifed a man.”

“Jesus, and I thought he was a citizen.”

The first deputy climbed into the back seat beside me. “I got to warn you anything you say can be used against you. Why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Cut Peter Culligan.”

“I didn’t cut him.”

“You got blood on your hand. Where did it come from?”

“Probably the Jaguar.”

“Your car, you mean?”

“It isn’t my car.”

“The hell it isn’t. I got a witness saw you drive away from the scene of the crime.”

“I wasn’t in it. The man who was in it just stole my car.”

“Don’t give me that. You can fool a fireman with it. I’m a cop.”

“Was it woman trouble?” Barney said over his shoulder. “If it was a woman, we can understand it. Crime of passion, and all. Shucks,” he added lightly, “it wouldn’t even be second-degree, probably. You could be out in two-three years. Couldn’t he, Conger?”

“Sure,” Conger said. “You might as well tell us the truth now, get it over with.”

I was getting bored with the game. “It wasn’t a woman. It was seaweed. I’m a seaweed-fancier from way back. I like to sprinkle a little of it on my food.”

“What’s that got to do with Culligan?”

Barney said from the front seat: “He sounds to me like he’s all hopped up.”

Conger leaned across me. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“All hopped up?”

“Yeah. I chew seaweed, then I orbit. Take me to the nearest launching pad.”

Conger looked at me pityingly. I was a hophead. The pity was gradually displaced by doubt. He had begun to grasp that he was being ragged. Very suddenly, his face turned dusky red under the tan. He balled his right fist on his knee. I could see the packed muscles tighten under the shoulder of his blouse. I pulled in my chin and got ready to roll with the punch. But he didn’t hit me.

Under the circumstances, this made him a good cop. I almost began to like him, in spite of the handcuffs. I said:

“As I told you before, my name is Archer. I’m a licensed private detective, retired sergeant from the Long Beach P.D. The California Penal Code has a section on false arrest. Do you think you better take the jewelry off?”

Barney said from the front seat: “A poolroom lawyer, eh?”

Conger didn’t say anything. He sat in pained silence for what seemed a long time. The effort of thought did unexpected things to his heavy face. It seemed to alarm him, like a loud noise in the night.

The car left the county road and climbed Sable’s hill. A second sheriff’s car stood in front of the glass house. Sable climbed out, followed by a heavy-set man in mufti.

Sable looked pale and shaken. “You took your time about getting here.” Then he saw the handcuffs on my wrists. “For heaven’s sake!”

The heavy-set man stepped past him, and yanked the car door open. “What’s the trouble here?”

Conger’s confusion deepened. “No trouble, Sheriff. We picked up a suspect, claims he’s a private cop working for Mr. Sable.”

The sheriff turned to Sable. “This your man?”

“Of course.”

Conger was already removing the handcuffs, unobtrusively, as if perhaps I wouldn’t notice they’d ever been on my wrists. The back of Barney’s neck reddened. He didn’t turn around, even when I stepped out of the car.

The Sheriff gave me his hand. He had a calm and weathered face in which quick bright eyes moved with restless energy. “I’m Trask. I won’t apologize. We all make mistakes. Some of us more than others, eh, Conger?”

Conger didn’t reply. I said: “Now that we’ve had our fun, maybe you’d like to get on the radio with the description of my car and the man that took it.”

“What man are we talking about?” Trask said.

I told him, and added: “If you don’t mind my saying so, Sheriff, it might be a good idea for you to check with the Highway Patrol yourself. Our friend took off in the direction of San Francisco, but he may have circled back.”

“I’ll put out the word.”

Trask started toward his radio car. I held him for a minute: “One other thing. That Jaguar ought to be checked by an expert. It may be just another stolen car–”

“Yeah, let’s hope it isn’t.”