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wheel:
    “Do you have two-way radio?”
    “What’s it to you?”
    “My car was stolen. I think the character who took it was driving the one in the ditch there. The Highway Patrol should be notified.”
    “Give me the details, I’ll shoot them in.”
    I gave him the license number and description of my car, and a thumbnail sketch of Curlyhead. He started feeding them into his mike. I climbed down the bank to look at the car I’d traded mine in on. It was a black Jaguar sedan, about five years old. It had slewed off the road, gouging deep tracks in the dirt, and crumpled its nose against a boulder. One of the front tires had blown out. The windshield was starred, and the finish blistered by fire. Both doors were sprung.
    I made a note of the license number, and moved up closer to look at the steering-post. The registration was missing. I got in and opened the dash compartment. It was clean.
    In the road above, another car shrieked to a halt. Two sheriff’s men got out on opposite sides and came down the bank in a double cloud of dust. They had guns in their hands, no-nonsense looks on their brown faces.
    “This your car?” the first one snapped at me.
    “No.”
    I started to tell him what had happened to mine, but he didn’t want to hear about it:
    “Out of there! Keep your hands in sight, shoulder-high.”
    I got out, feeling that all this had happened before. The first deputy held his gun on me while the second deputy shook me down. He was very thorough. He even investigated the fuzz in my pockets. I commented on this.
    “This is no joke. What’s your name?”
    The firemen had begun to gather around us. I was angry and sweating. I opened my mouth and put both feet in, all the way up to the knee.
    “I’m Captain Nemo,” I said. “I just came ashore from ahostile submarine. Curiously enough, we fuel our subs with seaweed. The hull itself is formed from highly compressed seaweed. So take me to your wisest man. There is no time to be lost.”
    “He’s a hophead,” the first deputy said. “I kind of figured the slasher was a hophead. You heard me say so, Barney.”
    “Yeah.” Barney was reading the contents of my wallet. “He’s got a driver’s license made out to somebody name of Archer, West Hollywood. And a statewide private-eye ducat, same name. But it’s probably a phony.”
    “It’s no phony.” Vaudeville had got me nowhere except into deeper trouble. “My name is Archer. I’m a private investigator, employed by Mr. Sable, the lawyer.”
    “Sable, he says.” The deputies exchanged significant looks. “Give him his wallet, Barney.”
    Barney held it out to me. I reached for it. The cuffs clinked snug on my wrist.
    “Other wrist now,” he said in a soothing voice. I was a hophead. “Let’s have the other wrist now.”
    I hesitated. But rough stuff not only wouldn’t work. It would put me in the wrong. I wanted them to be in the wrong, falling on their faces with foolishness.
    I surrendered the other wrist without a struggle. Looking down at my trapped hands, I saw the dab of blood on one of my fingers.
    “Let’s go,” the first deputy said. He dropped my wallet in the side pocket of my jacket.
    They herded me up the bank and into the back of their car. The driver of the fire truck leaned from his cab:
    “Keep a close eye on him, fellows. He’s a cool customer. He gave me a story about his car getting stolen, took me in completely.”
    “Not us,” the first deputy said. “We’re trained to spot these phonies, the way you’re trained to put out fires. Don’tlet anybody else near the Jag. Leave a guard on it, eh? I’ll send a man as soon as we can spare one.”
    “What did he do?”
    “Knifed a man.”
    “Jesus, and I thought he was a citizen.”
    The first deputy climbed into the back seat beside me. “I got to warn you anything you say can be used against you. Why did you do it?”
    “Do what?”
    “Cut Peter Culligan.”
    “I didn’t cut him.”
    “You got blood on