Five

I stopped the agency car at the address on Korreander Street and bustled up the steps of the white stucco bungalow.

A gaunt woman in the fifties, moving with awkward, swinging stride, came down the corridor. I could see her through the locked screen door. The inner door was open.

She stood tall and unsmiling, surveying me through the screen.

“What are you selling?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you want?”

“To see Mrs. Jasper.”

“What about?”

“An automobile accident.”

“What about it?”

“I want to find out how it happened. Her insurance company paid off on it.”

“What do you want to know about it?”

“I’ll tell her when I see her.”

She didn’t say, “Wait a minute,” or “I’ll see,” or “excuse me,” or anything else. She merely turned on her heel and I watched her long, angular figure as she strode unhurriedly down the hallway.

I heard the sound of voices. Then the woman was coming back, her long, thin legs swinging easily from the bony hips. Once more she stood in the doorway. “What’s your name?”

“Lam.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Donald.”

“Are you with an insurance company?”

“No.”

“What’s your interest in the accident?”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Jasper when I see her.”

“Have you talked with the people on the other side?”

“No.”

“Talk with the insurance company?”

“I prefer to give my information to Mrs. Jasper.”

“Well, she prefers to have you give it to me.”

I said, “Tell her if she wants to let that outrageous settlement stand, all she has to do is to refuse to see me. If she wants to be vindicated, she’d better talk with me.”

“What do you know about it?”

“A lot.”

Eyes as black as though they have been coated with Japanese lacquer surveyed me from deep sockets. Then she turned once more, walked back down the corridor, this time was gone for about a minute and a half, then returned and unlocked the screen door.

I went in.

She locked the screen door behind me.

“Which way?” I asked.

“Down the corridor,” she said. “First door to the left.”

I walked down the long carpeted corridor, turned to the left and entered a living-room.

The woman who sat in the wheel-chair was good-looking. Her hair was a rich shade of henna. The face was relatively unlined. The eyes were quick, alert and intelligent. If it hadn’t been for a little sag under the chin, she could well have been a lot younger than her years.

“How do you do, Mr. Lam,” she said. “I’m Amelia Jasper.”

“Mrs. Jasper,” I bowed. “It is a pleasure. I regret the intrusion at this hour, and on Sunday, but, you see, it’s the only day I have to gather material for the work I’m doing.”

“And what is your work, may I ask?”

I said, “I’m a free-lance writer.”

Her lips retained that fixed smile, but her eyes lost their cordiality. “A writer?” she asked coldly.

I said with some feeling. “I’m writing some articles on insurance and the way automobile insurance companies are operated. One thing I am attacking is the way they put a premium on committing perjury. When an accident takes place involving a car where one person, no matter how reputable, is the sole witness on one side, and several people on the other side are manifestly lying about what happened, the insurance company rarely takes the trouble to fight it out and…”

“Are you telling me?” Amelia Jasper interrupted, her eyes blazing with indignation. “I was never so humiliated in all my life. I take it you know about my accident.”

“The general circumstances only,” I said. “I understand you were riding alone.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes.”

“And there were three or four other people in the other car?”

“Four people,” she said. “Ignorant boors, people of exactly the type one would expect to find distorting the facts in order to obtain a paltry settlement of a few dollars.”

“It happened at an intersection?”

“Yes. I was coming into the intersection. I looked over on the right and saw no one coming. I glanced hurriedly to the left assuming that I would have the right of way over any vehicle on the left and that I needed to concern myself only with some vehicle on the right.”

“What happened?”

“These insufferable people ran into me. They were coming from the left. They were coming so fast that they entered the intersection long after I got there, but they had the consummate nerve to tell the insurance adjuster that they were already in the intersection when they saw me coming, and that I was driving at such terrific speed I couldn’t stop, that I ran into them.”

“Did you?”

“My car struck theirs, if that’s what you mean.”

“Then they didn’t run into you. You ran into them?”

“They put their car directly in front of mine,” she said.

“I can understand how the insurance company would have looked at it.”

“Well, I can’t,” she flared, “and don’t expect any cooperation from me if you’re going to start sympathizing with that insurance company.”

“I’m not sympathizing,” I told her. “I just was trying to find out what happened.”

I had taken a notebook and pencil from my pocket. Now, without even having opened the notebook, I put book and pencil back in my pocket, and bowed. “I’m very happy to have met you. Mrs. Jasper, and thank you so much for having consented to see me.”

“But I haven’t told you all about the accident.”

I shifted my position uneasily and said, “Well... I think I understand the circumstances.”

She said angrily, “Simply because there are four people on the other side, you’re adopting the position that I must be in the wrong.”

“Not at all,” I told her. “I simply felt it wasn’t a case that would be interesting to the editor of the magazine for which I’m planning to do the writing.”

“Why?”

I said, “What I want to show is the danger inherent in compromising cases, where the insured party is actually in the right but where the insurance company feels that defending the case would involve too much effort. Therefore they let a majority of witnesses on the other side commit perjury and…”

“Well, why isn’t that exactly what happened in my case?”

I hesitated. “Were you seriously injured?”

“My left hip was injured.”

“Is it nearly healed now?”

“Yes. I’m able to walk now, but ever since the accident I’ve had spells of sciatica. I’m having a bad one now — air pillows, aspirin and pain.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sympathetically.

“And what’s more, I’m afraid that this accident is going to leave one leg shorter than the other, permanently.”

“That will be all right as soon as the muscles adjust themselves — in time.”

“In time!” she exclaimed scornfully.

I kept quiet.

She studied me for a moment, then said, “My legs have always looked — well, rather nice.”

She hesitated just the proper amount of time to make it appear that the desire to convince me had overcome her modesty, and then raised her skirt, showing me her left leg.

I whistled.

She jerked the skirt back down indignantly. “I didn’t show you that for you to whistle at!”

“No?” I asked.

She said, “I was simply proving a point.”

“Proving a curve, I would say.”

“You’re nice, but think of my other leg so much shorter it will be disfigured.” Tears came to her eyes.

“It won’t be short in the least.”

“It’s shorter now. My hip is pulled up. And it’s getting thinner than the other as I fail to use the muscles. And I’m — well, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

I smiled tolerantly.

“I tell you I’m not. How old do you think am?”

I pursed my lips, went through the motions of disinterested appraisal. “Well,” I said thoughtfully, “you’re probably past thirty-five, but it’s not fair to ask me that question, now, because a woman always looks older in a wheel-chair. If you were walking around I’d... well, I guess perhaps you are around thirty-five, at that.”

She beamed at me. “Do you think so?”

“Right around there.”

She said, “I’m forty-one.”

“What?” I exclaimed incredulously.

She simpered at me. “Forty-one.”

“Well, you certainly don’t look it!”

“I don’t feel it.”

I said, “Well, I’m going to tall on the insurance company and get all of the facts in your case. I think perhaps, after all, it’s something that would go well in an article.”

“I’m satisfied it will, and I do wish you’d write an article like that. I think it needs to be published. Insurance companies are altogether too conceited, too cocksure of themselves.”

“They’re corporations,” I told her. “They tend to wind themselves up in a lot of red tape.”

“I’ll say they do.”

I motioned towards the morning paper which was lying on a reading table near her wheel-chair. “Read about the murder?” I asked.

“What murder?”

“The one out in the COZY DELL SLUMBER COURT.”

“Oh,” she said casually, “that’s one of those love, murder and suicide things. I remember seeing the headlines.”

“You didn’t read the article?”

“No.”

“Some folks from Colorado,” I said. “I believe the man’s name was Stanwick Carlton — no, wait a minute, the man who was killed was Dover Fulton. He’s from San Robles. Stanwick Carlton is the husband of the girl who was killed in the tragedy — Minerva, I believe her name was.”

Mrs. Jasper nodded absently and said, “I’d like very much to have you get in touch with the insurance company. Ask for Mr. Smith and get him to give you his version of what happened. Then I’d like to know just what he tells you. Do you suppose you could get in touch with me and let me know?”

“I might.”

“I’d really appreciate it. So you’re a writer. What do you write?”

“Oh, all sorts of things.”

“Under your own name?”

“No, mostly under pen names and sometimes anonymously.”

“Why do you do that?”

I grinned. “I write lots of true confession stories, and…”

“You mean to tell me those things aren’t true?”

“The ones I write aren’t.”

“But I thought they were.”

“Oh, I get facts out of real life and then I dress them up and tell them in first person. I’m always interested in divorces and murders, and things of that sort.”

“That’s why you asked about that murder?”

“I guess so, yes.”

She said, “I’ve always wanted to do some writing. Is it difficult?”

“Not in the least. You just’ put yourself on paper. It’s surprising how easy the words come.”

“But if it’s easy, why aren’t more people writing?”

“They are,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “you know what I mean — selling things to the magazines.”

“Oh, selling!” I exclaimed, and shook my head. “That’s terrible! The writing’s easy. You just go ahead and write the stuff. But trying to sell it, that’s where the rub comes.”

She laughed then and said, “You do think of the most humorous things, Mr. Lam. Won’t you sit down and talk with me a little longer?”

“I hate to presume on…”

“Well, after all, it’s Sunday and I’m here alone, and — of course, I don’t want to take up your time.”

“Not at all,” I told her. “It’s a pleasure — I’ll bet there’d be some red faces on the adjusters in that insurance company if I should uncover some new witness who would show that the accident absolutely was the fault of the other side, I think the insurance company knows what I’m doing and resents it, and are going to try to pin something on me so I can’t go ahead.”

“Well, I like that! Don’t you let them do it!”

I said diffidently, “I started to call on you yesterday, and then got frightened away.” I smiled, and then let my smile grow into a laugh of polite deprecation for my own timidity.

“You were frightened away?”

“Yes.”

“What frightened you?”

“A young, well-dressed chap I thought was a detective.”

“Why, whatever happened, Mr. Lam?”

I said, “He was tall and was wearing a grey double-breasted suit and was smoking a cigarette. He got out of his car at just about the same time I did, and looked me over. Then he walked past me and came up the steps and rang the bell here at the house. I drove around the block and parked where I could watch his car. I waited for him to come out. I thought — well, I felt sure that he was a detective working for the insurance company and checking up on me. I almost passed you up. But your case was exactly typical of the cases I wanted to investigate, so I decided to make another try.”

“He wasn’t a detective,” she said, “surely he wasn’t a detective. He’s — why, he’s a nice young man, just the same as you are.”

I laughed and said, “Well, that’s a load off my mind. He’s a friend, then. You’ve known him for a while?”

“Not too long.”

I waited.

She said, “He’s nice. A nice young man.”

I said, “He looked like a detective to me.”

She frowned.

“How did you meet him?” I asked.

She said, “Well, you might call it accidentally. He’s a rich chap, has an interest in some mining properties, so he doesn’t have to work. He’s what you’d call a play-boy, I guess, although what a man like that can see in me is more than I can tell.”

She simpered.

“He can see what I can see, can’t he?”

“Mr. Lam! You forget my age. The man can’t be over… well, he’s a lot younger than I am.”

“I’ll bet he’s older.”

“Why, Mr. Lam! How you talk!”

“You know I’m right.”

She tried to look demure. “Why, such an idea never occurred to me. Mr. Durham was just trying to be nice to me…”

I smiled knowingly.

She looked as satisfied as a bird preening its feathers.

I said, “Well, I’m sorry. I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“For what?”

“For getting so personal.”

She said archly, “Women like men who get personal.”

“Do they?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I... I guess I just never stopped to think of it.”

“Well, that’s what they want,” she said. “Remember it.”

“I will.”

She looked at me somewhat wistfully. “Will you be back?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll have to come back several times. I’ll make an investigation and then I’ll have to come back and ask you some more questions.”

“I wish you would. I’d like to do something about that insurance company.”

I got to my feet. She raised her voice and called, “Susie.”

The maid popped into the room with suspicious alacrity.

“Mr. Lam’s leaving,” she said. “He’ll be back from time to time. I’ll see him any time he comes, Susie, any time.”

The woman merely nodded her head.

She stood to one side in the passageway, and I walked out ahead of her.

I unhooked the screen door and opened it. She stood in the doorway.

“Good-bye, Susie,” I said, and smiled.

She glared at me and said, “You’ve fooled her. That doesn’t mean you’ve fooled me,” and slammed the front door hard.

I thought that over while I was walking across the street to where I’d left the agency car. I’d parked off the pavement, on the side of the road, and when I noticed the tracks of flat-heeled, feminine shoes around the licence number, I was glad that we took the precaution of keeping the car registered in the name of a dummy.