by Jerry eBooks
“Censoring everything that hits the presses,” Chris muttered, real excitement stirring inside him. “Ten to one it’s the Greeley story. They’re afraid something’ll break. Braddock’s taking no chances we run anything the public might see. And the Ledger’s the only sheet here—”
Travers yelled crisply: “Carter!
Telephone—”
Chris grabbed copy paper, pencil and hurried across the room. Scooping the receiver against his ear, he heard Johnny Brady’s voice rattling excitedly. It was difficult to follow the snapping words that peppered his brain, but he managed to nod, and say huskily, “Okay—check,” and hung up with a trembling hand.
“Hurry that stuff, Carter,” Travers scowled. “The presses roll soon.”
Fumbling with a stubby briar, Chris bobbed his head. “Just a minute, chief.” He watched a match spurt scarlet, a tiny living beacon. Confidence oozed through his thin bones, and he sat down, pecking at the keys with increasing rapidity.
HIS face flushed as he handed Travers the copy. The city editor scanned it, snarled: “What the hell kind of copy is this? You plastered?” His small, bright eyes raked Chris Carter’s face. Over his shoulder Vane Qualey read the poultry copy, and grinned. Travers flung back the sheets.
“Go over it—stick to your own stuff. You’re not doing fashion news.”
Cheeks afire, Chris shambled back to his desk, conscious of Vane Qualey’s thin, derisive laughter. He rewrote three pages, stood up slowly, face stiff as cardboard, blood roaring thickly in his ears. Travers glared with exasperation as Chris bent down.
“Those leghorn prizes. Want I should list ’em singly—or group ’em?”
Travers exploded. “How the hell do I know?”
Under his booming snarl, knifing acutely, came Qualey’s quick jeering ridicule. When he brought back the pages later, Travers scowled, without looking at them, “Send ’em up the chute. Heaven help you if there’s anything wrong!” and went back to the mounded copy before him.
The air tube hissed as the carrier-enclosed sheets shot up to the composing room. Minutes passed, long, terrifying minutes. Chris sat at his desk, holding to the typewriter carriage until his knuckles showed white through the skin. The distant rumble of presses shook the building foundations, rousing him. He walked to the water cooler.
“They’re rolling now, Qualey,” Travers snapped, his voice edged with tension. “Too late to do anything now. The polls’ll be open by the time they hit the streets. Tell Braddock he’s set for another three years.”
Chris Carter’s hand, lifting the paper cups, trembled and water trickled back onto his wrinkled cuff. Outside, exhaust blared from delivery trucks as the cars wheeled out across the dawn-gray spokes of the sleeping metropolis with the still-damp edition.
A copy boy ran in, tossed folded copies on the city desk. Vane Qualey stood up, cocking his jaunty felt hat over his big ears. Suddenly he stiffened, staring at the outspread paper.
Travers leaped to his feet, lips flaying apart, hands spread flat on the front page, glaring at the page-one story under glaring black streamers. “Carter! Carter!” he choked thickly. “You—you slipped this story by me—sent it up instead of that chicken filler!”
Chris Carter released the typewriter. He stood up, strangely poised, thin shoulders squared.
“Yes. That was Johnny Brady who called me before. He knew Thiele and Braddock had the Ledger sewed up tight. Braddock paid you well to kill any possible break on the Greeley story.”
Travers’ breath whistled audibly. He paled. Vane Qualey’s thin body tensed, his eyes grew very bright and hard.
“Johnny Brady got Lew Jerrel to sing. Jerrel was Braddock’s contact man. He told where the records were hidden. But the story was useless, unless the voters got it in time. Johnny thought of me—my chicken filler. Harmless old Carter—but I managed to burn you up, to annoy you with the first copy I wrote, and then rapped out Johnny Brady’s real story-the Greeley yarn, with a note to the composing room to front page it! So, old Carter slipped the story past you, Travers! I’m still a newspaperman, and proud of it! Are you, Travers?”
A gun appeared in Vane Qualey’s small gloved hand, spouting flame as it roared. A wave of sound engulfed Chris Carter. He spun, an icy finger tracing his left side, numbing it.
The city-room doors flailed inward, emitting a stream of blue-uniformed figures. Chris saw Johnny Brady’s anxious eyes, and crumpling, smiled into a great, blinding glare . . .
Johnny grinned. “You’re okay, Chris. The slug nicked your ribs. We got Qualey, and warrants’ve been issued for Thiele and his whole crowd.”
Heedless of gnawing pain, Chris Carter breathed deeply, savoring of the wine of content. His feet tingled, having trod the exciting trail.
Brady chuckled. “A second Stanley. You’ve got a feature page-one yarn to finish.”
Chris swallowed, mumbling gruffly through hot tightness in his throat: “Well, what’re we waiting for? Hey, copy . . .!”
WELCOME FOR KILLERS
John P. Rees
When the men who killed his friend returned for the loot, old Nap Orr prepared a . . .
OLD NAP ORR believed that a man should stand on his own two feet. That’s why, when torrential spring rains collapsed his storm cellar, he did not wish the neighbors to come, but set to work immediately to repair it. And when he saw that the police weren’t going to catch the Burgham bank robbers and murderers of the cashier, George Ames, he decided to do something about it himself. He had been mighty fond of George Ames.
Tonight he sat alone in his farm kitchen reading the weekly. His mongrel dog, Spot, tied to a table leg, growled, warning him that some one was outside. Just as old Nap got up from his chair, two men, one dark and pudgy, the other sallow and slender, stalked in the open door. Each had an automatic pistol in his right hand. The pudgy one covered Nap.
“Case the joint, Icy,” he said.
“Oke, Rollo,” Icy said from the side of his mouth a moment later, returning the flashlight to his topcoat pocket.
Rollo shoved the cold muzzle of his pistol against Nap’s temple. “All right, grandpa,” he sneered, “where’s that suitcase we left in your haystack down along the road? It ain’t been turned in and the hay’s gone, so we know you got it. Come clean—damned quick—or else!”
The hand that held the gun was cool, steady. But Nap knew he was safe until they had that suitcase containing the loot, guns, masks and suits used in the Burgham job. Afterward—well, he had to risk that.
He grinned up at them. “Sure I got it. Found it when I sold the hay, and moved it because the buyer was goin’ to move the hay. Soon as I saw what was in it I knew its owner would come for it sometime, an’ I’d better have it for him. You fellers don’t think—”
“We ain’t thinkin’ nothin’, grandpa,” Icy broke in. “We want that suitcase an’ everything that was in it when we left it, see.”
“Sure I’ll get it, fellers. Just want to be sure I’m givin’ it to the right owners, that’s all.”
Rollo lighted a cigarette. “Gonna be tough about it, huh? Well, maybe this will change your mind.”
Nap winced as the burning end of the cigarette touched his cheek.
“Next time I’ll stick it in your eye, grandpa. Now where’s that suitcase? No more stallin’ or you get the works.”
One more murder wouldn’t mean a thing to these killers. They’d killed George, and you couldn’t do anything more to them for two murders than for one. Professionals—the way they’d done things. Entering the bank exactly at closing time, masking as soon as inside so that no one but George, who had come up to lock the front door, had seen their faces; wearing conspicuous blue and white pencil-stripe suits and light gray hats.
Then, enroute away from the robbery, they’d changed clothes and hats, hid the suitcase with the loot, guns, masks, pencil-stripe suits and light gray hats in Nap’s alfalfa stock along the road, figuring when the chase had died down to return some night and g
et it. Everything was well-planned and expert.
Being city fellows, they wouldn’t know farmers get rid of their old hay before grass comes. Pretty slick, too, their story when the Highway Patrol caught them—readily admitting the car was the ’37 Ford used by the robbers, but swearing that the robbers, having a flat tire, had forced them to give up their car, a ’36 Ford, and when picked up were on their way to the nearest town to notify the law.
THE flat tire and the fact that neither was wearing a blue and white pencil-stripe suit seemed to substantiate their story. Their alibi—that they were returning from California to their homes in Indiana, and that one of them did own a ’36 Ford which was not at home, checked. And while both had police records, neither was listed as wanted; so the sheriff could do nothing but release them after forty-eight hours.
“It ain’t in the house,” Nap said, rising. “I buried it in the peach orchard. I’ll get my lantern an’ spade.”
“No lantern,” the pudgy Rollo snapped. “Icy’s got a flashlight. Go with him, Icy. I’ll watch the rear.”
Nap’s old heart skipped a few beats. His plan was doomed unless both accompanied him. But to argue would be fatal. So he said, as casually as possible: “You’re right, mister—one of you’d better watch the rear.”
Rollo’s lips twisted into a contemptuous snarl. “Don’t want us both with you, huh? Well, just for that I’ll go, too.”
With one on each side of him, and Icy’s flashlight picking out the path, they started for the peach orchard.
Nap’s first thought when he found the suitcase had been to turn it over to the sheriff. But the men, he realized, would deny ownership, and smart as they were there would be no fingerprints on anything because both had worn gloves during the robbery. Even if the sheriff planted a watch over the suitcase, the men would come for it some night, and in the darkness might get away, might even kill some one else, and then George Ames’ murderers would never be caught.
No, it had to be evidence that would stand up in court, something strong enough to offset the smart lawyers professional criminals got to defend them, something indisputably linking these men with that suitcase—like them coming back for it, then being trapped with the suitcase in their possession.
“Kinda used your head takin’ care of this stuff for us, grandpa,” Icy said. “We won’t forget you, either, will we, Rollo?”
“I’ll say we won’t,” the other shot back.
NAP could vision their twisted mouths giving the lie to these soft words. They planned to kill him, once they had that suitcase; then no one ever would know anything.
“That’ll be mighty fine of you fellers,” Nap replied. “Anytime you want to hide somethin’ just bring it out here. I’ll ask no questions, an’ what I know don’t go no farther.”
“You’ve got sense—oodles of sense, grandpa. Ain’t he, Rollo?”
“You tell ’em, Icy.”
“How much farther?” Rollo asked grimly.
“Just about there. Down that third row of trees.”
“Flash your light over there, Icy, an’ see if ever’thing’s oke.”
“Whose car’s that?” Icy demanded, and Nap felt Rollo’s gun against his back.
Nap forced a thin laugh. “My old model T. Been sittin’ there ever since I got through haulin’ straw.”
“Look it over, Icy.”
“Oke,” Icy declared a moment later, rejoining them.
“What’s that stuff under these trees?” Rollo growled.
“Pshaw, don’t you fellers know straw. That’s ‘round all my peach trees. Keeps ’em from bloomin’ too early. I’ll leave it there for a month yet.”
“For Pete’s sake, how much farther?” Rollo snarled from a mouth corner.
“Right over there,” Nap said, stopping abruptly. “I’ll shed this jacket, fellers. Quite a little diggin’ to do. Buried it good an’ deep.”
Nap set his spade down, removed his denim jacket, and leaning over to accomplish this natural act, he rose up slowly, but with every muscle in his old body taut as steel. His large hands, hard as horns from years of farm work, spread spatulate now as each described a quick backward arc; then drove forward like two powerful pistons, each hand catching a man in the small of his back with such impact as to hurl him forward upon the point where the layer of straw reached up in a small cone.
The split-lath support holding the straw gave away. Both men plunged headlong into the old well whose bottom was filled with discarded parts of farm implements calculated to bruise, stun or break any human body hurtling down that thirty-foot drop.
“It come to me while I was diggin’ my storm cellar,” Nap told reporters, “that if I’d widen the top of that old well so the two of them could start down at the same time, it would be just the thing. They wanted that suitcase so bad, an’ I just put ’em down there where it was.”
A SUCKER FOR BULLETS
James A. Kirch
Cort Ramsey was just a Wall Street order clerk, but he sure knew his trigger tape. Yet when the customer’s man bought himself a load of death, Cort found he’d been added to the deal—with a corpse as a dividend.
THE DJ tape was beginning to step it up, moving across the top of the board, and the prices were cracking, fast. I had a stick full of GTC orders on my desk, and I tried to keep my eyes on them, making sure the boys on the floor didn’t slip up on me. The lights on my board flashed like a neon sign.
Dickson wanted to dump 300 Mackson at the market, Harwarth was trying to get out from under on his steel position, and some two-bit customer was on my wire yelling about going short.
“I got an order in Sell 100 VX short since 18,” he was shouting, “and the stock’s down to 14 ‘A now. What the hell’s wrong with you guys?”
I told him to keep his pants on and switched to the floor phone. Gar son was crackling reports.
“Stow it,” I told him. “Shoot ’em later. Get these. Sell—200 GDX, 100 RFP, 500 Q. Dump ’em. Buy—100 XLM, 50 TUT. ‘S’all.”
Garson said, “Hold it, keed,” and I sat there waiting for him, watching the figures scoot across the tape. The break was a bad one.
The outside wire on my desk rang and a woman’s voice half-lisped at me. “Is the market still all right?” That was a honey.
“It ain’t even bounced yet, sister,” I told her. “They’re belting it.” I hung up and swung back to the floor phone. Garson was on again.
“Am I glad I’m broke,” he rattled. “Listen, keed, got your 2,000 SAC at 1517. What’s the name?”
I said, “Call ya back,” and kneed White’s phone off the hook. No dice. I said, aloud, “The lout’s drunk again,” and picked up the house wire, flashing the girl. “White, honey,” I told her. “Doublequick.”
“No answer,” she snapped back. “I been ringing the guy for ten minutes for Mr. Rackman. And is Rackman sore.”
I said, “Lemme know, honey,” cradling the phone, and swung around to watch the tape. She steadied a minute, with maybe some short-covering coming in, and then they started sniping at the utilities. For the next hour I was busy, plus.
I HAD a string of bail-out orders from one of our boys who was up to his ears, and then some more short covering from the guys who decided it was kissing bottom. The reaction didn’t come until one o’clock, and then it was more of a slow-up than anything else. It was slow enough, though, for me to let Pete warm my stool while I went out for coffee and.
Garson came on again from the floor just before I left, and this time his voice was edged. “Come on, keed,” he said. “Slip me the name on that SAC. The stuff’s hot.”
I kneed White’s phone off the hook again, with no luck.
“Christopher Columbus,” I told Garson. “And lemme alone, buddy. I’m off duty.” I tossed the phone to Pete and slid off the stool, beating it for the cafeteria across the street.
The way I figured it, it was White’s headache, not mine. He was supposed to give me the account’s name every time he shot an orde
r through; the idea being to keep customers’ men from changing their mind and slinging a bad position to some sucker. But he mostly didn’t do it. He had two or three fat accounts, one of ’em big enough to pay my salary for five years without feeling it, and when a guy brings in commissions like that he writes his own ticket. At least, at G. L. Harwarth & Co. he does.
I took it easy at lunch, wondering where all the damn fools who expected to beat the market got their dough, and especially why a smart richbucks like Frank Rackman let drunken Bill White handle his account. I was willing to lay six-two-and-even that Rackman was the guy White had got into SAC.
SAC, in case you’ve forgotten the tape symbol, meant Service Aircraft Corp., a new plane manufacturing outfit that had sunk a million bucks of stockholders’ money experimenting with a new type dive bomber. It was a dynamite stock proposition—if the test flights went off okay, the stock would skyrocket; if they flopped, the stockholders had bought in a dead horse. Unless you had inside dope, it was a good thing to stay clean of, and from what I heard, nobody had inside dope. They had plenty of hopes, though—and hopes are what they run brokerage firms on.
On the way back I cut through the side entrance to take a look in White’s office. He had a neat setup, that boy did. A door of his own to the main hall, with no name on it, and then an entrance from his office into the board room. His story was that his customers could duck in and put that way, without loss of time. My idea was White could duck out for a Scotch when he felt like it, without tripping over partners.
Which is what I figured he was doing now. The office was empty.
I was beginning to get worried. The SEC is pretty tough about putting orders through and then picking up the names later on, especially on a gamble issue. The way I figured, if an investigation came through on Service Aircraft before I got the customer’s name from White, there’d be hell to pay.
That’s how I figured. But I figured wrong.
There already was hell to pay. And nobody to foot the bill. Nobody, that is, but Cort Ramsey. And that happens to be me.