Murder on Wheels by Stuart Palmer

him what to do. She looks like the kind of woman who gets what she wants, or knows the reason why.”
    “Suppose she wanted Laurie Stait … and he didn’t want her?”
    “Oscar, I do believe you’re improving,” Miss Withers congratulated him. “Well, here we are at the abode of justice.”
    “You’d better come on up,” suggested the Inspector.
    “But what about our agreement ? I was going to keep in the background.”
    “There’s a lot of routine matters that ought to be settled by now,” he explained. “There’s the report of the auto expert who went over the wrecked Chrysler, and the pictures from the photographer, and so forth. Take a look at them, and then you can go out sleuthing all you like on your own …”
    “I don’t think I’ll … oh, yes I will.” Miss Withers exercised the ancient prerogative of her sex and changed her mind. For she had noticed a young man going up the flight of stone steps ahead of them, toward the main entrance of the building.
    It was a young man she had seen before. In spite of his wearing a nondescript hat and overcoat, she recognized him quite clearly. It was Hubert Stait, the odd little cousin of the dead twin, and he was going somewhere in considerable of a hurry.
    That somewhere proved to be the Inspector’s own office, or as close to that sanctum sanctorum as was possible with Lieutenant Keller barring the door.
    “I tell you, I’ve got to see the Inspector!” Hubert Stait was demanding as they came down the hall.
    “Well, if you turn around you can see him, all right,” the Lieutenant informed him dryly. “But as for his seeing you, I can’t say.”
    Miss Withers watched Hubert as he turned to face them. He looked even more like a startled owl than ever, now. His tie had not been tied carefully, and it failed to match his shirt … or even to harmonize. His voice showed evidence of a considerable amount of excitement.
    “May I see you alone, Inspector?”
    “Certainly.” Inspector Piper led the way to the inner door. As he held it open for Hubert Stait, his eyes sought Miss Withers’ for a second, and then dropped meaningly toward a low padded chair. “Will you wait there, Hildegarde?”
    She was vaguely annoyed, having hoped to hear the inside of this, whatever it was. But she dropped obediently into the padded chair.
    Lieutenant Keller came back into the office, and busied himself at some file cases near the window. For a few minutes Miss Withers amused herself by trying to figure out where the murderer could have stood to cast a noose over the head of a man in an open roadster on Fifth Avenue.
    In the car? That wasn’t likely. He would have had to jump out, which wasn’t easy, and then brace himself with the rope in his hands. No, that was out.
    From a window of one of the buildings? That was more likely, but though, as the Inspector had pointed out, a cowboy trained in the use of a lariat might have made the cast of the rope, yet how would a stranger in town have ingress to a front office on the Avenue, and how would he know Laurie Stait was driving past at that hour? Miss Withers knew that there was a saying that if you wait on the corner of Forty-second Street at Fifth Avenue long enough, you will meet everyone you ever knew. She had always doubted the usefulness of meeting everyone she’d ever known, and besides, there wasn’t a high degree of probability that one of the cowboys had taken up such a vigil. Much less Rose Keeley, who didn’t appear a highly patient person.
    It was from such reveries that Miss Withers was rudely jerked forth when she realized that there was a low buzzing somewhere close by. It annoyed her, and she looked over the desk top to see what it was.
    The buzzing came in starts and stops, and gradually as her ears became accustomed to it she made out that she was listening to the human voice … to Inspector Piper’s voice, dim and far away. But it did not come through the door.
    Lieutenant Keller was watching her.