“That car, Bill,” Cuff said. “We din’t shake it off, just circling the hill.”
“What car?” Margie demanded. “Cuff, you big dope, what car?”
“The car,” Cuff explained patiently, “that’s been trailing us since we left Bill’s place. That car.”
CHAPTER 8
“A CAR trailing us, since we left the hill, since we left Bill’s?” Cassie made a little squealing sound. “A car? Trailing us?”
“Yeah. We din’t shake it off just circling the hill. That was what you circled the hill for, wasn’t it, Bill?”
“Frankly, no,” Leonidas said. “I told you to circle the hill so that we would approach the Winthrop house from the left, and make it appear to any of the servants who might be watching that we had come from the village. I admit thinking that someone might try to enter my house, but it never entered my head that anyone would follow us.”
“Aw, din’t you?” Cuff sounded as though he were disappointed in Leonidas. “Gee, I thought you tumbled right off. I seen that car park off the corner while we was at the Winthrop house, but I thought it was only the prowl car, see? I didn’t really notice till it slowed down when I slowed down for you to read the will later. It slows when I slow, see, and it picks up when I do, and I twisted around North Main, and it did too, and it’s hanging right along. See?” he indicated the rear-vision mirror. “It just jumped the car that swung in behind us off North Cedar. They’re trailing us, all right.”
“Can’t you shake them?” Cassie demanded.
Cuff smiled.
“In this baby,” he said, “I can shake anything in this world. Just you watch. I’ll run you down the loop, and then through the old car barns, and then by the viaduct—”
“Wait,” Leonidas said, as Cuff’s foot started to press down on the accelerator. “Wait. Before you—”
“Wait for what?” Cassie said. “You don’t want to be followed, do you?”
“No, I don’t. On the other hand—”
“People don’t follow people,” Cassie said ominously, “for any good! You can’t tell what someone might be planning to do to us. Why, think of Haseltine! Someone in Haseltine is always being forced to the side of the road in a car, and being hurtled over some precipice! Think of when Casimir edged Lady Peggy over that awful ravine! Why, Bill, you just can’t tell what people are up to when they trail you in cars!”
“True,” Leonidas said. “But I like to think, Cassie, that people are following us because they are faintly puzzled. If they’d intended to harm us, they passed by any number of excellent opportunities coming down the hill. No, I think that people merely wish to know what we are doing. I don’t like being followed, but on the other hand, as I started to say, I should like to know who is following us. I have what amounts to a burning passion to know the occupants of that car. Er—instead of jeopardizing our lives rushing through car barns and viaducts, Cuff, would it be possible for you to ascertain the identity of our pursuers, and then depart from them in some less spectacular fashion?”
“Huh?”
“Bill wants to find out who’s trailing us,” Margie translated, “and then beat it. Can you do it, Cuffy?”
“Gee, I guess so,” Cuff said. “Only most usually I just always beat it, Sugar.”
“Suppose,” Leonidas said, “you were to pull into a parking space— I wonder if any are cleared?”
“The one by the auditorium is,” Cassie informed him. “They were clearing it this morning. But if we pull into a parking space, they’ll just wait till we pull out, or else follow us on foot.”
“Listen,” Leonidas said, “very carefully. Let’s see if this won’t work. Listen hard, Cuff.”
Cassie gurgled with pleasure as he unfolded his plan, and added a suggestion of her own which inspired Margie to add another.
“Fine,” Leonidas said. “Now, you circle around the auditorium block as though you were hunting a parking space, stopping and then starting up again. Got that, Cuff?”
“He gets it,” Margie said. “He’s awful quick at things you do. It’s just things you think that floor him. When we come to the old high school, Cuff gives me the wheel, and crawls out, by the east side of the parking lot.”
“Then,” Cassie said, “we circle the block again, while Cuff watches this car following us, sees who’s in it, and gets the plate numbers. On our second circle, he checks up and makes sure, and we pull into the parking space, and leave the car in front of that little house where the attendants stay, and we go in.”
Some eight minutes later, Cassie and Margie bustled out of the door marked “Women” at the rear of the attendant’s little house, while Leonidas strolled out of the door marked “Men.”
“It’s awfully lucky I knew about these doors,” Cassie said as the trio met and hurried towards the back of the parking lot. “Because if you watched us go in that place, you’d think we’d gone to the phone booths. I’d never have known if I hadn’t lost Estelle and Hattie and Ernest one day— Isn’t this working nicely?”
“It is,” Leonidas said, “if Cuff has managed to do his part.”
“Oh, he’ll have a car,” Margie assured him. “He always does.”
“He’s wonderful,” Cassie said. “Rutherford can’t believe that Cuff does it with that little gadget. Rutherford says it’s black magic, and he never saw anything like it outside of Haiti. It just doesn’t make any difference what’s locked. Cuff just takes that little gadget, and—see, there he is! What a nice car!”
Calmly, as though it were her invariable custom to ride in hastily pilfered cars, Cassie opened the door of the smart sedan and got in.
“Hurry, Bill, hurry, Margie/’ she said. “Cuff, what a nice car! I wish Simeon had such a pretty instrument panel!”
“Aw,” Cuff said, “if that chauffeur hadn’t come back for his ear muffs, I’d of got you a Cadillac
