I was walking slowly, figuring Archie would stay a block behind her and wanting to be at least one block behind him, and preferably two, for the street seemed empty. But the street wasn’t empty at all.

  A dark-coated woman had come from the other side of Madison and now, staying on the other side of the street from Archie and Eulalia, was walking after them, close to the buildings, clutching a large handbag. It was dark and the snow veiled everything a little, but I caught something catlike in the action. Was it all coincidence? As I reached Madison and saw how her pace timed itself to theirs, I knew it wasn’t.

  I waited until she was the best part of the block away. Archie was in the next block and Eulalia yet another block farther uptown, and still scintillant. It was quite a procession.

  I stood for a moment, watching the woman immediately ahead to see if she looked back. She didn’t. She clearly thought she had everything her own way—she was tailing the tailer.

  Good. I’d tail her.

  I crossed the street to be more directly behind her, took off and looked ahead.

  Eulalia had disappeared.

  Archie reached a corner, looked down each side street, then turned back toward Park, obviously going the way Eulalia had gone. I began to get an insane glimmering. I also began to close the gap between me and the lady I was following, who turned the corner Archie had turned.

  An empty cab came by, its roof light a welcome beacon in the gloomy night. I waved it in violently. “Two blocks north,” I said. “Fast! Then over to Park and stop.”

  I felt a little silly. “Private eye job,” I said and hoped it sounded terse.

  “Sure,” said the cab driver. “Only two’ll get you six you’re checking on a girlfriend. You want it?”

  “Wise guy!”

  He chuckled. But when we got to Park he pulled up at the corner, switched off the lights and waited. I got out and looked down Park. Eulalia was not quite a block away walking toward me, head down in the sleet. There is something surrealistic about an attractive girl, all dressed up for a night club or party, slogging alone through slush and steady snowfall. Even as I looked, a southbound cab came by, slowed, honked and waited for her to hail it. She didn’t.

  Now I was sure. I ducked back and climbed into the cab.

  In a moment Eulalia came around the corner and headed back toward Madison and my cab. In brief, she was walking around the block by herself on an impossibly unpleasant night, and when she went by my dark cab she looked awfully mad. I caught a glimpse of her open-toed shoes, the gold strapwork darkened by wet snow. Her feet must have been like icicles.

  We waited. Archie came around the corner in a moment, looked about surreptitiously, didn’t notice the cab, and started after her. When he got halfway down the block, the woman in the dark coat came around the corner. I got a glimpse of dark, fearful eyes and a determined face, the big pocketbook tightly gripped. Then she hurried on, closing the gap, and the possible danger that Archie was running—the curious and unpredictable danger—occurred to me with sudden force. Through the cab’s rear window I had seen Eulalia cross Madison, look around and then turn south toward home. She was doubling back all right. I’d better get him out of it. That pocketbook probably held a gun.

  What followed should have been a neat checkers game.

  The light on Park turned green. “Take off,” I told the cab driver. “Turn north, then west on Thirty-ninth. Stop this side of Madison.”

  He did, disregarding the red light at Thirty-ninth and making a skidding stop near Madison. I did not have to tell him to switch off his lights. I jumped out and looked cautiously down the avenue where Eulalia had turned. She was standing under a street light, and was looking around as if she wanted a cab. It was all clear as glass. She had made herself perfectly visible to the expected tail, completed her circuit of the block to give the other woman every chance to spot him, and now, the cold wet job done, was going home, frozen-footed.

  It was simple. Archie would be standing in the same relative position as I at the street corner, but a block closer to her. The other woman would be a little behind him, awaiting his next move. She and Eulalia had staged a neat game of fox and hounds with an extra set of hounds. I was yet another set.

  Then I caught my breath.

  A man had appeared, out of nowhere, down the block, and was standing beside Eulalia. He was tall and big-shouldered. He wore an old, greenish trench coat and an Alpine hat with a feather in it. He took her arm. She smiled up at him; even at that distance I saw the flash of that pretty face under the street light.

  Brillhart?

  But Brillhart was dead.

  He left her quickly, walked down the side street and out of sight.

  I suppose it was the quick furtiveness of it that impressed me, or at least tended to convince me. If someone is putting on a masquerade they do it elaborately. But Brillhart, if that’s who it was, had come out of the shadows only momentarily, had been barely glimpsable, and had then disappeared like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Even as my muddled brain registered these whirling thoughts, an elderly red MG roadster wheeled out of the side street, a block away, scooped up Eulalia and sped off down Madison.

  Archie ran out from his corner and looked around wildly for a cab. Fortunately none was in sight. He began running toward my corner, since it was closer to Forty-second Street, hoping to find one. But halfway up the block he slowed down and gave up; he knew they had gotten away. He must have felt discouraged but also confused and also frightened if, as I gathered, he had gotten a fairly close-up look at Brillhart, or his double.

  I ducked back to my cab and got in.

  When Archie reached my corner, he turned and looked backward—for me, I suppose. If the other woman with the big handbag was in sight, he apparently did not notice her. Instead he turned left and walked the other way down Thirty-ninth Street toward a small neon sign I had not even noticed. Dan’s Do-Nut Shop. His shoulders were hunched discouragedly but he plodded on with determination, and I liked him for it.

  I watched him go into Dan’s. As he did, the other woman came up, crossed the street, watched where he went, and then started after him. I could guess what he was going to do. I got out of the cab fast, handed the driver a $10 bill, said, “Wait here awhile,” and began running toward Forty-second. If Dan’s was in the telephone book—

  I got to the all-night drugstore opposite Grand Central quite fast. I riffled the book, found Dan’s Do-Nut Shop wasn’t listed, swore, then realized I was looking in the Brooklyn book, found the Manhattan one, then Dan’s, dialed it and got a busy signal. That was good. Archie was calling me, as I had figured. After a minute I tried again and a voice said, “Dan’s Do-Nuts.”

  I described Archie and they called him to the phone. He said, “Hello?” guardedly.

  “Listen, Archie.”

  “Deac?”

  “Yes. Now listen. We’re in a hurry. Look at your watch. In ten minutes a cab driver will go into that restaurant you’re in and order black coffee. I’ll tell him to rattle his spoon so you’ll know him. When he finishes his coffee you engage him. You won’t have to pay him anything—he’ll know where to take you and he will be paid in advance. That’s important.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Never mind. He’ll take you to Penn Station. Get out at once and hurry into the station—that’s to lose the person following you. She’ll be slowed up. She’ll have to pay off her cab.”

  “I’m being followed?”

  “Shut up. You know Penn Station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then when you get there move fast to another exit, grab a cab and get away from there. Start for Grand Central. If you have any doubts about whether you’re followed, go on to Grand Central and do the same thing. Do it again at the Waldorf and then the Astor, if you have to. But you won’t. Call me at home only when you know you’re in the clear. But whatever you do, shake that tail—it’s a woman in a dark coat. That’s all I know. Got it?” Obediently he repeated the instructions. He had it.

  I began to feel good. We were getting some cards to play, for a change.

  Outside I flagged another cab, gave the driver $20 and told him how and where to rattle a teaspoon in a coffee cup. He looked happy about the whole thing and, what was more, he looked intelligent. I thanked whatever gods may be for the quick-witted New York cab driver. Now I had two of them working for me.

  I hurried back to the first one at Thirty-ninth and Madison, feeling a little like the ringmaster in a circus. The woman who was following Archie was easy to spot because a trail of tracks in the new snow led to where she stood, a half-visible blur, between parked cars across from Dan’s Do-Nut Shop.

  I got into Cab Number One, told the driver what I wanted, gave him another $10—after all, this was Archie’s money—as well as a card with my address and telephone number, and then waited, keeping an eye on my watch.

  Well before the ten minutes were up the other cab pulled into the street, found a place to park and the driver went into Dan’s as instructed. I got out of my cab. “Don’t worry about a thing,” the driver whispered after me. I walked away; it was out of my hands now.

  But I couldn’t help turning at the corner, and looking back.

  Down the side street Archie and the other cab driver came out of the Do-Nut Shop, got into the cab and started toward Fifth. Immediately my cab lighted up, drove slowly toward the restaurant, and the woman, who had darted out into the middle of the street looking for a cab in which to follow Archie, saw mine coming and hailed it. They took off after the first cab. It had worked.

  I walked up to Grand Central and took the subway downtown.

  * * * *

  In the apartment I replaced wet shoes with slippers, made some espresso, sat back and sipped the coffee while I waited for my telephone to ring. That gave me time to ask myself, since the mystery seemed pretty close to solution, why I had done all this for someone I hadn’t seen in twenty years, who had never meant much to me, and who now could involve me in something rather unpleasant. I decided there were two reasons.

  One was the puzzle itself. I have never liked the “How old is Ann?” kind of brain-twister, or checkers game problems, or crossword puzzles. But something untoward in real life, something inexplicable and strange—that draws me like a magnet.

  The other reason was Archie’s helplessness and appealing loneliness, as evidenced by the fact that he had no one else to turn to, with all his means, but a casual friend he had not seen since he was a helpless and lonely child.

  This philosophizing was interrupted by Cab Driver Number One. He didn’t phone; he appeared in person.

  CHAPTER 10

  COFFEE

  He was short and squat, with the grinning confidence of a man who knows that what he does is not vitally important but that he does it well. He wore a sports jacket, a sports-car cap, and a hearing aid.

  “Hi,” he said, and took off the cap. “I guess you’re the party. I didn’t get a good look at you before.”

  “I’m the party. Where’d you take her? And want some coffee?”

  “That’d be fine. Well, I’ll tell you.” He sat down and I handed him coffee. “This was interesting, in a way.”

  “I’m very glad.”

  He sipped. “Good coffee. Now. You wanna know where she lives—right?”

  “That was always the general idea.”

  “Right.” He sipped again. “Well, I’ll tell you. This dame really acted kind of odd. And at the end—well, I got a surprise for you. Or maybe you know who she is.” He looked at me wisely over the coffee cup’s rim.

  The idea of hitting him with the espresso machine crossed my mind. “If I knew her name and address I wouldn’t have hired you.”

  “Oh, sure. So I’ll tell you from the beginning.” He went on sipping his coffee and finally put the cup down.

  “Why tonight?” I said. “Why don’t you sleep on it and call me in the morning?”

  He grinned, and extended the cup for more coffee. “Okay. My wife says the same. I talk too much. But you know what it’s like, you’re cooped up in a cab all day?”

  “Sure. But why not tell me what it’s like spying on a dame?”

  “Okay. So she says follow that cab, like you told me she would, and they duck into Penn Station and I hold back a little like you said, to lose them. So by the time we get down the ramp where she can jump out, the other cab is long gone. So she said a few things to me a lady wouldn’t have said and started to get out and then she gave me an address on East Fiftieth Street—”

  “Number 199?”

  “That’s right. I thought you didn’t know her?”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, then she changed her mind and told me to drive her uptown. To West Seventy-first.”

  “And you did?”

  “Sure. Good coffee.”

  “So you know where she lives.”

  “I sure do.”

  “If you’ll tell me, I’ll make some more coffee.”

  He laughed. “Where she lives is easy. She lives at 253 West Seventy-first. An old brownstone that’s sort of an apartment, I figure.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t just visiting there?”

  “For two reasons. Because when she realized she’d lost the guy we were tailing, first she said to take her to Fiftieth. Then she says, no, she’s changed her mind. ‘Take me home,’ she says. ‘Okay, lady,’ I says, ‘where’s home?’ and she gives me the Seventy-first Street address. But the real kicker comes when I let her out. That’s why I come down here in person. I figured you’d want to know this right away. Because that dame is famous.”

  I just waited, letting my coffee get cold.

  “Yes, sir, famous. There’s an old guy putting out a trash barrel in front of this address when we pull up, the manager or owner I suppose, and when he sees her, he comes over to help her out of the cab and he calls her by name. And you know who she is?”

  I just looked at him.

  “She’s the wife of that famous old actor—you know, the Western star?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “William S. Hart.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “That’s who she is. That’s what the manager calls her.

  He opens the door and says very respectful—you know, ‘Good evening, Mrs. Bill Hart.’”

  “Are you sure he didn’t say, ‘Mrs. Brillhart’?”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it. I’m old enough to remember Bill Hart, mister.”

  “Sure.” But I began to feel better. It had worked.

  “More coffee?”

  “No, thanks. But since I got your phone number, you mind I have Laraine call you and find out what brand you use? She makes lousy coffee.”

  “Laraine?”

  “My wife.”

  “Tell her to call any time.”

  “Thanks.”

  Just as he left the phone rang. I knew who it was.

  Archie said, “I’ve got to talk fast—I’m home. What the hell happened? Where were you? God, Deac, do you know who I saw?”

  “Did you see him—really? That’s what I want to find out. I was around, all right. Closer than you thought. But was that Brillhart?”

  I suppose he paused for only a few seconds, but it seemed like an hour.

  “It looked like him,” he said. “It really looked like him. It was dark and with the snow I couldn’t see very well, but when he got under the street light, it sure looked like him. The only thing was he looked leaner.”

  He paused again. “But I guess he could have lost some weight, eh?”

  “You’re not absolutely sure it either was or was not Brillhart. Right?”

  “Right.” His voice was low and hesitant.

  “Okay. Forget it. Get a good night’s sleep. You did fine. We’ll have this all cleared up within a day or so.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I mean it. Everything’s under control. Good night.” Under control. Oh, brother!

  CHAPTER 11

  A FEW IN FOR LUNCH

  When I set out next morning, most of the snow had disappeared, in the invisible way that snow vanishes from New York sidewalks. Only a little dirty rime here and there in the lee of a front step or along the curb was left to remind me of Eulalia’s cold walk and the other woman’s futile vigil.

  Again I got into Brillhart’s apartment without trouble. It was stuffy and I tried turning on the ventilating part of the air conditioner, but as Eulalia had said, it wasn’t working. I looked around for a while, finding nothing new of importance except, in a drawer, some bills and opened letters, all postmarked within the past three weeks. Two letters were from a girl named Eden in Hollywood. She sounded hospitable.

  There was coffee in a can in the kitchen and I made some. While it was percolating I called Quayle. As I expected, he sounded sleepy and, when I apologized and told him my name and where we’d met, politely disinterested.

  “To come to the point,” I said, “I’m a friend of Brillhart’s, as you may have gathered. Some of us think he has turned up missing.”

  “In the last day or two?”

  “Much longer than that. I can explain that but it’ll take a lot of time. I’d rather just ask you one question. The other night at Kim Winter’s you mentioned seeing Brillhart when you were passing the Music Hall some days ago. How sure are you it was Brillhart?”

  “How sure do I have to be? It was Brillhart.”

  “How close were you to him?”

  “Well, my cab was on the far side of Sixth from the Music Hall, if that’s what you mean. He was in that old MG of his. On Fiftieth.”

  “And moving.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you get a good, full-face look at him?”

  “Not at all. It was the—the general posture—you know what I mean. The car and the old raincoat.”

 

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