by Jerry eBooks
“Thanks, Arlene—and I won’t hesitate to use it if I have to!” Corey promised, pocketing the gun.
Minutes later he was breaking all speed laws, driving his coupe by the shortest route back to the Prentiss estate. When he reached the dark grounds, he parked his car outside the gate, around a turn that screened it where it stood in the shadow of trees.
Like a shadow, he moved onto the grounds. He saw no sign of any other person, but knew he had better move fast. Stealthily he slipped to the little caretaker’s cottage. Once more the key went into the lock. He slipped in, this time moving in absolute darkness.
His nerves went cold when his shoulders hit a bulky object. He could faintly see the dead man swaying from the impact. Using his memory of the layout of the room, he crossed the floor, found a closet door. He squeezed in among earth-smelling overalls and coats. Then, experimentally, he reached out until his hand closed on something cold and metallic—a telephone on a little stand. He had remembered its location precisely.
He waited, silent, tense, alone in the dark cottage with only that vaguely visible hanging corpse for company. Minutes passed. A cold fear began to oppress him. Suppose he was wrong? Suppose the murderer didn’t fall for the bait?
He stiffened. Was that the sound of a car, somewhere outside? Silence again. The minutes became eons. And then, someone was trying the cottage door!
Instantly Corey lifted the telephone from its cradle, drew it into the closet to muffle the faint buzzing sound. He did that with his left hand. His right went into his coat pocket, grasped the gun Arlene had loaned him.
The door was opening. Moonlight slanted in. Corey had deliberately left it unlocked. A shadowy figure appeared momentarily, then blended with darkness as the door closed. Corey heard a man breathing. His breath came rapidly, panting, the breath of a badly frightened man, almost a sob. Corey’s eyes were slits. The killer was going through torment all right!
A little funnel of light suddenly cut the gloom. The man who had come in was focusing a flashlight on the corpse. His movements were frantic as he searched around confusedly. He seemed to reach decision then. He stood up the overturned chair near the hanging corpse. He climbed on it, and in the dim light, the knife he held in his other hand, the knife with which he apparently was going to cut down the corpse, flickered evilly.
THAT was when Corey walked out of the closet, gun in hand.
“All right, you can keep your hands up right as they are!” he gritted.
The light flashed crazily, picked out the sheen on Corey’s gun, then hastily dropped.
“I can see you well enough to shoot!” Corey warned. “And I don’t have to see you to know who you are—John Hatcher!”
As he spoke, he moved to the wall-switch, flooded the room with light. John Hatcher, his face blanched under his gray hair, climbed down off the chair. The man was actually shaking.
“Drop that knife.” It clattered to the floor. “So you were going to try to take the body away, to cover up your second murder, eh?” Corey snapped. “You couldn’t find the evidence, could you?” He was still too wary to say that there was really no evidence to be found! “Well, you’ll soon be swinging from a rope just like poor Chris Jenson, Hatcher.”
Hatcher’s face was glistening with sweat. “Listen, Jeff,” he croaked hoarsely. “You’re not forgetting all I did for you!”
“You undid it when you framed me for murdering Judge Prentiss!”
“I didn’t frame you! I didn’t frame anybody! It just happened that way, and what was I to do when you were blamed? I stood behind you at the trial.”
“Yes, and then tried to frame me for killing Chris Jenson.”
“I had to, Jeff!” the man shouted insanely. “I had to kill Jenson when I knew you were going to pump him, even though I didn’t know for sure that he could pin the crime on me!”
“You killed both men,” Corey grated. “And that’s not all. You appropriated those funds from the War Memorial Fund, cheating honest people who wanted to build a monument for some of the boys I went with overseas! I ought to shoot you down like the rat you are!”
“No, Jeff,” the cringing Hatcher pleaded. “No Jeff! Please Jeff! Listen, Jeff!”
Then, with a truly insane scream, he leaped wildly at Corey. The move was so swift, so desperate, that Corey found the gun knocked up before he could fire it. Screaming, cursing, Hatcher was fighting like a wildcat, until Corey, with his free arm, doubled a fist containing all his own pent-up fury, brought it to Hatcher’s jaw with a crunching impact.
Even as Hatcher went down like a log, the cottage door burst open. Blue-clad police filled the raftered deathroom, and with them came District Attorney Floyd Saxon and Arlene!
“Jeff, are you all right?” Arlene threw herself into his arms. “I kept begging them to come in, but—”
“But I wanted to hear as much as I could,” Saxon said. “Which, it seems, was plenty.”
“I did just what you said, Jeff,” Arlene explained. “I went right back to Mr. Saxon and told him there had been another murder, that he had to come with me immediately, bringing police. We raced in his car to a drug store just a little distance from the estate. There I kept calling this cottage every five minutes, until I got a busy signal. Then—”
“We came, with me fit to be tied by all this run-around.” Saxon grinned tightly. “It seems I owe you an apology, Corey, but it also seems you owe us all an explanation.”
“Once I came to the conclusion that the criminal was Hatcher,” Jeff said, even as the police were reviving and handcuffing the realtor, “I knew that I had to set a trap for him, because I had no real proof. So I made up a story about there being some evidence here. He fell for it and, already worried because the body here hadn’t been reported, he rushed out in his panic. I arranged for Arlene to bring you, Mr. Saxon, to a nearby store, because I knew if you got here too soon and found the body and not the real killer, you might arrest me.”
“But Jeff, you still haven’t told how you decided that Hatcher was the murderer,” Arlene said.
“Those flower markers told me that, Arlene.” Corey nodded to the desk where they still were. “When I linked those up with the peculiar way Chris Jenson had changed his testimony at the trial, there was only one answer. Although too proud to admit it even to his employers, Chris Jenson was colorblind. He couldn’t have told you the color of a tulip, or any other flower that might grow in more than one shade. That was why he left markers to label the colors even after the flowers bloomed.
“Seeing the back of a man’s head, a colorblind man might of course easily confuse red hair for that of some other light color. I had three suspects. You, Saxon, and Blanchard both have dark hair, and the one thing a color-blind man can tell is the difference between dark and light. But Hatcher’s hair is gray, and he has a lot of it, too, just as I have.
“The reason Chris Jenson was sure it was me at first was a psychological one. He had seen me enter the mansion, and hadn’t seen me leave. When a man did come out, he simply assumed it was I, and also assumed the back of the head he saw was red. But as the trial went on, and I kept insisting I had left the mansion unobserved and earlier, he began to think about it, and realized he couldn’t be sure after all. That’s why he changed his testimony.”
The suave, dark-haired D.A. spoke then with grudging admiration.
“Well, Corey, you certainly cleared yourself nobly. And the whole city will bring in the verdict this time. People will be glad you and your future missus are staying in town. We need honest citizens like you!”
SHOOT FAST, BUT SHOOT STRAIGHT!
Sam Carson
They called Asa Myers, ex-cop, a “back number”—but he didn’t hesitate to match lead with murderous gangsters!
THE north wind thrust a rose vine against the living room window, causing it to make a raking sound across the panes. Asa Myers stood looking out at the gloomy weather, an old, restless man.
He was restless because he had spent the
majority of his years outside, as a peace officer. And because he had spent all those years, Asa Myers paid attention to jangling nerves, the aching right leg and the tingling area at the base of his skull.
Trouble! Asa never had claimed to have psychic powers. But he was alerted for some sort of danger, and it worried him. Asa had survived a number of tight situations in his forty years, first as U.S. marshal, and then as sheriff of Roane county. And he had never given up following hunches.
It wasn’t personal danger for Asa to worry about. He was a back number now, with Readyville so grown up, thanks to war plants, that he was all but forgotten in the wave of progress. Asa listened to his daughter Ann, singing as she went about her work in the kitchen. Asa shook his head. He wanted to forget right now, the bitter disappointment of the morning.
The phone rang. Ann, Asa’s daughter, came out of the kitchen, hands covered with biscuit dough.
“Answer it Dad,” she called. “It may be Bob. He said he’d come home to lunch if he could get off.”
It was Bob, Asa’s son-in-law.
“Howya feeling, Pop?” he asked. “Say, I got to pinch hit for Blair and sign for the factory payroll. Means I won’t be home for lunch after all.”
“I’ll tell Ann. She was baking biscuits.”
“Boy, what I could do to them. Sorry, Pop. I got to make a living.” He hesitated. “Pop, maybe I’ll get a chance to drop in on Lee Sanders this afternoon. He might change his mind about a rifle team after all.”
“Don’t do it, son,” Asa told him. “Chief Sanders don’t equip his squads with rifles any more, and the sheriff don’t give a hoot. They’re not interested.”
“Well, don’t take it hard, Pop. After all, this isn’t horse and buggy times. Officers have to shoot fast and at close range. Remember that. It’s different now. Well, see you later.”
Asa cradled the phone and looked across the room at his daughter, back again in the doorway.
“Bob’s got to look after the factory payroll again.”
“Oh.” Ann’s face fell. Then she laughed. “I’ll save the dough till dinner.” She darted away on clicking heels.
Asa Myers walked back to the window. On the table nearby was the letter from Chief Sanders, the college trained chief, which had given the bad news.
BEFORE Pearl Harbor, for two decades, Asa Myers had captained a team of law enforcement officers from Roane county to the Southeastern Police Association pistol and rifle tournament.
They were going to renew the matches, down in Florida, and Asa had talked with various men he had shot with before. But none of the officers was interested, it seemed. And now Asa knew why. Chief Sanders had frowned on the idea.
Horse and buggy! You had to shoot fast and close up these days! Bob was trying to make it easy, but he had repeated the words of Sanders, and Asa knew Bob really believed the same way.
For the first time in his life, Asa Myers felt helpless. Bob and Ann had dragged him off the little place up North River Road, and were trying to make him comfortable and contented, at least. He liked Bob, cocky as he was. Bob had to fill the place made so tragically vacant by Clint Myers.
Clint had been born two years ahead of Ann, a sturdy, sure thinking kid who made football history on the Readyville High School team. But Clint rested in the heart of the Coral Sea, and a lot of Asa Myers, which had survived his wife’s death, was with Clint’s drifting body today.
Now it was Ann, and Ann alone. Therefore, Asa tried to bend his life to her wishes. But he was unhappy, and today he had tasted of the dregs of bitterness.
Why, Asa could never explain. But as Ann called him in to lunch, he went over and switched on the police radio receiver. That receiver was a gift of Bob, wangled from Chief Sanders. And within seconds after the receiver came to life, there was the warning whistle of a general call. The operator’s code words were not casual, but snapped out.
“Brayton Shoe Factory payroll held up, Market and E street . . . Three men in black sedan . . . heavily armed . . . Car thirty-two—head east on Ferry road Car Sixteen—head for Highway seven-six-one . . . Car Fifty-six—”
“Bob!” Asa whispered.
It had to be Bob!
The bandits had waited for him to get the money, then head west a block on Market to E street. There was a bunch of warehouses at that corner, and few passersby. There was bound to be shooting. Bob carried an automatic, and the factory guard probably had a sawed off shotgun.
He forgot Ann, till she appeared at his side, face pale but in complete control of herself. They stood there as the police radio operator assigned every radio car in the city to road blocks, others to join county officers and state patrolmen. And in a momentary lapse of orders, the operator directed an ambulance to the holdup scene.
Ann whirled, dashed to the phone. Asa restrained her.
“Don’t,” he said. “You’d just be wasting time.”
“Then let’s go—Hurry!”
Ann ran to her bedroom, shedding her apron. Asa paid her no attention. From the steady barrage of messages he gathered that state patrolmen were in motion. That meant officers would come roaring down the major highways from stations as distant as twenty miles.
And already it was evident the payroll bandits had made a circuit of side streets and had reached Ferry Road ahead of the police. Ann came racing back, car keys jingling in her hand. Whatever she meant to say remained unspoken. The police operator came on with a message to be shuttled on by the state patrol station.
“Look for black Buick with Ohio license plates. Probably stolen. Left rear side window shattered. Bullet holes in trunk. White side wall tires. Driver is heavy set, blond man. Other two men were medium sized and masked. These men have machine-guns. They shot two men in payroll car.”
“Bob’s in General Hospital then,” Ann said. “We’ll go straight there.”
She hurried to the door. Asa hadn’t moved.
“Come on, Dad!”
Asa looked at her, shook his head.
“Nothing I can do. It’s in the hands of the doctors. You go.”
Ann looked her father over gravely. She closed the door slowly, walked up to him.
“Why are you staying, Dad?”
Asa sighed.
“I’m keeping you, honey. The way that operator said it, Bob ain’t dying.”
“That isn’t what you’re thinking about.”
“No.” Asa saw much of Clint’s resolute chin and frank eyes before him. “No, I was thinking, if I could handle a car like I used to, I might catch ’em. I’m afraid they’ll get away.”
ANN was twisting the key ring, as if in extreme doubt. She started again toward the door, but came back.
“Tell me,” she said finally. “How would you catch them—the ones who shot my man?”
“The robbers took the Ferry Road. They won’t cross Blue River. The ferry crew have a police radio. They’ll stick on the far side. The state patrol has a bunch coming down Highway seven-sixty-one. There ain’t a train this side of Elmore Junction. South, the road blocks are easy to set up, and by now nobody can hide inside Readyville. And those bandits ain’t roosting either.”
Ann waited. She asked no questions.
“Way I’d take if I was a payroll bandit, is to skyhoot out seven-sixty-one ahead of pursuit.”
“But the state patrol—”
“They have twenty miles to meet the bunch going north. Look. I’d take Ferry Road to North River, out past my place. I’d go around Longnecker hill and ease into Highway seven-sixty-one for three miles. And when I got by Roane Ridge north of town, I’d cut back into Highway eight-twenty-three and double back by Roane Ridge.”
“But that would be losing time.”
“Listen, seven-sixty-one and eight-twenty-three make a V, with Readyville in the middle and the ridge between town and eight-twenty-three. That’s why it goes north to make the intersection. Once they’re on eight-twenty-three, they’re wide open, for that highway cuts across a half dozen roads in t
wenty miles, and no bunch of officers can block ’em.”
Ann looked up, face still pale.
“How can you get to eight-twenty-three ahead of the bandits?”
Asa looked at the electric clock on the mantel.
“Been five minutes since it happened. Due west by northwest of here, it’s just four miles. But the way the bandits are traveling, it’s thirty-two. There’s a gravel road over the ridge. Has four ladderbacks in it. A good driver—”
“Get your rifle,” Ann said grimly. “We might make it.”
The rain now falling was little more than a drizzle. Ann sent the car toward Roane Ridge, its pine crest dim in the low clouds. The gravel road curved like garden hose tossed down impatiently, and Asa held his rifle between his legs.
It was the weapon he had planned to take to the Florida match, the one with which he had tied for first place in 1928. It was a 30-30, and the sight was Asa’s invention. The stock, he had made himself, and now, holding it so reverently, as he always had, Asa didn’t feel so helpless.
Yes, it might be a wild goose chase. Ann would never reproach him. Asa knew that. But he hated to think of what Bob would say. And he hated too, to think of what he would think of himself, if Bob were hurt worse than Asa had surmised. Then Ann took the first ladderback turn and Asa wound up in a corner, rifle barrel rapping his shin. It was a wild trip over Roane Ridge.
Lee Sanders was a nice young man, and not at all like the traditional chief. But Asa knew his own kind were regarded as obselete by Sanders’ new men he was placing in all key positions.
Readyville no longer was an overgrown village. It was a city, and its population was three fourths foreign.
Maybe Sanders was right. But things like payroll holdups, committed within four blocks of Police Headquarters, were fundamentally the same problem as in Asa’s day. If you didn’t catch them immediately, you had to play bloodhound, and take all the laughs, the sarcastic cracks of the press, and the bawling out sessions of the big shots.