by Jerry eBooks
“Pull in on the wrong side here, honey,” said Jimmy. “I may be inside a few minutes, so if anything goes wrong just scream like the dickens.”
“What could go wrong here?” the girl asked, braking the car to a halt in a small shower of gravel.
“Wolves!” said Jimmy ominously. “It’s wooded country.”
“What’s wrong with wolves?” the girl countered.
He laughed and opened the door, turned back to blow a kiss at her as he stepped to the driveway. So while he had been subconsciously aware that another car had turned at the far end of the lane between the cabins and was coming back toward them, he missed its approach on the other side of the driveway.
The lights snapped on as he turned to walk around the front of the convertible, caught him full face. There was the sudden roar of a powerful motor racing, then the other car was swerving directly toward him. It was less than thirty feet away and picking up speed.
Jimmy gave vent to a yell. He could thank his wartime experience then for saving his life. Instinctively he dropped, as if under a dive bombing attack, and rolled under the convertible for cover.
One of the wheels of the other car tore his coat, so close did it come, and he could feel the wind of it and smell the aroma of gasoline. The convertible rocked on its springs as a bumper rasped against its right rear mudguard.
Then it was gone. Jimmy lay there on the dirt under Dawn’s car, and swore to himself softly.
After a while—it was probably a matter of seconds, although it seemed hours—he heard another voice swearing, almost in time to his own. He turned his head in his confined quarters and, made out the silhouette of Dawn’s ash-blond head down against the road peering at him.
“Hello,” he said. “So you do care!”
“Jimmy! Oh, I thought you were dead!”
“You were not alone,” said Jimmy. “Help me out of here. I’m weak as a puppy.”
WHEN he finally got to his feet, he was still trembling. Dawn put her arms around him as he sat on the running board and held him close.
“Do I have to go through this every time to get this?” he asked as her lips caressed his grimy face.
She laughed, and the sound brought him out of it.
“Did you get a glimpse of the low-down character who was driving that jaloppy?” he asked.
“No,” was her reply. “How could I? All of a sudden the headlights came on, and then the bumper hit my rear mudguard. I didn’t even get a chance to read the license plate. Oh, Jimmy, I’m a rotten Watson!”
“A fit match to my Holmes,” he replied. He stood up then, after disengaging himself, took a tentative step. “No bones broken.”
He looked down the alley from which the car had come. It was quite broad for a street of that sort, possibly to allow plenty of room for parked cars.
“Okay, honey,” he said, after a moment. “Let’s get it over with. It may not be pretty, but after this I’m keeping you with me.”
“Try and shake me now,” said Dawn. They walked around the car to the door of the main building. Without stopping to knock, Jimmy tried the door. It was unlocked, so he flung it open and walked in, the girl at his heels.
A seamed, skinny, sunburned man in a shiny black alpaca jacket was bent over an old roll-top desk. He started as he heard the new arrivals, quickly slammed the top of the desk down and rose to meet them.
“Don’t you believe in knocking?” he snapped, in a disagreeable nasal voice. He surveyed Jimmy’s begrimmed face and torn clothing, cast a bloodshot eye at Dawn. He was wearing gold-rimmed bifocal glasses. “Besides,” he added, “I ain’t got no room tonight. All full up.”
“Don’t you believe in keeping track of what happens in this camp of yours?” asked Jimmy, his voice ominously low in pitch. “There was enough noise out there just now to wake you out of an alcoholic stupor.”
“Don’t drink,” said the man. He grinned and the grin was not pleasant. “Besides, it don’t pay to pay too much heed to what goes on in a place like this. What’s it to you, bub?”
“Listen to me, you eighth-rate racketeer,” said Jimmy, stepping close to him. “I was almost run down out there. Suppose you tell me who was here last?”
“Suppose I don’t?” said the man. “Besides, in a place like this, it’s kinda hard to remember.”
“I’ll bet, Brother Phelps,” said Jimmy. “Let’s see what you have in that desk of yours.”
“You lay a hand on that desk and I’ll have the police on you,” bleated Phelps. “Hey! You can’t hit a man with his glasses on—it’s a penal offense!”
“Very well, we’ll take them off,” said Jimmy.
Moving with deceptive gentleness, he hooked a finger under the gold-rimmed bifocals, drew them from the cowering man’s nose, handed them gravely to Dawn.
“What you agoin’ to do?” Phelps quivered.
“Nothing, if you play ball. As for the police, I’m doing a little job for Chief Potter right now. How would you like to have a squad go through those cabins of yours tonight? I didn’t think so. Well, talk. Who was here?”
“I can’t tell you, mister, honest I can’t.”
“Sorry, baby,” Jimmy said to Dawn. “I warned you it might be rough. Take a look in the desk and see what’s under the blotter.”
“She ain’t got no right to—” the man cried, moving to intercept the girl.
Jimmy made a motion as if to hit him. The fellow cringed. Then, behind him, Dawn whistled.
“Look!” She cried. “Money, money, money!”
“That’s mine!” cried Reuben Phelps, roused to a show of valor by the possibility of being robbed.
It was evident where his chief interest in life lay.
Jimmy gave him a glance of disgust, then deliberately turned his back.
CHAPTER IV
CAT OUT OF THE BAG
DAWN had fanned a mess of bills. Jimmy looked at them, saw they were all hundreds, all new, that there were fifteen of them. He looked at Dawn quizzically, then held out his hand. She obediently let him have them.
Facing the fearful, if irate Reuben Phelps, Jimmy smiled, took a cigarette lighter from his pocket, and ignited the flame with his thumb.
“Some of us,” he said gently, “are not as avid for the root of all evil as you, Mr. Phelps. Some of us even care how we get it.”
“You can’t do that!” the tourist camp keeper cried, and there was anguish in his twang.
He made a pass at the bills, but Jimmy pulled the money back from him, held the lighter close enough so that a little curl of smoke rose from the corner of one of the bills. Phelps bleated like an anguished sheep.
“Okay,” said Jimmy. “Who gave it to you?”
“I can’t tell you mister!” cried Phelps. “Honest I can’t!” He looked ready to go down on his knees and plead.
“Very well then,” said Jimmy. “Suppose we put it another way. Do you know Mr. Richard Carden?”
“Sure do. Who doesn’t in Laketown?”
“Has he ever come here?”
Phelps hesitated, and Jimmy singed another bill. The action drew a prompt affirmative.
“Has he ever come here with a redheaded lady?”
“I dunno. He doesn’t always bring the same one . . . No! Don’t burn ’em! Sure he has.”
“Can you give me the lady’s name?”
“No, I can’t mister, honest I can’t. That’s the one thing I can’t tell you!”
Jimmy gave him a long stare. He had questioned too many desperate people abroad not to know when he had drawn from them all they were going to give. He threw the money carelessly on the floor, stepped to the wall telephone and called the Wade mansion.
“Chief Potter?” he asked, and Phelps who, his money recovered, had been about to launch a new protest, deflated like a pricked blimp. “This is Grey. Everything all right at your end?”
“Everything’s a mess,” said the chief. “You?”
“Wide open here,” said Jimmy. “Wait the
re and keep Mr. Wade with you, will you? I’m coming back and bust this thing wide open.”
He hung up, saw that Phelps was looking at him with an odd gleam in his eye. Again taking the receiver from the hook, he wrenched it from the box, cord and all.
Phelps squawked in despair. “You can’t do that.”
“Pay for it,” said Jimmy coolly, “with some of that blood money you got tonight. You made plenty. Come, Dawn, let’s get out of this backwoods Plaza.”
“I didn’t tell you nothin’!” cried Phelps desperately after them. “Remember, I didn’t tell you nothin’!”
“You told me plenty,” said Jimmy, slamming the door after Dawn and walking around to his own seat on the right side. “Sorry, honey. Hope you don’t think I’m just an American Gestapo boy.”
“I wish you had hit him,” Dawn said sweetly. “Ugh! Talk about nasty men!”
“Let’s not, if you don’t mind,” said Jimmy. “Step on it now—back to the house.”
“Okay,” the girl replied. “Do you really know who did it?”
“Yup,” said Jimmy, lighting cigarettes for both of them and handing one to her. “But I have so little proof I couldn’t file charges of a misdemeanor. The job now is to force our baby into the open.”
“Tell me, darling,” Dawn pleaded. “I’m going crazy.”
“I could still be wrong,” said Jimmy. “For Pete’s sake, this isn’t the way you drove out here.”
“Well,” said Dawn, “you said to step on it, so I’m taking the short way home.”
“Then on the way out here—” His voice had a metallic ring that frightened the girl. She took a placating hand off the wheel and caressed his torn sleeve.
“You didn’t mind, did you, honey? I only wanted to have a few moments alone with you?”
“Mind!” he exclaimed, and his voice was almost choked. “Mind? No, of course not, Dawn. The only thing is, this is murder, and in your own home. And by taking those few minutes, we not only lost a chance to nab our killer, but I nearly got killed.”
THE atmosphere was a trifle strained the rest of the way back to the Wade mansion.
Dawn drove the convertible expertly up the long winding driveway that led to the porte-cochere. Though it was after one o’clock, the big gray stone pile was still alight downstairs and an orange glow in a number of the upstairs windows revealed that few of its inmates were early to bed that night.
Another car blocked the entrance of the entrance, and Dawn pulled up directly behind it. Jimmy got out, approached the other car, released the brake and wheeled it forward and out of the way.
The dashboard emergency moved easily, and to brace it, he jammed some pieces of cardboard he found on the floor in front of it, wedging them well in. Heat from the engine still flooded the driver’s compartment. Then, dusting his hands, he returned to Dawn, who was regarding him somberly from the steps.
“Whose car is that?” he asked.
“One of ours,” said Dawn. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Jimmy. “Did you lock yours?”
“We never do here on the place,” she told him.
“Lock it,” said Jimmy.
It was an order. She obeyed him, looking puzzled and a little frightened. When she came back to him, she held the keys. She stood close in front of him and under the dim overhead light he saw that she was crying.
“For Pete’s sake, honey!” he said, and then she was sobbing in his arms.
“I might have k-k-killed you!” she bawled. “Why don’t you b-b-beat the devil out of me?”
“Well, you didn’t,” said Jimmy. He put his arms around her, held her close. “But with your permission I intend to give you plenty of further chances.”
“Oh, Jimmy!” she said, and it was all right.
He held her until her sobbing was spent, then lifted her chin, kissed her lips and made passes at her eyes with his handkerchief.
“Come on, darling,” he said. “We’ve got work to do. And nasty work, I’m afraid. Maybe you’d better go upstairs and let me handle it alone.”
“You mean, you don’t want me?” she asked. Her voice trembled, and she looked like a whipped puppy.
“I surrender,” he said. “But don’t be surprised at anything. This isn’t going to be nice.”
“Beat the devil out of whoever it is, and I’ll help,” she said.
“It’s not that kind of nastiness this time,” he told her. “Let’s get it over with.” Olin Wade and Chief Potter were awaiting them in the study. Both sets of eyes popped as they took in Jimmy’s torn and disheveled condition.
“Great Scott, Jim!” said the millionaire, removing his cigar. “What on earth happened to you?”
“I had a little tangle with our killer,” he told them bluntly.
“Then you saw who it was?” the chief asked. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go on that assignment. Those tourist camps are tough places. Who was it?”
“Hold it,” said Jimmy.
He sank into a comfortable leather chair and eased aching bones. The dive under the car and his argument with Phelps had taken more out of him than he had realized at the time.
He smiled quickly at Dawn, who had perched herself on the arm of the chair.
“I didn’t see our killer,” he went on. “I’ve got a good idea who it is, though. But until I get proof, we’re out of luck. Mr. Wade, do you mind if I ask you a few very frank and intimate questions?”
The millionaire sighed and settled himself in his chair as if to prepare himself for a blow.
He seemed to know what was coming.
“Fire away, son,” he said in a weary voice. “When a murderer’s loose, it’s no time to spare feelings.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Jimmy.
He sat up straight and carefully marshaled his words. “Mr. Wade—Olin,” he said, “to the best of my knowledge, and I know mighty little, mind you, your wife has been accepting the attentions of another man.”
“You mean Carden, I suppose,” said Wade.
JIMMY, who thought he had seen everything, was honestly shocked at this avowal. He could feel Dawn stiffen beside him, give a little cry.
“Sorry, youngster,” said the millionaire to his niece. “But since it’s out, you might as well hear it from me. This young man of yours would have to tell you about it later anyway. I know your curiosity.”
“Uncle Olin!” was all the girl could say, but there was endless sympathy and distress in the two words.
But if the other two were shocked, the effect upon Chief Potter was almost ludicrous. He sat up as straight as if someone had poked a shish kebab skewer down his back. His eyes popped and his mouth fell open.
“Mr. Wade!” he said. “You knew about this and yet you gave this man a job?”
“Why not?” said Wade. “I was afraid if I sent him away Marian would leave me.”
The rest of them sat and stared.
“Then you mean,” said Jimmy, groping for understanding of this amazing man, “that you knew about Carden all along?”
“Hardly,” said Olin Wade. He looked suddenly like an old man. “I only made the discovery recently. And Rick’s engagement seemed to clear things up so that no—er—drastic action was necessary.”
“Poor Uncle Olin!” said Dawn. “I think you’re the biggest man who ever lived.”
“In one sense, perhaps,” said the millionaire with a rueful glance at the expanse of his waistline. He sighed. “But I seem to have handled things badly. This murder tonight—”
He made another aimless gesture.
“But, Mr. Wade!” exploded Chief Potter. “Why if I found a guy on the force even looking at my Molly I’d take him apart!”
At that moment the sound of a motor starting on the driveway caused all of them to pause. Then came a clash of gears, the noise of a motor bucking savagely as it picked up speed on the driveway. Jimmy rose.
“The keys, Dawn,” he said.
“Not without me,” she said posit
ively, sliding from the arm of the chair and moving swiftly toward the door.
“Hey!” bellowed the chief, overturning a chair as he started after her. “It’s no job for a girl!”
“It’s no time for an argument either,” said Jimmy, racing after Dawn. “Where’s your car, Chief?”
“Dolan’s picking me up in half an hour,” Potter muttered.
Both men reached the car in a dead heat as Dawn put her foot on the starter. Behind them they left a forlorn old man, sitting sunk in his chair and holding a dead cigar in his hand.
CHAPTER V
ENGLISH DRIVER
BEFORE either of the men could object to Dawn’s presence, she had the convertible in gear and was racing after their quarry, whose tail-light was no longer visible.
“Where to?” Dawn asked.
“Carden’s house,” said Jimmy quickly. “I know a short cut,” said the girl as they turned into the main road. “It’s rough, but .it cuts the distance by a third.”
“Don’t break your lovely neck,” said Jimmy, wedged in between Dawn and Potter.
There was pertinence in his remark, for the girl had skidded the car onto a rough, winding dirt road that seemed to be a rocky Jacob’s ladder right into the sky.
“Are you crazy?” Potter asked. “We’ll crack up this crate on this goat path. Why Carden’s house anyway?”
He had taken his service revolver out and was busily rolling the cylinder close to the dashboard light to make sure the chambers were loaded properly.
“Sit tight, Chief,” said Jimmy quietly. “We’ll get there first if Dawn doesn’t crack us up.”
“Shut up!” she said, expertly picking an all but invisible pair of grass-grown ruts that seemed to run head-on into a cluster of trees.
“Two will get you ten that this little wench who got shivved blackmailed Carden into marrying her,” said Potter. “What else could that card in her bag mean? He probably lost his head and stuck her with the first weapon handy and used Mrs. Wade for his alibi.”
“I’ll take that bet,” said Jimmy quietly.
Chief Potter stared at him, grunted. “You’ll lose,” he said.
“Maybe, Potter. We’ll see.”