Time Travel Omnibus, page 417
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.
After the fourth day of the phenomenon of the disappearing passengers, Mr. Steems’ lodgings began to get crowded—with suitcases, packages, storage batteries, saxophones in their cases, groceries of all kinds. One wall of his room was solidly banked with suitcases alone. After the fifth day, the space beneath his bed was filled, and a second wall partly obscured. On the sixth day, he began really to run out of space.
That day—the sixth—was the day the newspapers broke the story. The headlines were impressive.
52 Missing in City! Monster at Work?
And there it was. Up to a given hour, fifty-two citizens of all ages and both sexes had disappeared from the city’s streets, and other disappearances were being reported almost hourly; a list of unfortunates who had seemingly gone out of existence like snuffed candle-flames . . .
Mr. Steems read the list with a jaundiced eye. “I never seen none of ’em,” he said bitterly, to the missing persons’ luggage piled against the walls about him. “I don’t ask nobody their name an’ address when they get in my cab! It ain’t none of my business!” Then Mr. Steems again hurled the crushing, unanswerable question at an imaginary interrogator: “Whadda you want a guy to do? Stop runnin’ his taxi an’ starve to death?”
The newspaper account pointed out that none of the known missing had any reason to disappear. Some had vanished as early as eleven in the morning, and some as late as half-past midnight. All had dropped out of sight while on their way from one part of the city to another. Several had last been seen entering a taxicab. Anxious relatives were demanding that the police take drastic action. They demanded the questioning of taxidrivers—
“Yeah!” cried Mr. Steems furiously. “Not only that old bag hadda vanish, so Susie don’t speak to me no more, but now they’ gonna get everybody scared to ride in taxicabs!”
He slammed down the paper and went to the corner saloon. He had a beer. He believed that he thought better with a beer. It was a delusion. He brooded.
“Whadda they want?” he muttered oratorically a little later. “It’s them Commies start stories like that! Them newspaper guys, they’ Commies!”
He had another beer, and his rage mounted to the point where he dropped a nickel in the saloon pay-phone and furiously called a newspaper.
“Whadda you guys tryin’ to do?” he demanded shrilly. “You wanna drive a honest, self-respectin’ guy outa business? You go printin’ stuff about people vanishin’ outa taxicabs and how am I gonna make a livin’ ? You wanna drive a guy to crime?”
He hung up and went to his cab, muttering embitteredly. Three blocks, away he picked up a fat man for a fare. The fat man had an evening paper in his hand. He gave an address. He said in mock fear: “You’re not the Taxi Monster, are you?”
Mr. Steems let in the clutch with a violent jerk. He drove a full hundred yards, hissing like superheated steam awaiting release. Then he spoke in a tone of suppressed frenzy. He expressed his opinion of newspaper reporters in terms that would have curdled sulphuric acid. He worked up to scathing comment on people who made jokes at guys who were only trying to earn an honest living. His voice rose. His bitterness increased. When—it was then 9:45 P.M.—when he came to a red light and a large truck forced him to halt, he was expressing himself at the top of his lungs. There were stores on either side of the street. Their signs lit his face clearly.
A squad-car came to a halt beside him. Patrolman Cassidy said, “That’s him!” and got out and walked to the side of the cab. Mr. Steems was saying shrilly, “It’s guys like you—guys that because you got some money think you can raise hell with any guy that’s got to make a living—it’s guys like you that ruin this country! Yah, you capitalists—”
“Say,” said Cassidy, in Mr. Steem’s ear. “What’s the matter?”
Mr. Steems jumped. Cassidy! Outrage upon outrage! He said furiously: “That guy in the back asked me if I’d killed anybody in my cab yet, on accounta that fancy piece in the paper—”
Patrolman Cassidy looked. Then he said, “That guy in the back? What guy in the back?”
Mr. Steems turned. There was no guy in the back at all. But on the deerskin seat-cover was a watch, and a monogrammed fountain pen in silver and gold, and 75 cents in small silver, a hearing aid, three pants-buttons, a glittering pile of zipper-teeth, and a belt-buckle.
Patrolman Cassidy signaled to the squad-car. He stepped into the cab himself.
“We’re going to Headquarters,” he said in deadly calm. “I’ve been checking, and Susie’s mother ain’t the only one that was last seen getting into your cab, Steems! We’re goin’ to Headquarters, and don’t you try nothing funny on the way, you hear?”
Mr. Steems practically strangled upon his sense of injustice. He started toward Headquarters. The squad-car followed close.
When at last he could speak, Mr. Steems cried shrilly: “You ain’t got nothing on me!”
And there was no answer from the back of the cab.
MR. STEEMS can tell of these things. He can tell of his status after his lodgings had been searched, and—stacked against the wall, hidden under the bed, jammed into the closet—souvenirs turned up of seventy-one out of the seventy-two persons finally reported missing. The exception was, of course, Patrolman Cassidy, whose shield, service gun, whistle, handcuffs, brass knuckles and other assorted metallic mementos lay enshrined at Headquarters as a symbol of devotion to duty.
Mr. Steems became instantly, nationally famous as the Taxi Monster, murderer by wholesale. His downfall was ascribed to an untiring patrolman who, spurred on by love of a missing person’s daughter, had gone sleepless and followed clue after clue until finally he unmasked the monster—and had tragically become his final victim, done somehow to death on the way to Police Headquarters while a squad-car followed close behind.
Mr. Steems was held without bail on seventy-two charges of murder in the first degree. (It would have been seventy-three, had Mr. Binder’s vanishing been reported.) Mr. Steems’ frenziedly righteous protests went unheeded. He was sunk.
But there is justice for all in these United States, especially if publicity goes along with it. A Mr. Irving Castleman, Esquire was appointed by the court to defend Mr. Steems. He instantly pointed out that not one dead body had so far been found, nor had any of the missing persons been seen dead by anybody. The principle of corpus delicti therefore applied. He requested Mr. Steems’ instant release. The authorities countered with charges of grand larceny for each article found piled up in Mr. Steems’ lodgings. His lawyer submitted that no complaint of theft had been made by any missing person. Those objects might have been gifts to Mr. Steems. There was no proof to the contrary. Mr. Steems should be released.
It was not until the cops encouraged a lynching-mob to hang around outside the jail that Mr. Steems’ lawyer consented to let him stay in a cell as a suspicious person!
Things boomed. Feature writers, news commentators, and gossip columnists made the most of Mr. Steems. He was compared to Mr. Landru, to Mr. Cripps, to Bluebeard, Giles de Rais, and other mass murderers. His record topped them all. He was tendered the rewards of such eminence. Huge payments were offered for the story of his life and crimes, and his lawyer urged him to accept so he could pay his trial expenses. Three psychoanalysts explained his urge to kill as the result of childhood frustration. One psychoanalyst said it had developed because he was not frustrated as a child. Four sociologists declared that not Mr. Steems but society would be on trial when he stood before the bar. The telephone company set aside its biggest switchboard for the use of the press when the trial took place.
Susie hit the headlines. Not as Mr. Steems’ fiancée, however, but as the heartbroken sweetheart of his final victim. Three other women, however, claimed to be already married to him, and twenty-nine more wrote and suggested matrimony.
And then the bottom dropped out of everything.
