by Jerry eBooks
Without moving from tie edge of his desk, Martin shot the gun from his hand. “T-that’s what you t-think.”
THE FAT man stared at his shattered hand, bleated, “Paul—!”
“Paul’s dead,” Martin told him quietly. “He m-made the same mistake that you did. He forgot when you gave me a badge you also g-gave me a gun.”
He picked Hunt’s gun from the floor and motioned him back through the office. Jennifer put out a hand to stop him. “You’re going where?”
Martin looked at her surprised. “W-why to lock him up. Then I’m coming back to t-take you and Bill home.” He ruffled the other man’s hair good-naturedly. “There’s nothing the m-matter with him that a tough Polack brother-in-law can’t cure.”
Her face grew crimson. “You mean you’re asking me to marry you?”
He studied his answer, shook his head. “N-no. I’m t-telling you that you’re going to at n-nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Stan,” she said meekly.
The elder Helm was abjectly apologetic. “I should have known,” he admitted. He brightened. “And as a weeding present you can have any job in the mill that you want from general manager down.”
“Y-you s-stay out of my life,” the young sheriff told him firmly. “I’ve got a job.” He took his shield from his pocket and polished it on his coat lapel. “What’s m-more, I’m b-beginning to like it.”
COUNTRY CADAVER
Ken Lewis
Jim knew, when he took his lovely wife to the harvest dance, that the three strangers would be there, too. They weren’t in town for their health—they were there to ruin his. He was their man now—but too soon he’d be their corpse!
JIM HARRIS was breaking up the south forty for winter wheat on that late September afternoon when Billy Beam stopped by the field to tell him about the three strangers. Jim didn’t pay much attention, at first. His crusty little neighbor was the best kind of friend, despite their difference in age. But Billy had a double helping of curiosity, and when he couldn’t satisfy it logically he was apt to let his imagination run away with him.
Sure, Jim agreed, thinking more about the rich black furrow to be finished than about Billy’s gossip. Sure, city folks in a little out-of-the-way place like Valencia were scarcer than hen’s teeth at this season. But there must be some logical explanation.
“Cattle buyers?” he suggested.
Billy shook his grizzled head derisively, his black eyes bright with mystery. “Not them birds! They’re registered at the Valencia House as salesmen. But Abe Marple says they don’t try to sell nobody nothin’. Just stand around on the street corners and give ever’ body the once-over, like they was detectives huntin’ an escaped criminal. Don’t look like detectives, though.”
Jim’s blue eyes crinkled. Sweat stippled his broad freckled forehead and beaded the roots of his wavy red hair, but his voice was easy with peace and Indian Summer. “Go on, you damned old woman!” he grinned. “Probably just tourists down for the Harvest Home tonight.”
Billy snorted. “Then why’d they get here Wednesday—three days early? And why’d they bring that blind man along? He can’t dance or play games!”
Blind man? Jim Harris’s eyes jerked and the wheat-straw cigarette he was rolling fell apart in his fingers.
“Look, Billy,” he said softly, trying to sound natural through the sudden pounding in his chest. “Would one of these strangers happen to have thick hooked nose and a pockmarked face? Would his pal be short and dark, with cheeks like a bulldog?”
Billy eyed him queerly. “Thought you hadn’t been to town this week!”
Jim tried to grin. “Hank Meadows stopped by and mentioned ’em yesterday morning,” he said, too casually. “He didn’t toy to make a mystery out of it.”
Billy grunted. “If you know so much about ’em,” he said peevishly, “mebbe you know what they’re doin’ around here, too.”
Jim shrugged. But after Billy’s old Dodge had rolled on down the road, he stood there by the fence a long time, his angular face troubled and brooding. Sure, he thought wryly. He knew what Billy’s three strangers were doing. They were hunting for a tall redheaded ex-soldier, whose name they wouldn’t know, but who could tell them what had happened to a dead man. . . . His mind went back to that night during his last leave before shipping overseas two years ago.
The sunlight faded, and the warm, dreamy peace of the fields. He was alone in the farmhouse again, waiting for Martha to return from her mother’s bedside in town, wondering whether the rattle of the front door was caused by the storm outside, or whether someone was really out there, trying to get in. . . .
HE WENT to see, and found Link Stevens, Martha’s brother, huddled on the rainswept porch, clutching a blood-soaked sleeve, “You gotta help me, Jim,” Link croaked, his thin face white and drawn. “I really got something this time! Something worth five-hundred grand! Only some other guys want it, too. They followed me out here. I gave ’em the slip for a minute when I turned down the side road from the highway. But they won’t be fooled long. They’ll see my coupe outside, and come in and kill me. And I can’t drive any more—not with this arm . . .” His feverish babbling trailed off.
“Cops?” Jim had asked tightly. “I was afraid you’d get into trouble in the city. You haven’t written for six months. I had to tell Martha you’d gone in the army, to keep her from worrying about you. . . . Cops again, Link?”
Link Stevens hadn’t heard him. His eyes were bright with pain and fear. “Listen, Jim!” he said hoarsely. “Buck Mallin was killed tonight by some of his boys. They were after the key to a safe-deposit box. A box where he’d stashed half a million under a false name, hiding it from the income-tax dicks. . . . And I’ve got the key! Part of it’s yours, if you help me get away.”
Jim shook his head. “I want no part of it, Link. Not of you, or Buck Mallin’s money, or the rest of the Mallin gang. So get out—before Martha comes back and finds you here.” Link’s eyes had shifted queerly. “Look, Jim. They’ll be here any minute—Bradshaw and Potts. They’ll kill me, sure. You too, probably. Even if they leave you alone, do you want my body found here and identified? Here, where it’ll tie me up to Martha and Mom? The gang don’t know my real name. I never used it around them. Once I get away from here, there’ll be no way they can connect with Martha and Mom. But I can’t get away, unless you drive for me. You know the back roads. You can lose them.”
In the end, Jim walked frozenly beside him through the rain to the coupe parked at the road’s edge. And there Link introduced his companion—the tall, stoop-shouldered blind man hunched in the seat.
“Blackie Mallin—Buck’s brother. He gave me the key, in return for helping him get away. He knew Potts and Bradshaw would come for him next, when they couldn’t find the key on Buck. . . . They did. We had it close, back there on the highway. That’s when they gave me the slug in my arm.”
The blind man didn’t speak, nor Jim acknowledge the introduction. He just climbed in behind the wheel, with Link wedging the blind man between them, and drove off through the darkness.
They had almost reached the river half a mile south when the coupe’s right rear tire blew. Jim and Link spilled out to change it, while Blackie Mallin stood by helplessly.
The job was about finished when the blind man spoke, his voice harsh and brittle, “Car coming. I can hear it.”
That was all the warning they had. A knoll at the rear cut off the approaching headlights, till the big sedan was almost upon them. Jim and Blackie Mallin sprawled headlong in the ditch, but Link paused frantically by the fender to pull a revolver out of his coat. A gun flashed from the sedan, and blood spurted suddenly from his throat, but he managed to trigger once before he fell.
The sedan’s near front tire exploded and the car lurched drunkenly in the gravel, hopped the ditch, careened crashing into an oak beside the road, then fell back on its side and lay still.
Jim moved numbly to Link, lifted a limp wrist. He saw the blo
od had almost stopped pumping from Link’s throat. The slug through his Adam’s apple had done its work well. . . .
He heard a faint sound from the thicket to the right, turned to find the blind man gone. He let him go. If Blackie Mallin wanted to crash off through the thickets, mad with terror, that was all right with him. He had no pity for the Mallins or their kind. His concern was with Link’s corpse.
If it were found here, where it could be identified, the whole countryside would soon know the truth. Worse, Martha and Mother Stevens would know it. They’d realized that Link was wild. They hadn’t known he was a vicious criminal. They thought he was in the army, doing something for his country. If the truth came out now, they’d never be able to lift their heads again. It would probably kill Mother Stevens.
But why should the truth come out? Link was beyond help now. There was nothing Jim or anyone else could do for him. And the river was only a stone’s throw away—deep and dark, right off the bank. . . .
He had already tugged Link’s body into the coupe, pointed the car’s nose at the river, opened the throttle, jumped back, and let it plummet into twelve feet of water, before he remembered the key Link had mentioned—the key to Buck Mallin’s hidden half-million. That would be down there somewhere, still in Link’s pocket.
Well, that was okay by him—he didn’t want it. He was glad to be rid of the whole stinking mess.
Slogging back to the farm on foot, he paused to burn a match in the window of the wrecked sedan. Two men were pinioned behind its telescoped dashboard—the pockmarked man and his short dark companion. Their eyes bulged glassily, and it was impossible to tell if they were still breathing. Blood smeared the windshield where their heads had struck earlier.
He left them that way. They’d brought this on themselves. They’d killed at least one man tonight—two, if Link’s story were true. If they, too, were now dead, it was only justice. . . .
BUT they hadn’t been dead. Somehow, they’d managed to wriggle free, after he left them; to stagger to the highway and get away. And now they were back again, probing the secret of Link Stevens’ disappearance, hunting the key to half a million dollars, searching for the face that had peered in at them—framed by matchglow—on that night of wind and rain two years ago. . . .
His face was stony as he unhitched the team from the plow and headed for the barn. Martha had supper on the table when he finally reached the kitchen.
“You’ll have to hurry, darling,” she told him lightly. “There’s hot water in the tank, and I’ve laid out your things.”
She was a quick, lithe girl with bright, warm overtones in her soft brown hair and eyes, and his heart quickened as always at her nearness. But with her words, his eyes darkened as a new thought occurred to him. Bradshaw and Potts—and blind Blackie Mallin, who had evidently joined forces with them in an effort to recover the key—would undoubtedly be at the festival tonight. They’d have learned that the Harvest Home was the one event of the year attended by everyone in the community. And most of the boys were back from service now—they could be pretty certain that their quarry would be among the crowd.
Martha was studying him strangely. “What’s wrong, Jim? Don’t you want to go to the dance?”
“Sure, honey. Sure we’ll go to the dance!”
Why try to escape the inevitable? If Bradshaw and Potts didn’t find him tonight, they’d still be around tomorrow. And the next day, and the next. He couldn’t refuse to go to town forever. . . .
But after he’d bathed and dressed, he slipped the small flat .32 from his dresser drawer into the inside coat pocket of his new blue serge. Somehow, when he remembered the roar of high-calibre slugs on that night two years before, the little gun seemed pitifully inadequate.
They reached the school house shortly after dark. A temporary outdoor dance platform had been set up on the lawn, and barrels of beer and cider were interspersed with sandwiches, cakes and pies on the long tables lining the building wall. Cars almost filled the parking lot to the right, and colored bulbs vied weakly with the white wash of the harvest moon overhead.
Jim let his sedan join the others, stepped around to open the door for Martha.
The man with the thick hooked nose and the pockmarked face lounged against a post at the parking lot exit and eyed the passers-by almost lazily. He wore a white silk shirt and new levis, and held a sack of peanuts in one hand. Every time he popped a nut in his mouth, a gold tooth gleamed.
The short dark man with the bulldog jowls stood ten feet beyond, balancing a glass of beer in his hand. His eyes were flat and blank in his square blunt face, but his lips seemed to quirk with faint derision.
Jim Harris saw them there, looking bored and half asleep in the bad light, and he thought of the deceptive sloth of vultures. For a moment he was tempted to confront them now, his voice hard with challenge. “You—Bradshaw, Potts. Looking for me?”
But that would mean explaining about Link to Martha; and they’d probably jump him alone, if he gave them the chance. He set his face stiffly toward the dance floor beyond, and ushered Martha through the gate.
He felt their half-hooded eyes brush over him, leisurely at first, then with sharper scrutiny, and he was certain that he had been recognized. He didn’t see Blackie Mallin around, but the blind man could hardly help to identify him anyway. He’d probably been left behind for tonight.
Martha swung into his arms at the platform’s edge, vibrant with the mood of festival. Potts and Bradshaw meant nothing to her. Her soft hair brushed his cheek and her warm eyes glowed and he knew that he had never loved her more. He pressed her to him almost fiercely, as though to hold her safe from the menace that seemed to surround them.
They began to move and turn in rhythm with the music, and through a break in the crowd he caught another glimpse of Bradshaw and Potts. They still stood by the gate, scanning the faces of those who entered. They hadn’t moved or spoken to each other, after he passed.
Suddenly he found himself dancing as he’d never danced before—almost wildly. So he hadn’t been recognized, after all! A man looks different in a uniform—And he’d been in uniform that night! They could have caught only the briefest glimpse of his face, as their headlights bore down on him through the rain!
At intermission, he found an excuse to leave Martha chatting at one of the tables, while he slipped out to the car to rid himself of the weight of the gun in his pocket. It didn’t belong there now—it was like a spectre at the feast.
Bradshaw and Potts had given up their vigil. They were over at the tables, eating.
He had shoved the gun into the sedan’s glove compartment, and was closing the car door again when Billy Beam stepped out of the shadows and stood beside him.
“Expectin’ trobule, Jim?” Billy asked gravely.
Jim shook his head. “There’s no such word as trouble in my book, oldtimer,” he grinned.
Billy eyed him doubtfully. “Thought mebbe you was worried about them three strangers.”
Jim’s throat tightened. Had Billy seen him putting the gun away? “Why should I be?” he asked.
Billy shook his head. “Well, you knew all about ’em, even before I told you. You said Hank Meadows dropped by and mentioned ’em yesterday. But Hank’s been flat on his back with flu all week. I found that out tonight. You better check your facts, before you tell me a story like that again, Jim Harris!” He glided away toward the colored lights, obviously miffed because Jim had lied to him.
Jim followed slowly. At the edge of the lot, another figure slipped from the shadows ahead and hurried toward the tables. A tall, stoopshouldered figure with a white cane.
Blackie Mallin! Jim’s mouth twitched. He knew now why Bradshaw and Potts had brought the blind man along. Even Blackie hadn’t known Jim’s name—Link hadn’t mentioned it in the car that night. But Blackie had heard Jim’s voice. And clothes, one’s outward appearance, are of no consequence to a blind man. He makes his identifications by sound!
Had Blackie overh
eard him talking to Billy Beam and recognized his voice? Even heard Billy call him by name? Was he scurrying off now to inform Bradshaw and Potts? Jim’s step was heavy again as he rejoined Martha.
And there was a strange tightness in his chest, a lump of tense uncertainty, by the time the dance broke up and they returned to the car sometime past midnight. Bradshaw, Potts and Blackie had disappeared. What were they waiting for?
HE LEARNED the answer to that, soon after he turned the sedan from the highway onto the side road south. His headlights picked up Billy Beam’s old Dodge centering the roadway, Billy himself crouching above a crumpled form at the edge of the ditch.
The crumpled form was all that remained of Blackie Mallin. Jim knew it as soon as he saw the white cane in the gravel. The blind man’s skull had been crushed like a walnut shell, and tire tracks crossing his legs showed where the death car’s other wheels had passed over him.
“Deader’n a doornail,” Billy grunted, looking up to eye Jim obscurely. “Hit-run accident, I reckon. He musta been walkin’ along the road when it happened. You go on and phone the sheriff. I’ll stay here with the body.”
Jim nodded numbly and crawled back in the sedan. Mallin’s death had been no accident. The blind man had identified him to Potts and Bradshaw. After that his usefulness to them was over. He’d been killed because he knew too much.
The back of Jim’s neck was cold with sweat. Now it was just a matter of time till Bradshaw and Potts closed in on him. Not much time, either.
He saw the strange roadster half hidden behind the toolshed as soon as he swung the sedan into his own drive. He yelled for Martha to duck, pawed frantically for the gun in the glove compartment as he slammed on the brakes.
But already it was too late. The pockfaced man and his short dark companion stepped from the darkness on each side of the running board. Pockface thrust a heavy automatic through the window an inch from Martha’s ear, His gold tooth gleamed in a frozen grin. “Get the keys, Pottsy. I’ll see what our pal has hidden behind the dash.” He had a soft lazy voice.