As a private eye I get a lot of screwball
cases, but nothing to match my own; my wife and
kid trying to kill me—and neither aware of it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1956
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's funny how a silly little habit can save your life.
I got into the car that morning and was thinking of nothing inparticular—except maybe the cases I hoped to be getting downtown in myone man private dick office. We live at the top of the city's highesthill, my wife and our son Sam, who's seventeen, and myself. At leastit's the highest hill in the residential district and the highest oneI know of. So out of habit I patted the brakes to test them as the carbegan to roll down the slight incline of the driveway.
The brakes didn't hold.
Had I started down Jackson Hill, down the long half mile slope whichlevels off at the busy intersection of MacArthur and Houston Avenues,I'd have streaked through the intersection out of control. I don't knowwhat the odds for survival are in such a circumstance, but I'd hate tohave to test them.
As it was, I shook my head in surprise and pulled the handbrake,bringing the Olds to a stop at the foot of the driveway. I climbed outand bent down to take a look at the right front wheel. In a few secondsI knew what the trouble was. Brake fluid. There wasn't any. But thatdidn't make sense because I'd had the car—brakes included—overhauledonly last week.
Which meant someone had drained the brake fluid from the Olds.
I checked the other front wheel and it was the same. No brake fluid.I sat there in the car for a few minutes smoking a cigarette before Iwent into the house to call the local service station and have them towthe Olds in.
It was the third time in less than a month that someone had tried tokill me.
That happens, of course, to private detectives. It isn't only in themovies and the two-bit mystery thrillers that it happens. It happens inreal life, too. I know because I've been in the business twenty years.Go downtown some time and look me up; Frank Foley's the name and you'llfind me in the Ditmas Building on Pearl Street. Sure it happens toprivate eyes in real life. They're on a hot case and someone wants themoff and because it's known bribes won't do any good, violence, mayhemand murder are tried.
But that didn't fit the situation in this case. There had been threetries on my life. The jets of our gas stove turned on while I wasnapping over a cup of coffee late of a cold night in the kitchen, withdoor and windows closed. The pulley of our extension ladder failingto hold while I was up painting the eaves of the house. And now thedrained brake fluid.
I was on no important case. All of my work at the moment was routine.They say I am getting old, but don't you believe it. I've got some goodcases ahead of me yet. They say I was able to get away with my shadytricks when I was younger but that I'm slipping and can't get awaywith them now. Don't you believe it. In my business you've always gotto get away with them. And when Frank Foley is all washed up, FrankFoley will be the first one to know it.
The situation in this case was worse. The situation in this case wasstrictly a family affair. All the attempts at my life had been made athome, either by my wife Sue or our boy Sam. Sounds nuts, because we'rea pretty happy family usually. But there it was. Either Sue or Samcould have snafu'd the pulley on the extension ladder and either one ofthem could have turned on the gas j