"Can you put on an act?"
"I did. I put on all the act I dare put, and still he won't budge. I put on such an act that Lola is hardly speaking to me any more. She thinks it's selfish of me. I can try again, but—"
"Holy smoke no."
"I could do this. The day before he's to start, I could bang the car up. Mess up the ignition or something. So it had to go in the shop. Then he'd have to go by train."
"Nothing like it. Nothing even a little bit like it. In the first place, if you've already put on an act, they'll smell something, and believe me Lola will be hard to talk down, later. In the second place, we need the car."
"We need it?"
"It's essential."
"I still don't know—what we're going to do."
"You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time. But we've got to have the car. We've got to have two cars, yours and mine. Whatever you do, don't pull any monkey business with the car. That car's got to run. It's got to be in perfect shape."
"Hadn't we better give up the train idea?"
"Listen, it's the train or we don't do it."
"Well, my goodness, you don't have to snap at me."
"Just pulling off some piker job, that don't interest me. But this, hitting it for the limit, that's what I go for. It's all I go for."
"I was just wondering."
"Quit wondering."
Two or three days later was when we had our piece of luck. She called me at the office around four in the afternoon. "Walter?"
"Yes."
"Are you alone?"
"Is it important?"
"Yes, terribly. Something has happened."
"I'll go home. Call me there in a half hour."
I was alone, but I don't take chances on a phone that runs through a switchboard. I went home, and the phone rang a couple of minutes after I got there. "The Palo Alto trip is off. He's broken his leg."
"What!"
"I don't even know how he did it, yet. He was holding a dog or something, a neighbor's dog that was chasing a rabbit, and slipped and fell down. He's in the hospital now. Lola's with him. They'll be bringing him home in a few minutes."
"I guess that knocks it in the head."
"I'm afraid so."
I was at dinner before it came to me that instead of knocking it in the head, maybe this fixed it up perfect. I walked three miles, around the living room, wondering if she'd come that night, before I heard the bell ring.
"I've only got a few minutes. I'm supposed to be on the boulevard, buying him something to read. I could cry. Whoever heard of such a thing?"
"Listen, Phyllis, never mind that. What kind of break has he got? I mean, is it bad?"
"It's down near the ankle. No, it's not bad."
"Is it in pulleys?"
"No. There's a weight on it, that comes off in about a week. But he won't be able to walk. He'll have to wear a cast. A long time."
"He'll be able to walk."
"You think so?"
"If you get him up."
"What do you mean, Walter?"
"On crutches, he can get up, if you get him up. Because with his foot in a cast, he won't be able to drive. He'll have to go by train. Phyllis, this is what we've been hoping for."
"You think so?"
"And then another thing. I told you, he gets on that train but he don't get on it. All right, then. We've got a question of identification there, haven't we? Those crutches, that foot in a cast—there's the most perfect identification a man ever had. Oh yeah, I'm telling you. If you can get him off that bed, and make him think he ought to take the trip anyway, just as a vacation from all he's been through—we're in. I can feel it. We're in."
"It's dangerous, though."
"What's dangerous about it?"
"I mean, getting a broken leg case out of bed too soon. I used to be a nurse, and I know. It's almost certain to affect the length. Make one leg shorter than the other, I mean."
"Is that all that's bothering you?"
It was a minute before she got it. Whether one leg was going to be shorter than the other, that was one thing he didn't have to worry about.
Decoration Day they don't have mail delivery, but the day watchman sends over to the General Fidelity box and gets it. There was a big envelope for me, marked personal. I opened it and found a booklet. It was called "Colloids in Gold Mining. An examination of methods in dealing with the problem." Inside, it was inscribed, "To Mr. Walter Huff, in appreciation of past favors, Beniamino Sachetti."
Chapter 5
His train was to leave at 9:45 at night. Around four o'clock, I drove down to San Pedro Street and talked employers' liability to the manager of a wine company. There wasn't a chance of landing him until August, when the grapes came in and his plant opened up, but I had a reason. He explained why he wasn't ready to do business yet, but I put on an act and went back to the office. I told Nettie I thought I had a real prospect, and to make out a card for him. The card automatically gave the date of the first call, and that was what I wanted. I signed a couple of letters, and around five-thirty I left.
I got home around six, and the Filipino was all ready to serve dinner. I had seen to that. This was June 3, and I should have paid him on the first, but I pretended I had forgotten to go to the bank, and put him off. Today, though, I had stopped at the house for lunch, and paid him. That meant that when night came he could hardly wait to go out and spend it. I said O.K., he could serve dinner, and he had the soup on the table before I even got washed up. I ate, as well as I could. He gave me steak, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, with fruit cup for dessert. I was so nervous I could hardly chew, but I got it all down somehow. I had hardly finished my coffee when he had everything washed up, and had changed to cream-colored pants, white shoes and stockings, a brown coat, and white shirt open at the neck ready to go out with the girl. It used to be that what a Hollywood actor wore on Monday a Filipino house boy wore on Tuesday, but now, if you ask me, it's the other way around, and the boy from Manila beats Clark Gable to it.
He left around a quarter to seven. When he came up to ask if there was anything else for him to do, I was taking off my clothes getting ready to go to bed. I told him I was going to lie there and do a little work. I got some paper and pencils and made a lot of notes, like I was figuring up the public liability stuff for the man I talked to in the afternoon. It was the kind of stuff you would naturally save and put in the prospect's folder. I took care there was a couple of notes on the date.
Then I went down and called the office. Joe Pete, the night watchman, answered. "Joe Pete, this is Walter Huff. Do me a favor will you? Go up to my office, and right on top of the desk you'll find my rate book. It's a looseleaf book, with a soft leather back, and my name stamped in gold on the front, and under that the word 'rates.' I forgot to bring it home, and I need it. Will you get it and send it up to me by messenger, right away?"
"O.K., Mr. Huff. Right away."
Fifteen minutes later he rang back and said he couldn't find it. "I looked all over the desk, Mr. Huff, and through the office besides, and there's no such book there."
"Nettie must have locked it up."
"I can tell her if you want, and ask her where she put it."
"No, I don't need it that bad."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Huff."
"I'll have to get along without it."
I had put that rate book in a place where he'd never find it. But it was one person that had called me at home that night, and I was there, working hard. There'd be others. No need to say anything to him that would make him remember the date. He had to keep a log, and enter everything he did, not only by date, but also by time. J looked at my watch. It was 7:38.
A quarter to eight the phone rang again. It was Phyllis. "The blue."
"Blue it is."
That was a check on what suit he would wear. We were pretty sure it would be the blue, but I had to be sure, so she was to duck down to the drugstore to buy him an extra tooth brush, and call. No danger
of its being traced, there's no record on dial calls. Soon as she hung up I dressed. I put on a blue suit too. But before that I wrapped up my foot. I put a thick bandage of gauze on it, and over that adhesive tape. It looked like the tape was wrapped on the ankle, like a cast for a broken leg, but it wasn't. I could cut it off in ten seconds when I was ready to. I put the shoe on. I could barely lace it, but that was how I wanted it. I checked on a pair of horn-rim glasses, like he wore. They were in my pocket. So was 58 inches of light cotton rope, rolled small. So was a handle I had made, like stores hook on packages, but heavier, from an iron rod. My coat bulged, but I didn't care.
Twenty minutes to nine I called Nettie. "Did you see my rate book before I left?"
"Indeed I didn't, Mr. Huff."
"I need it, and I don't know what I did with it."
"You mean you lost it?"
"I don't know. I phoned Joe Pete, and he can't find it, and I can't imagine what I did with it."
"I can run in, if you want, and see if I can—"
"No, it's not that important."
"I didn't see it, Mr. Huff."
Nettie lives in Burbank, and it's a toll call. The record would show I called from the house at 8:40. As soon as I got rid of her I opened the bell box and tilted half a visiting card against the clapper, so if the phone rang it would fall down. Then I did the same for the doorbell clapper, in the kitchen. I would be out of the house an hour and a half, and I had to know if the doorbell rang or the phone rang. If they did, that would be while I was in the bathroom taking a bath, with the door shut and the water running, so I didn't hear. But I had to know.
Soon as I had the cards fixed I got in my car and drove over to Hollywoodland. It's just a few minutes from my house. I parked on the main street, a couple of minutes' walk from the house. I had to be where a car wouldn't attract any attention, but at the same time I couldn't be so far off that I had to do much walking. Not with that foot.
Around the bend from the house is a big tree. There's no house in sight of it. I slipped behind it and waited. I waited exactly two minutes, but it seemed like an hour. Then I saw the flash of headlights. The car came around the bend. She was at the wheel, and he was beside her with his crutches under his elbow on the door side. When the car got to the tree it stopped. That was exactly according to the play. Next came the ticklish part. It was how to get him out of the car for a minute, with the bags in back and everything all set, so I could get in. If he had been all right on his two feet there would have been nothing to it, but getting a cripple out of a car once he gets set, and especially with a well person sitting right beside him, is like getting a hippopotamus out of a car.
She opened up just like I had coached her. "I haven't got my pocketbook."
"Didn't you take it?"
"I thought so. Look on the back seat."
"No, nothing back there but my stuff."
"I can't think what I've done with it."
"Well, come on, we'll be late. Here, here's a dollar. That'll be enough till you get back."
"I must have left it on the sofa. In the living room. "
"Well all right, all right, you left it on the sofa in the living room. Now get going."
She was coming to the part I had taken her over forty times.
She was all for asking him to step out and get it. I finally beat it into her head that if she did that, she was just setting herself up to him to ask her why she didn't step out and get it, so he wouldn't have to unlimber the crutches. I showed her that her only chance was to talk dumb, not start the car, and wait him out, until he would get so sore, and so worried over the time, that he would make a martyr out of himself and get it himself. She kept at it, just like she was coached.
"But I want my pocketbook."
"What for? Isn't a buck enough?"
"But it's got my lipstick in it."
"Listen, can't you get it through your head we're trying to catch a train? This isn't an automobile trip, where we start when we get ready. It's a railroad train, and it goes at nine forty-five, and when it goes it goes. Come on. Start up."
"Well if you're going to talk that way."
"What way?"
"All I said was that I wanted my—"
He ripped out a flock of cusswords, and at last I heard the crutches rattling against the side of the car. As soon as he was around the bend, hobbling back to the house, I dove in. I had to dive in the front door and climb over the seat into the back so he wouldn't hear the back door close. That's a sound that always catches your ear, a car door closing. I crouched down there in the dark. He had his bag and his briefcase on the seat.
"Did I do it all right, Walter?"
"O.K. so far. How did you get rid of Lola?"
"I didn't have to. She was invited to something over at U.C.L.A. and I took her to the bus at seven."
"O.K. Back up, now, so he won't have so far to walk. Try and smooth him down."
"All right."
She backed up to the door and he got in again. She started off. Believe me it's an awful thing to kibitz on a man and his wife, and hear what they really talk about. Soon as she got him a little smoothed down, he began to beef about Belle, the way she passed things at dinner. She panned Belle for the way she broke so many dishes. Then they got switched off to somebody named Hobey, and a woman named Ethel, that seemed to be his wife. He said he was through with Hobey and Hobey might as well know it. She said she used to like Ethel but the high-hat way she's been acting lately was too much. They figured it out whether they owed Hobey and Ethel a dinner or the other way around, so they found out they were one down, and decided that after they knocked that one off that was going to be the end of it. When they got that all settled, they decided he was to take a taxi wherever he went, up in Palo Alto, even if it did cost a little money. Because if he had to slog along on crutches everywhere he went, he wouldn't have a good time, and besides he might strain his leg. Phyllis talked just like he was going to Palo Alto, and she didn't have a thing on her mind. A woman is a funny animal.
Back where I was, I couldn't see where we were. I was even afraid to breathe, for fear he'd hear me. She was to drive so she didn't make any sudden stops, or get herself tangled in traffic, or do anything that would make him turn his head around to see what was back of us. He didn't. He had a cigar in his mouth, and lay back in the seat, smoking it. After a while she gave two sharp raps on the horn. That was our signal that we had come to a dark street we had picked out, about a half mile from the station.
I raised up, put my hand over his mouth, and pulled his head back. He grabbed my hand in both of his. The cigar was still in his fingers. I took it with my free hand and handed it to her. She took it. I took one of the crutches and hooked it under his chin. I won't tell you what I did then. But in two seconds he was curled down on the seat with a broken neck, and not a mark on him except a crease right over his nose, from the crosspiece of the crutch.
Chapter 6
We were right up with it, the moment of audacity that has to be part of any successful murder. For the next twenty minutes we were in the jaws of death, not for what would happen now, but for how it would go together later. She started to throw the cigar out, but I stopped her. He had lit that cigar in the house, and I had to have it. She held it for me, and wiped the end of it as well as she could, while I went to work with the rope. I ran it across his shoulders, just below the neck, under his arms, and across his back. I tied it hard, and hooked the handle on, so it caught both sections of the rope, and drew them tight. A dead man is about the hardest thing to handle there is, but I figured with this harness we could do it, and do it quick.
"We're there, Walter. Shall I park now or drive around the block?"
"Park now. We're ready."
She stopped. It was on a side street, about a block from the station. That stumped us for a while, where to park. If we went on the regular station parking lot, it was a 10 to 1 shot that a redcap would jerk the door open to get the bags, and we'd be sunk. But p
arking here, we would be all right. If we got a chance, we were to have an argument about it in front of somebody, with me complaining about how far she made me walk, to cover up on something that might look a little funny, later.
She got out and took the bag and briefcase. He was one of the kind who puts his toilet articles in a briefcase, for use on the train, and that was a break for me, later. I wound up all windows, took the crutches, and got out. She locked the car. We left him right where he was, curled down on the seat, with the harness on him.
She went ahead with the bag and briefcase, and I came along behind, with the bandaged leg half lifted up, walking on the crutches. That looked like a woman making it easy for a cripple. Really, it was a way to keep the redcap from getting a good look at me when he took the bags. Soon as we got around the corner, in sight of the station, here came one, running. He did just what we figured on. He took the bags from her, and never waited for me at all.
"The nine forty-five for San Francisco, Section 8, Car C."
"Eight in Car C, yas'm. Meet you on the train."
We went in the station. I made her drop back on me, so if anything came up I could mumble to her. I had the glasses on, and my hat pulled down, but not too much. I kept my eyes down, like I was watching where I put the crutches. I kept the cigar in my mouth, partly so it covered some of my face, partly so I could screw my face out of shape a little, like I was trying to keep the smoke out of my eyes.
The train was on a siding, out back of the station. I made a quick count of the cars. "Holy smoke, it's the third one." It was the one that both conductors were standing in front of, and not only them, but the porter, and the redcap, waiting for his tip. Unless we did something quick, it would be four people that had a good look at me before I went in the car, and it might hang us. She ran on ahead. I saw her tip the redcap, and he went off, all bows. He didn't pass near me. He headed for the far end of the station, where the parking lot was. Then the porter saw me, and started for me. She took him by the arm. "He doesn't like to be helped."