The Third Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  Callahan felt almost sorry for Timmy. But not quite. Timmy was a fool. He craved things, notice above all. At all times and in all places Timmy would always act upon one single principle, of doing what was most satisfying to him at the moment. Usually it involved securing for himself the undivided, emotional attention of other people. A holdup was an orgy of such notice. Being watched, fearfully or fascinatedly or admiringly, was more important to Timmy than anything else in the world—much more important than the consequences of the attention-getting act, especially the consequences to anybody else. But Timmy was perfectly sane. It was simply the way he was.

  Now Timmy said suddenly, “You and Jeanne are going to tell the cops I was here.”

  “If they ask us, yes,” Callahan said evenly. “Not otherwise. We’re not likely to brag you’re Jeanne’s brother.”

  Timmy snarled. “No? I told some friends of mine about Jeanne being a witness against me. Know what they advised me to do?”

  “I can guess,” said Callahan coldly. “Turn right at the next corner. The bus station’s two blocks down.”

  “You cross me,” Timmy said with venom, “and some of my friends that’re getting out presently—they’ll come see you. Understand?”

  “Yes,” said Callahan. He felt sick. Timmy could be right.

  “You get it?” Timmy insisted ferociously. “You got a good stunt for me, sure. But if it’s got a trick in it, you better tell me now. If anything happens to me, my friends got no use for your kind, or for Jeanne. I told ’em plenty about her. My own sister, sending me to the pen!”

  Callahan knew with precision that Timmy was scared. Because he was scared, he was dangerous. Timmy’s notion of action was grandiloquent action, dramatic stuff. To act like an ordinary person was unnatural to him. Even to think about it made him uneasy. He had a picture of himself as a glamorous figure, and he had to live up to that picture or he didn’t feel right. Now he had to sing small. Discussing his conduct with Callahan didn’t even make him look smart. He was getting panicky because he had to take direction from somebody else, and the direction had no grand gesture in it.

  “There’s the bus station ahead,” said Callahan coldly. “You’ll get on the bus and nobody’ll suspect you. Lie back in your seat and don’t call attention to yourself, and you’ll be hundreds of miles away by daybreak. Get off somewhere and take another bus. I don’t want to know where you change. But listen to me: when you eat, eat in a diner. Don’t show more than a couple of dollars. When you take another bus, don’t flash a big bill. Don’t show off! Let people ignore you! If you’ll do that for just three or four days, you can cross the country and get where the police won’t dream of looking for you.”

  It was true. It was profoundly practical advice, for Timmy. It was better advice than Callahan knew, because he knew nothing of the punched cards that contained a strictly detached analysis of Timmy’s methods of operation, based on the sort of person Timmy was.

  Callahan reflected dryly that it was quaint that he could give a crook good advice; if he were a crook himself he would inevitably act the fool.

  * * * *

  The shiny, purring yellow car approached the bus station, which looked singularly desolate. It was brightly lighted enough but there was nobody in it, and the newsstand inside was closed. It was a glaringly lighted empty room, with green paint on the walls and unused benches inside, an oasis of light in the midst of night.

  At the edge of the lighted area about the bus station, a parked car waited. It was a late-model sedan, big and black and glistening, with white-walled tires. A car like this, parked in a city, would at least be stripped of its custom upholstery before dawn. In a small town like Bainbridge, though, it was safe enough. It waited for somebody, beside the bus station. The headlights of Timmy’s car swept over it as he came to a smooth stop at the curb.

  Callahan hardly noticed the black car. He tapped Timmy’s arm. “Now, do as I said,” he said grimly, “and you’ll vanish as if the earth had swallowed you. You’ve only to let yourself be ignored, and you’ll be all right. And when you do start to show off again—and you will—and the cops do catch you, you’ll be much more admired if you don’t tell anybody your brother-in-law told you how to get away. Let your friends think you were the smart one. Leave Jeanne and me out!”

  Timmy stared ahead. Then he turned and grinned at Callahan. “If you think you got me tricked,” he said with bright eyes, “you better think again. If you try, you’ll get yours—and Jeanne too. But—” He paused and then grinned more widely. “Have fun. It’ll be the only time in your life you’ll ever drive a car like this!”

  He got out. Callahan slid into the driver’s seat. He pulled the pair of gloves from his pocket and put them on. He drove the big yellow car away.

  * * * *

  At state-police headquarters, a teletype clicked. A man with a green eyeshade took a sheaf of reports and went over to a map that covered all of one wall. Consulting the papers in his hands, he began to stick pins into the map: blue pins for this, red pins for that, parti-colored pins for the other. Little paper tickets under the pins carried dates. A linkage between certain burglaries in a certain city became obvious as the man inserted pins. A burglar was working the city very systematically, burglarizing on Thursday nights only. For reasons individual to himself, and of which he was probably unconscious, the spots he burglarized could be seen to follow a pattern. He thought it was a pattern of unpredictability. But there would be an extra number of police about a certain four-block neighborhood next Thursday night. The burglar would be caught red-handed.

  A pin for a filling-station holdup went into position. There was violence, murder. But the murder had not been planned; details proved that. It had not been planned at all. The filling-station operator had been killed because he’d tried to telephone.

  This fact tied in precisely with other facts: a stolen yellow car sighted in a town a hundred miles from Suffolk, by someone unable to reach a telephone at the time; and then, another hundred miles away, a call from another filling station; and finally, from just over the border of the next state, a third report on the yellow car. A man on the lam can’t run too low on gas. He doesn’t dare—especially in a big, rich-man’s car that gulps down fuel. The line of flight of the yellow car was established: it would pass through a town named Bainbridge.

  That fact, with others, was noted on a card machine, which patiently ran its tiny metal fingers over innumerable punched cards. The machine reacted violently to facts the cards revealed. An operator interrupted other teletype business to put a special item on the wire. And to make sure, somebody telephoned long-distance.…

  * * * *

  When Callahan got back to his house, there was a gray car in front of the door. It was three o’clock in the morning then, and the lights in Callahan’s house were burning brightly, except upstairs where the children slept. Callahan was weary from unaccustomed walking, but when he saw the gray car’s taillights his breath left him and his heart began to pound. He ran.

  When he reached the front door he was panting and sweating and deadly pale. Jeanne opened the door and clung to him, sobbing.

  “What happened?” Callahan demanded hoarsely. “You’re all right? The kids? What happened?”

  “I—was scared!” Jeanne gasped. “You didn’t come back. I didn’t know what might have happened!”

  There was a stirring in the living room. A state trooper said politely:

  “It looked pretty had. I got sent here, Mr. Callahan. There’s an alarm out for a guy they want to question about that Suffolk holdup killing. This guy was paroled about three weeks ago and went right back in business, his kind of business.”

  Callahan felt nauseous. Jeanne said faintly. “They—they think Timmy did it, Bob.”

  Callahan drew in a deep breath. The trooper said comfortingly, “The punched-card machines at headquarters said that Mrs. Callaha
n was a witness against him when he was sent up. He was due to come through this town. And guys like that—”

  “He’s her brother,” Callahan said bitterly.

  The trooper said awkwardly, “Sure, but a guy that starts off delinquent and graduates to holdups and such, he gets so that sort of thing don’t matter much to him. He gets proud that he’s different from other people. He likes to prove it. And if he was coming through this town, why, he might try to—get even. Even with his sister. So I was sent here to make sure you people would be all right. The things we can’t figure out ahead we can’t do much about. But things like that…

  Callahan said harshly: “He didn’t try to get even. He was here. I didn’t know what he’d done, but I guessed something. I didn’t want him caught here and my family exposed to all the publicity there was last time. I headed him away.”

  The trooper nodded.

  “Yeah. She told me. We got to allow for things like that. People hate to turn in brothers and sisters and such. It’s human. Anyhow, he’s gone. I guess you people are safe enough now.” Incredibly, he did not seem to want to ask any more questions. He prepared to depart. Callahan went to the door with him. There the trooper beckoned, and Callahan followed him outside. It was singularly peaceful now. There were stars. Callahan noticed them for the first time tonight.

  The trooper said, “Listen. Your wife—she’s a nice woman. You’ve got to allow for things like that. She tried to kid me. Said you’d taken this guy to the bus station. Said he was heading south on the bus. She was scared he’d killed you. She was pretty desperate. Wanted to get me away from here. I don’t blame her. She had to think of her kids and you.”

  Callahan swallowed.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said the trooper apologetically. “It’s human for you not to want a lot of publicity. But—which way did he really go? You’d better get that guy off your neck. Your wife needn’t know you told me anything. But that guy’s got to be caught. Holdups in themselves aren’t so bad, but he panics and kills people.”

  Callahan said in an extremely flat and emotionless voice:

  “He rode around, gloating about how smart he was, and then he dumped me a couple of miles out on Route 138. He’s headed south.”

  It was a lie. Callahan told it so that Timmy wouldn’t be caught while following his—Callahan’s—directions, and so Timmy’s friends wouldn’t feel that Callahan had betrayed him, and so there wouldn’t be a trial with Jeanne called as a witness again.

  The trooper nodded. “He was figured for that. Your wife tried hard to make me believe he was on a bus. But they got him pretty well figured out at headquarters—personality analysis from the way he’s acted. That guy’d never ride on a bus. A big car’s his style.” He nodded again. “Understand, I came here to make sure you people were all right. You didn’t have to tell me that. It won’t make any difference. We’ve got roadblocks up to stop him. Thanks.”

  He went down the walk to his car. He started it quietly and turned it around and drove away.

  Callahan went back inside the house. He pulled the pair of gloves from his pocket and threw them away. “Timmy’s safe,” he said brittlely. “The trooper didn’t believe you. He asked me. I told him Timmy headed south on Route 138. That’s where I left his car in a ditch, without any fingerprints on it. They think it’s incredible that he should take a bus.”

  Jeanne began to cry again. And Callahan didn’t know whether she wept because in her desperation she’d told the trooper about Timmy, or whether she was desperately relieved that he’d got away. But Callahan knew forlornly that as long as Timmy was at large, he was a menace hanging over them.

  * * * *

  At half past four in the morning, the teletype clicked a long report. In clipped “officialese” it reported that a state-police roadblock on Route 138 had been crashed by a man in a black sedan with white-walled tires. He saw the waiting troopers. He opened fire as he went through. The troopers returned it. A tire on the sedan went. The car careened and turned over. The man who’d been expected to be in a big yellow car had been killed in the wreck of a big black car. Fingerprints proved him to be a parolee, three weeks out of prison, wanted for the Suffolk holdup-murder, the killing of the filling-station attendant, and so on. The black car had license number such-and-such, which belonged in Bainbridge. The man had jumped the ignition to steal it.

  It was all quite impersonal and emotionless. In state-police headquarters, a man in a green eyeshade checked the license number of the black car. It had been reported stolen barely an hour before. It was missing from beside the bus station in Bainbridge.

  The teletype clicked an order to cancel all queries on a list of names previously sent out. Some of the Suffolk robbery money had been found on the dead man who had crashed through the roadblock. There were no further questions on the other individuals whose cards had been picked out by the machines.

  The man in the green eyeshade ran several cards through the machine. He got a list of the robberies for which he had put pins in the wall-sized map. He very carefully removed the pins, checking each one against the list.

  There was just one item left in this matter. It was cleared up when a big, yellow, expensive car was found in a ditch on Route 138, four miles out of Bainbridge. It appeared that the fugitive had ditched it when it ran low on gas, walked back to Bainbridge, and stolen a black sedan parked by the bus station.

  The matter of Callahan’s brother-in-law Timmy, who came riding out of the west in a stolen car, was removed from the list of pending cases.

  But the machines did not stop. The teletype clicked. A sixteen-year-old girl had run away from home. A punched card was made to contain the data. A grocery store had been burglarized, with such-and-such individualities of technique. The machines began to sort cards, to identify the man who performed his burglaries in that precise fashion. Presently the teletype clicked…

  * * * *

  Callahan and Jeanne heard about Timmy’s death on the morning news broadcast. Jeanne was dazed—stunned—by the news. It had seemed so certain that Timmy would get away.

  “We did all we could for him,” Callahan said unhappily. “He had every chance. What more could anybody have done? But I’m sorry, Jeanne.”

  He comforted her as well as he could, while she wept for Timmy.

  THE BAD SAMARITAN

  Originally published in Collier’s, Sept. 5, 1936, as by “Will F. Jenkins.”

  Herman talked to his dog. Mountains reared serenely toward the sky on four sides. There was no other human habitation within forty miles. Herman lived separated from the world, according to his faith. And he sat before his cabin and talked to his dog. The dog’s name was Erik, and he lay on Herman’s own blankets with bandages about his body. They covered raking wounds a mountain lion had given him as he fought to protect Herman’s lambs. He looked unblinkingly up at Herman as the man’s voice went on. Sometimes his tail wagged gently. He liked to hear Herman talk.

  There was silence everywhere. The trees were still. Wind blew overhead among the mountain peaks, but in the valley there was utter calm. Small noises came from the lambs in Herman’s raised-up fold. A jackrabbit bolted in bobbing panic from one small clump of brush and dived headlong into another.

  Then the stranger appeared abruptly, snarling.

  His approach must have been noiseless indeed. Even Erik, the dog, had not heard him. He stepped around the corner of the cabin and light glittered upon something deadly that he held ready in his hand. He was a small man, and his eyes were beady and hate-filled. There was a sheriff’s badge pinned to the breast of his shirt and he wore the high-heeled boots of a horseman, but there had been no sound of a horse’s hoofs. His boots were stained and muddy. By the look of them, he should have been footsore and limping.

  The gun bore upon Herman’s heart. The stranger stood catlike, alert, threatening. No word. Nothing but the
sudden, noiseless appearance, and the lined-up gun, and the beady, hating eyes, and something like a noiseless snarl.

  Erik, the dog, growled suddenly and tried to struggle erect. But he was very weak. Herman held him still with gentle fingers while he turned his head and regarded the stranger.

  One glance at the weapon and Herman’s eyes rose calmly to the pinched and snarling face above it. He said nothing. He did not pale. He held the feebly struggling dog and murmured soothingly:

  “Quiet, Erik. Quiet. It iss a friend.”

  Then to the stranger he said gently:

  “Put down der gun. You are hungry. I giff you food. You are tired. I giff you a place to rest. There iss no need for money or for der gun either.”

  The beady eyes swept over Herman. No holster, either at hip or shoulder. Merely a heavily built, muscular, squat-framed man with a heavy beard and very blue eyes and an expression of habitual calm. The stranger sneered. It was not easy for him or anyone like him to understand an expression like Herman’s, atop a frame fit for battle.

  “You’ll give me grub, eh?” said a thin voice. “I’ll take it! D’you know who I am?”

  Herman soothed the feebly struggling dog.

  “No. You are hungry and tired. It iss enough.”

  The stranger pointed with his free hand to the sheriff’s badge pinned to his shirt. The shirt was puckered beneath the clasp.

  “See what that badge says? Sheriff! I hadda tip on you, fella! I come up here to look over yer place! I know what you been doin’! An’ you can talk or not, I’m goin’ to get the evidence! An’ then there’ll be a nice ride back to jail for you, with the pen afterward!”

  Herman said gently:

  “But I know der sheriff. You are not him.”

  The thin man tensed. His eyes flared.

  The pistol stirred. Herman soothed the dog Erik. He made no move. He did not flinch. The stranger’s thin voice raged suddenly: