Donald Hamilton - The Steel Mirror

THE

STEEL MIRROR

He came back from the railway station with his tickets through the hot late afternoon sunshine; and at the door of the Ford garage he had to step aside for a fawn-colored Mercury convertible just driving in. He caught a glimpse of the face of the girl behind the wheel, rather shght and fragile beneath a hat that turned back from her forehead in a ruffled halo of pale straw. The hat had a veil that covered but did not conceal her face, and a large stiff black bow at the rear. The car had Illinois license plates, a Chicago sticker, and smelled strongly of boiling alcohol. It had, apparently, been driven hard; and something about the conjunction of the small face, the delicate veiled hat, and the overheated car fifty miles away from home, seemed incongruous to John Emmett; and, inside the garage, he walked very slowly toward the office door, waiting for the girl to get out so that he could get a full look at her.

"Please," he heard her say to the mechanic who came up. "It keeps boiling."

The mechanic raised the hood. "You've still got your antifreeze, haven't you, Miss?"

She said, "Oh, is that it? Can you fix it?"

"Just drive it over the pit," the mechanic said. "Ill clean it out for you."

The car jerked forward, backed, went forward again; the mechanic beckoning, waving, finally halting it with his hand.

"Better let me do it, Miss," he said, coming forward.

The girl laughed uncertainly. "1 guess you'd better. I can't seem to make it fit."

Then she got out and brushed at the rear of her pale gabardine suit; and stood watching the mechanic put the car into place with two expert movements; the girl standing there, slender and rather small in the dusk of the grimy garage, in the fragile hat and the expensive hght suit. She was wearing white gloves and carrying a large rectangular black purse on a strap over her arm. The stockings on her fine legs were obviously nylon, and she was wearing dark pumps with moderately high heels.

All that cost and careful preparation, John Enunett thought, frowning, as for a cocktail party; standing a Httle stiff and cramped, a little crushed in the rear, with perspiration on her forehead and upper Hp, beside an overheated car in a dirty garage in Jepson, Illinois. It was really none of his business, and he started to turn away.

"Please," the girl asked the mechanic, "Have you any road-maps?"

"See the man in the oflBce, Miss."

Emmett held the door open for her as she came up, and followed her into the office.

"I'd hke one of IlHnois and one of Iowa," she said, "and if you've got a big one that shows...."

Emmett grinned at her. "The guy over there," he said.

She flushed a Httle, seeing the camera, Hke a badge proclaiming him a tourist, slung over his shoulder. "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought..."

The man in the comer pushed a map across the counter. "All we've got is IlHnois," he said.

"Oh," she said, "well..."

"Try the Standard station up the street."

Emmett had gone behind the counter where his suitcases stood, with his fishing-rod case, between the shelves of automobile accessories. He hesitated a moment and raised his head.

"I've got some in my car," he said.

The girl turned, her gloved hand on the map on the counter. "Thank you," she said politely, "thank you, but I can...."

"I won't need them," he said, and grinned wryly. "It's not really my car any more. It kind of disintegrated about ten miles east of here. I just sold what was left of it." As the girl looked at him he was suddenly glad that he had changed, in preparation for catching the eight o'clock train, from the dirty slacks and sports shirt in which he had been driving. He could see himself in the spotted plate-glass windows, looking not particularly young or handsome or athletic, or even, he thought, particularly inteUigent, but quite respectable. "I've got the whole works," he said. "Clear to the coast. You're welcome to them. They're no good to me without a car."

"It's very nice of you," she said. "If you're sure..."

He shrugged his shoulders. As they walked back into the garage he asked, "How far are you going?"

"Well," she said, "not quite as far as the coast."

He asked, smiling, "You wouldn't like a passenger?"

She laughed, glancing at him, and said, "I don't think so. I'm sorry."

He opened the door of the ancient Ford with the D.C. plates that had been hauled away into the rear of the garage, and took the maps from the glove compartment.

"Thank you very much," the girl said, receiving them. "I'm sorry about your car."

He knew that she was really apologizing for the fact that she could not quite see her way clear to inviting a strange young man to ride with her, but he kicked the front tire of the Ford ruefully.

"And I just put new rubber on the thing," he said. "Four new tires."

"Can't tibey fix it?"

"Oh, yes," he said bitterly. "For a couple of hundred theyll put in a new motor which might get here three weeks from now, overhaul the transmission and rear end, and for another fifty-something, they'U beat the dents out of the fenders and throw in a paint job and simonize. By the time they got through I'd have to grab a plane to get to Bakersfield in time." He grimaced. "I was going to spend a month seeing the country between jobs, but I guess I'll just have to try a dude ranch I know, instead."

As he talked, he found himself trying to introduce himself and at the same time make the girl feel a little sorry for the poor man whose vacation plans had broken down. Yet he was aware that she could not help him: he could hardly expect her to chauFeur him through the Rocky Mountains, and he was quite able to pay the train fare to wherever he wanted to go. So that, in the last analysis, he was not really talking about transportation at all, but about the two of them and the fact that he was curious about her and wanted to find out what

brought her, dressed as she was, into this Httle town looking for road maps of Iowa and points west. He was, in other words, quite simply trying to pick her up. The reahzation startled him.

"Well," he said shortly, "I think you'll find all you need there. I'd better get my gear over to the railway station before somebody walks off with it."

He heard her heels click dully on the greasy floor behind him as he returned toward the oBce. At the door, her voice stopped him.

"Please," she said.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. ''Yes?"

"Is there any clean place in town to eat?"

"I really wouldn't know," he said, and her face contracted a little at his brusqueness. Suddenly he understood that she was asking him to ask her to eat with him so that they could talk this matter over further; it was still not quite closed. She was actually considering it. He found himself a little startled. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've never been here before. Suppose I ask."

"If you would."

He came back to the oflBce door after a moment, shoving the camera case back with his elbow.

"He says the truck drivers eat at the Ehte, and the flossy place is called Parsons'." He did not step across the sill, making his report through the open door, so that she would not think he was assuming he had permission to accompany her.

"Well," she said uncertainly, "what would you?"

"If youre going alone," he said carefully, "I'd suggest Parsons'; but if you don't mind my company, the EUte probably has better food cheaper."