“Subsequent events,” Leonidas said, “seem to bear out your contention that Rossi was not the ideal person to be summoned— Ah, Cuff. What of Pig Eyes?”
Cuff climbed in behind the wheel.
“Bill, I take my hat off to you! Pig Eyes—his real name’s Binsky, or something. Well, he come to Dinty’s at five minutes of three this after, see, and he has three slugs of gin, and he takes the three-o’clock Providence bus. Dinty says he couldn’t hardly wait for the bus to leave the corner. Here.”
He emptied a fistful of quarters into Margie’s lap.
“Cuff,” Cassie said severely, “you stopped to play the slot machine, didn’t you? And you promised Margie and me!”
“You promised us,” Margie said. “You swore that you wouldn’t touch another slot machine! After you lost all that money on Marlene, you promised—”
“Yeah, Sugar Pie,” Cuff said. “I know. But this was different. I says to myself, if I hit it, that’s a good sign, see? That means Bill finds out who done it, and I get to knock that guy’s block off. And I hit it, and you can keep the jackpot for the bank book. And it means everything’s going to come out fine, see? Don’t you think it’s a good sign?” He appealed to Leonidas. “Ain’t it a good sign?”
“It is rather a far cry,” Leonidas said, “from the examination of—er—bovine viscera to the examination of the entrails of a slot machine, but I suppose one might still term it haruspication. M’yes. It is heartening to know that the Fates look kindly on us. Cuff, will you be good enough to take us, please, to Fourteen Florence Street? I want to inquire after George.”
Cassie eyed him with suspicion.
“I always thought haruspication was geese honking,” she said. “And I don’t intend to be caught again. Is it George Street, or George Alley, or George Court? George What?”
“George Chard,” Leonidas told her. “And geese honking is augury, Cassie. Haruspication involves viscera. Of course, if it happened to involve the viscera of geese, I’ve no doubt they honked to a considerable extent, but—”
“How d’you know that George Chard lives at Fourteen Florence Street?” Cassie interrupted.
“I have practically never found reason,” Leonidas said, “to question the listings in a telephone directory. If the telephone company says that George Chard—he is Dalton’s only Chard, by the way—if they say he lives at Fourteen Florence, I accept that fact as gospel truth. There is, of course, the possibility that George may have moved, but I think not. My telephone directory is a very recent telephone directory—”
“You found him in the phone book!” Cassie said. “Bill, you’re just so smart! But what do you mean, inquire after him?”
“Miss Chard told Leslie that George is a musician,” Leonidas said. “I think we may assume that George is not a particularly prosperous musician, if he lives on Florence Street. And you remember that George went out without his overshoes. And since that fact loomed so important, I think we may further assume that George, in his overshoeless state, took cold. In fact, I think that George became seriously ill. Doubtless the poor fellow was in a run-down condition/’
“If you want to know/’ Cassie said, “I am practically in a run-down condition, myself! Bill, d’you feel all right? Maybe there’s carbon monoxide coming out of that heater. Cuff, perhaps we’d better leave this car and take another. Bill’s being affected by the heater fumes.”
“Heater fumes,” Leonidas said, “are probably the only thing not affecting my condition, but I agree that a change of cars is indicated. I should not care, at this point, to be detained by the police for being an occupant of a stolen car. And it’s about time someone reported this. Possibly we might take a taxi.”
Cassie and Cuff looked horror-stricken at his suggestion. Margie sniffed.
“Aw, no, Bill!” Cuff said. “You can’t! Why, the colonel’s hand-picked the cab drivers, Bill. They ain’t the way they used to be. Say, if you get a cab, and you get chased, they’d let you get caught/”
“Absolutely!” Cassie said. “A cab would be fatal. Why, suppose we’d been in a cab coming from your house! We shouldn’t have known we were being followed, and the Lord only knows what mightn’t have happened to us at that awful garage place halfway up Arthur!”
“Wow!” Cuff said. “If we’d gone there! Say, they’d be picking us up in pieces out of a Camavon ditch tomorrow!”
“Very well.” Leonidas gave in. “Get another car, Cuff.”
“It’s the best thing, Bill. Til swing around by the movies. There’s always plenty of cars outside the movies, and if you get one from somebody just going in, then nobody reports it for a couple hours. I’ll get a nice snappy roadster. I like snappy open jobs.” Margie reminded him of the weather.
“Below zero, dopey, and you talk about open jobs! Listen, you get a nice sedan with a heater!”
“And nothing conspicuous, please,” Leonidas added. “Something commonplace, that won’t call attention to us. Something quiet. No chromium.”
“Aw,” Cuff said, “while I’m about it, I might as well get a good one!”
“Something quiet.”
Cuff sighed.
“Okay. I’ll get you a plain sedan. Gee, if we was over by the Centre—”
“You’d what?” Margie demanded, as Cuff hesitated. “Aw, I just got a thought,” Cuff said. “I know just the car.” A dreamy look flitted over his face. “It’d do swell. I could get it— Say, where’ll I leave you? I better leave you somewheres while I get something. How’s for I leave you to wait at a bus stop, huh?”
“Not in this cold!’’ Cassie said. “We’re not going to freeze in one of those lean-tos. Where are we, in Daltonham? Well, turn down the avenue and leave us at the railroad station. At least it’ll be warm.” Margie got out with Leonidas and Cassie at the station, and then she
