The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (88 page)

“That told him off, huh?”

Mr. Binder did not answer. He was not there. The back of the cab was empty. It was as if Mr. Binder had evaporated.

Mr. Steems fumed. He turned off abruptly into a side street, stopped his cab, and investigated. Mr. Binder was utterly gone. A large patch of deerskin lay on the floor. On the deerskin there was an unusual collection of small objects. Mr. Steems found:

1 gold watch, monogrammed THB, still running

87 cents in silver, nickel, and copper coins

1 pocket-knife

12 eyelets of metal, suitable for shoes

1 pair spectacles in metal case

1 nickel-plated ring, which would fit on a tobacco-pipe

147 small bits of metal, looking like zipper-teeth

1 key-ring, with keys

1 metal shoelace tip

1 belt-buckle, minus belt

Mr. Steems swore violently. “Smart guy, huh!” he said wrathfully. “Gettin’ a free ride! He outsmarted himself, he did! Let ’im try to get this watch back! I never seen ’im!”

He pocketed the watch and money. The other objects he cast contemptuously away. He was about to heave out the deer hide when he remembered that Miss Susie Blepp had made disparaging remarks about the condition of his cab. So had her mother, while grafting dead-head cab-rides as Mr. Steems’ prospective mother-in-law. Mr. Steems said, “The hell with her!” But then, grudgingly, he spread the deerhide over the backseat cushion. It helped. It hid the spring that was about to stab through.

Mr. Steems was dourly pleased. He went and hocked Mr. Binder’s watch and felt a great deal better. He resumed his lawful trade of plying the city streets as a common carrier. Presently he made a soft moaning sound.

Susie’s mother stood on the curb, waving imperiously. His taxi flag was up. Trust her to spot that first! He couldn’t claim he was busy. Bitterly, he pulled in and opened the back door for her. She got in, puffing a little. She was large and formidable, and Mr. Steems marveled gloomily that a cute trick like Susie could have such a battleaxe for a mother.

“Susie told me to tell you,” puffed Mrs. Blepp, “that she can’t keep tonight’s date.”

“Oh, no?” said Mr. Steems sourly.

“No,” said Susie’s mother severely. She waited challengingly for Steems to drive her home (any hesitation on his part would mean a row with Susie). She slipped off her shoes. She settled back.

Mr. Steems drove. As he drove, he muttered. Susie was breaking a date.

Maybe she was going out with, someone else. There was a cop named Cassidy who always looked wistfully at Susie, even in the cab of her affianced boyfriend. Mr. Steems muttered anathemas upon all cops.

He drew up before Susie’s house Susie wouldn’t be home yet. He turned to let Susie’s mother out.

His eyes practically popped out of his head.

The back of the cab was empty. On the seat there was 17 cents in pennies, one nickel, a slightly greenish wedding-ring, an empty lipstick container, several straight steel springs, twelve bobbie pins, assorted safety pins, and a very glittering dress-ornament. On the floor Mrs. Blepp’s shoes remained—size ten-and-a-half.

Mr. Steems cried out hoarsely. He stared about him, gulped several times for air, and then drove rapidly away. Something was wrong. He did not know what, but it was instinct to get away from there. Mr. Steems did not want trouble. He especially did not want trouble with Susie. But here it was.

This was bad business! Presently he stopped and inspected his cab with infinite care. Nothing. The deerskin made a good-looking seat-cover. That was all. There was no opening anywhere through which Susie’s mother could have fallen. She could not have gone out through the door. Under no circumstances would she have abandoned her shoes. Something untoward and upsetting had come into Mr. Steems’ life.

Mr. Steems retired to a bar and had several beers. There was a situation to be faced; to be thought out. But Mr. Steems was not an intellectual type. Thinking made his head hurt. He could not ask advice, because nobody would believe what he had to say. Apprehension developed into desperation, and then into defiance.

“I didn’t do nothing,” muttered Mr. Steems truculently. “I don’t know nothing about it!” Would Susie not be willing to believe that? “I never seen her!” said Mr. Steems in firm resolve. “I never set eyes on that old battleaxe today! The hell with her!”

He had another beer. Then he realized that to stay encloistered, drinking beer after beer might suggest to someone that he was upset. So he set out to act in so conspicuously normal a manner that nobody could suspect him of anything. He had lost considerable time in his meditation, however. It was nearly nine o’clock when he resumed his cruising. It was half-past nine when he stopped behind a jam of other vehicles at a red light on Evers Avenue. He waited. He brooded.

Somebody wrenched open the door of the cab and crawled in.

Mr. Steems reacted normally. “Hey! What’s the idea? Howya know I want a fare now?”

Something cold and hard touched his spine and a hoarse voice snarled: “Get goin’, buddy. Keep your mouth shut, an’ don’t turn around!”

The red light changed. Shoutings broke out half a block behind. Mr. Steems—with cold metal urging him—shifted gears with great celerity. He drove with all the enthusiasm of a man with no desire to be mixed up in gunplay. The shouting died away in the distance. Mr. Steems drove on and drove on.

Presently he dared to say meekly: “Where you want me to drive you or let you out?”

Behind him there was silence.

Resting on the deerskin seat-cover there was a very nasty-looking automatic pistol, a black-jack, $1.25 in coins, seventeen watches, thirty four rings, a sterling silver gravy-bowl, and a garnet necklace. There were also two large gold teeth.

Mr. Steems, trembling, went home and put the cab away. Then, unable to stay alone, he went out and drank more beers as he tried to figure things out. He did not succeed.

After a long time, he muttered bitterly, “It ain’t my fault! I don’t know nothing about it!” Still later he said more bitterly still, “I can’t do nothing about it, anyways!” Both statements were true. They gave Mr. Steems some pleasure. He was innocent. He was blameless. Whatever might turn up, he could stridently and truthfully insist upon his complete rectitude. So he had some more beers.

* * * *

Came the dawn, and Susie babbling frantically on a telephone. Her mother hadn’t come home or called, and it was raining terribly, and—

Mr. Steems said indignantly, “I ain’t seen her. What’s the idea of missing that date with me?”

Susie wept. She repeated that her mother had not come home. The police —Patrolman Cassidy—had checked, and she hadn’t been in any accident. Susie wanted Mr. Steems to do something to find out what had become of her mother.

“Huh!” said Mr. Steems. “Nobody ain’t going to kidnap her! I don’t know nothing about it. What you want me to do?”

Susie, sniffling, wanted him to help find her mother. But Mr. Steems knew better than to try. It hurt his head even to think about it. Besides, he didn’t want to get mixed up in anything.

“Look,” he said firmly, “it’s rainin’ cats and dogs outside. I got to make some money so we can get married, Susie. The old dame’ll turn up. Maybe she’s just kickin’ up her heels. G’bye.”

He went out to his cab. Rain fell heavily. It should have brought joy to Mr. Steems’ heart, but he regarded his cab uneasily. It wore a look of battered innocence. Mr. Steems grimly climbed into the front seat.

He set forth to act innocent. It seemed necessary. That was about nine o’clock in the morning.

* * * *

By half-past ten, cold chills were practically a permanent fixture along his spine. He had had passengers. They had vanished. Unanimously. Inexplicably. They left behind them extraordinary things as mementos. Financially, Mr. Steems was not doing badly. He averaged half a dollar or better in cash from every fare. But otherwise he was doing very badly indeed. At eleven, driving in teeming rain, he saw Patrolman Cassidy—and Cassidy saw him. At Cassidy’s gesture, Mr. Steems pointed to the back of his cab, implying that he had a fare, and drove on through the rain. His teeth chattered. He drove hastily to his lodgings. Business had been good. Far too good to have allowed Cassidy a look into the cab. Mr. Steems furtively carried into his lodgings:

4 suitcases

1 briefcase

2 dozen red roses

1 plucked chicken, ready for the oven

2 qts. milk

1 imitation-leather-covered wallpaper catalog

From his pockets he dumped into a bureau drawer not less than eight watches—men’s and women’s—four rings, eleven bracelets and nine scatter-pins. He had brushed out of the cab at least a double handful of small nails, practically all of them bent at the end and many of them rusted.

Mr. Steems was in a deplorable mental state. Once he had stashed his loot, however, indignation took the place of uneasiness.

“What’s that guy Cassidy want to see me for, huh?” he demanded of the air. “What’s he tryin’ to do? Figure I done somethin’ to that old bag?”

He drove back indignantly in search of Cassidy. He scowled at the raincoated cop when he found him. Cassidy explained that Susie was upset. Did Mr. Steems, by any chance—

“I told her I didn’t know nothing about the old dame!” said Mr. Steems stridently. “Sure, she grafts a ride every time she gets a chance! But I didn’t see her yesterday. What’s Susie think I done to her, anyway?”

Patrolman Cassidy did not know. Naturally.

And then a passenger with two suitcases and a briefcase stepped up beside Cassidy and said, “Is this taxi taken?”

There was nothing for Mr. Steems to do but accept him as a fare. To refuse would have been suspicious.

Two blocks away, the cab somehow felt empty—Mr. Steems was acquiring an uncanny ability to feel this—and he turned around and saw a cigarette-case and a monogrammed lighter on the backseat cushion, with $1.25 in change, pants-buttons, metal eyelets suitable for shoes, a gold-barreled ball-point pen, and other miscellany.

Mr. Steems could not afford to cease to drive his taxicab. To do so would be to invite inquiry. He could not refuse passengers. To do so would be instantly suspicious. He was caught in a vise of circumstance. But he had the sustaining conviction of blamelessness. What happened was not his fault. And anyhow, he was one of those fortunate people who develops fury as a fine art. It was his custom always to get mad enough soon enough to avoid all heed for thought. He went through life in an aura of pleasurable indignation, always assured that anything that happened was somebody else’s fault.

That process took over now. When a passenger flagged him down and got in his cab and gave an address, Mr. Steems was blameless. When the passenger vanished into thin air, leaving souvenirs behind, Mr. Steems merely felt his resentment increase. By the end of the second day, he seethed as he cleaned up after each departed fare. He raged as he packed his lodgings with the baggage and parcels that mysteriously remained.

Somebody, he muttered darkly to himself, was gonna have to pay for this funny business! Somebody was gonna pay plenty! When they tried to get their stuff back, they’d see!

That prospect of future justification and revenge ended his mental efforts. He did call up Susie to find out if her mother had turned up yet—she hadn’t, and he generously offered to take Susie out on a date to take her mind off her troubles. But Susie got almost hysterical, and Mr. Steems took refuge in a beer and embittered mutterings. He wasn’t responsible for what happened to people who rode with him!

“What’s a guy gonna do?” he asked bitterly of his beer-glass; There was the possibility that he could cease to drive the cab from which every passenger seemed to vanish into thin air. But he dismissed that notion with incredulous horror. “They want a guy to starve to death?” he demanded truculently.

He would definitely not consider starving to death. But he couldn’t fathom the mystery. He’d completely forgotten the clue that might have given him the answer. Mr. Thaddeus Binder had been the first passenger to vanish. He had left the deerskin behind, loaded with his possessions. The deerskin remained, and now frequently was loaded with other people’s possessions. But Mr. Steems could not add that together. And even if he had, Mr. Steems would have failed to understand. He would have needed to be told that Mr. Binder had made an experiment to prove that compenetrability was possible. Maybe even that wouldn’t have helped, however; and, besides, he didn’t remember Mr. Binder. He recalled male passengers by their tips and some female ones by their hips. Mr. Binder was gone from his recollection.

* * * *

A third day passed. Susie’s mother did not reappear. Susie took an unreasoning dislike to Mr. Steems. She said he didn’t care. As a matter of fact, nobody cared more than he did, but he was in a fix. Susie conferred tearfully with Patrolman Cassidy. Her mother’s disappearance was duly reported to the Bureau of Missing Persons. There were a surprising lot of people missing, all of a sudden. Patrolman Cassidy discovered the fact and grew ambitious. He considered that in Susie’s mother’s case he had a lead. He began to work from that standpoint.