Give 'em the Ax by Erle Stanley Gardner

Author:Erle Stanley Gardner [Gardner, Erle Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-11-09T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten—TIGHT SQUEAK

THE THREE BLOCKS back to my apartment house seemed to be three miles. I went down into the garage and grinned at the attendant. “I’m going to have to take my car out again,” I said.

He looked at the two-bits I handed him as though it were an insult rather than a tip, then moved a couple of cars and jerked his thumb toward the agency car. “There it is.”

I got in, started the motor, and eased it out of the garage. I ran down the street for half a dozen blocks and pulled in to the curb and parked. I waited for about five minutes then started up, gave it the gun, went around the corner fast, and did a couple of figure eights around blocks.

No one was following me.

A fog had drifted in from the ocean and now it was beginning to settle. The air had turned cold, and the damp chill went clean through to my bones. I’d be all right for a while and then the weakness would grip me and my blood, thinned from the tropics and weakened by bugs, would turn cold, and I’d shiver and shake the way I did when the old malarial chills would get me. But these spells only lasted for a minute or two and then I’d be myself again. It was just weakness.

I drove up to the Hall of Justice, found a good place to park, and parked the bus.

I waited for half an hour that seemed like eternity. Then Billy Prue came bustling out of the lighted entrance, looked up and down the street, turned to the right, and started walking with quick, business-like steps as though she knew exactly where she was going.

I waited until she had nearly a block head start, then slipped the car into gear.

After a couple of blocks she began to look around for a taxicab.

I slid the car up close to the curb, rolled down the window, and said, “Want a lift?”

She looked at me at first dubiously, then with recognition, then with anger.

“You may as well,” I said. “It doesn’t cost any more.”

She came across and jerked the door open. “So you snitched on me. I should have known it.”

I said wearily, “Don’t be a damn fool. I’m trying to give you a break.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“You’d better tell it.”

I said, “Somebody planted the murder weapon in my car while it was parked out in front of Cullingdon’s place.”

Her startled gasp of surprise might have been overdone or it might not.

I said, “Naturally, they hauled me over the coals. Bertha Cool, that’s my partner, thought you’d snared me into it.”

“And so blabbed to the police?”

“Don’t be silly. She isn’t that dumb.”

“Well, how did it happen—?”

I said, “Bertha Cool was sore. She made some crack about me having bought three packages of cigarettes and Frank Sellers, of Homicide, apparently didn’t even notice the crack. That’s when I knew where you were.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

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