"Roger Wm. Maddox" was so momentarily distracted, he initially failed to hear the cabbie's reply.
"What?!"
"$52.95, sir. That's how much the fare is."
"Oh! Sorry!"
Roger passed a fifty-dollar bill through the slot of the plexiglass partition, followed by a five dollar bill.
"Keep the change."
"Thank you, sir!"
Whereupon, both men debarked from the taxi. As the cabbie stooped to unlock the trunk, Roger considered a multitude of ways in which to broach the subject. Finally, he decided to be direct. So, he leaned down and whispered:
"Doc Kraepelin told me you were a private detective."
"I am. This just seemed the most discrete way to pick you up at the station."
"Discrete? If I were headed for opening night at the Radio City Christmas Show, maybe. But, right now, it must be close to eighty degrees in the shade!"
Raymond Venn--thirtyish, with brown eyes and matching wavy hair--looked up at his client and half-smiled.
"I'll explain everything inside. Right now, though..."
He never finished that thought. Instead, he looked at back at the trunk with a deep frown. Then, in a blur of motion that left "Roger" dizzy from eyestrain, he threw open the trunk; grabbed the towbar of the suitcase; and started twirling over and around his head, in clockwise circle, with just his right arm!
Yet, that was not the climax of this weird spectacle. What really astonished "Roger" was the faint yelling that seemed to come from high in the air, as something flew upward from the suitcase!
"Ed! Grab her!!"
"Uh-uh-uh-uh!"
Thirty seconds later, a trained fish crow alighted on top of the taxi cab, with something clasped firmly in its beak. Raymond Venn withdrew that something, and showed it to his client. The latter gasping at seeing that "it" was really a "she."
"Doc wasn't kidding," said the mysterious private detective: "You really _are_ in trouble. This is Vorexia Jones; one of the Sitmobtia's leading hit people."
tbc
Giantess World
