The other’s assumption of nonchalance deserted him. The sneer left his face and a look of uneasiness replaced it.
“Ain’t nothin’ in there concernin’ me,” he mumbled.
“Enough to send you to the chair!” retorted Harrigan. “You may have overlooked it, but it says—”
“What?” blurted the crook.
“You know what!” shouted Harrigan. “You made a getaway with the goods after—”
“Cheese it!” The other shrank back, cowering, his face ghastly. “I—I reckon—you’ve got me!” he stammered. “The—the harness-bull musta come to—long enough to—”
“Describe you as the jake who beat him into insensibility with a black-jack!” finished Harrigan. “Here it is! Take a look! Read it!”
He flung the paper open, and waved it before the other’s face in a way that the latter couldn’t have read anything, even if he had been in a condition to do so, which Harrigan knew quite well he wasn’t. Shuddering and twitching in the grip of fear, his eyes glassy with terror, he appeared on the verge of collapse.
“Take it away!” he blurted. “I don’t want to read it! To hell with it!”
Harrigan thrust the paper quickly into his pocket, a breath of relief escaping him. The crumpled and mud-stained newssheet had turned the trick! His little bluff had made good!
Swiftly he stepped to the wall and pressed the electric call button. A few minutes later a rap came on the door, and Harrigan opened it. The shifty-eyed individual with whom he had talked at the desk faced him.
The man’s jaw dropped, and he stared amazedly.
“Why, what’s wrong?” he blurted. “What—”
“Your guest,” broke in Harrigan, “Mr. James L. Mullins, of Tacoma, alias Slinky Malone, of Folsom, is wanted for murder and a jewel robbery in Seattle. He brought the stuff here—in a little black bag over there!”
“Jool thief? Murder?” muttered the other incredulously. “Stuff in the—the black bag?”
Harrigan pulled back his coat, showing his badge.
“Fly-cop!” blurted the other.
“Get to a phone,” ordered Harrigan. “and tell headquarters to send the wagon up here to your place at once! Tell ’em Harrigan wants it!”
The man’s lips opened and closed, but no words came. His eyes shifted from Harrigan to the prisoner, then to the little black bag on the table.
“Quick!” ordered Harrigan. “No time to waste!”
With a gasp the other backed from the room, closing the door.
Swiftly Harrigan disarmed the prisoner and handcuffed him. With a groan the crook slumped into a chair, covering his face with his manacled hands.
Harrigan stepped to the table on which the bag rested. Bending over it, he was unfastening the catches when the door was suddenly flung open behind him, and a voice spoke menacingly.
“Stick up yer mitts, an’ quick about it!” was the snarling command.
Harrigan turned his head slowly, and looked over his shoulder. Standing in the doorway, a revolver gripped in his hand, was the shifty-eyed lodging-house proprietor!
“Quick! Do as I tell ya!” he gritted.
Harrigan’s eyes widened with astonishment. “What d’you mean? What—”
“I mean,” growled the other, “that if you make one little off move, you’re a dead one! Now, stick up yer mitts an’ belly the wall!”
Harrigan had no other choice than to obey, and the other quickly relieved him of his weapons.
“I ain’t runnin’ this cheap kipp,” he explained gruffly. “I been roomin’ here fer a coupla weeks, an’ the owner left me in charge while he went over to Oakland on business. Fact is I’m in the same profesh as this here bird wit’ the bracelets on—a collector of sparklers an’ the like! Only difference between him an’ me is—I ain’t a cheap kittle-cracker like what this jake is. I’m a reg’lar peterman!
“When you tipped me off a while ago that the gent was a jool thief, an’ that the swag was in the little black keister, you could’ve knocked me dead wit’ a feather. I been keepin’ an’ eye skinned fer some easy pickin’s ever since I lit in the burg, an’ if there’s anything softer’n this—”
The sentence ended in a chuckle.
Harrigan was stunned. “Well, what’s the game?” he demanded.
“It’s this,” answered the other. “The sparklers in that keister belong to me!”
Before Harrigan could recover, the other picked up the black bag and weighted it.
“They’re in there, all right,” he chuckled. “I can tell by the heft of it! Now, lissen! I’m goin’ to lock you two birds in here an’ make a gitaway wit’ the goods. By the time you git out I’ll be headin’ fer—elsewhere.
“Anyhow, it’ll take you quite a while to burst out, an’ even then, Mr. Dick, you ain’t goin’ to chase off, leavin’ a murderin’ jake like him on the slim chance of coppin’ a feller what’s helped hisself to a few thousan’ in sparklers. You’ll stick to him like a plaster till he’s safe in the jug, an’ by then you’ll be wastin’ time lookin’ fer me!
“As fer you,”—the speaker cast a contemptuous glance at the prisoner—“I reckon you’ll git all that’s comin’ to you; an’ here’s hopin’ you swing!”
Again he weighted the bag in his hand and chuckled.
“Well, so-long, gents; I gotta be movin’.” He backed to the door and paused. “No need of punchin’ the call-button; I cut the wires before comin’ in here an’ put it outa commission!”
As the door closed behind him Harrigan sprang forward, seizing the knob and jerking it violently.
“Easy!” came a jeering voice from the other side. “Take yer time! See if you can’t deteck some way to git outa there besides jumpin’ through the winder er bustin’ the door down!”
Harrigan swore softly as the sound of retreating footsteps reached him.
Keeping a watchful eye on the prisoner, who was slumped down in his chair, staring like a man in a trance, Harrigan set grimly to work on the door, which resisted his efforts exasperatingly. He worked as quietly as possible, not wishing to bring the residents of the place to the scene and be forced to explain. Also, he had no desire for the matter to become public.
It was fifteen minutes before the lock finally gave and the door sprang open.
With a gasp of relief, and mopping his perspiring face, Harrigan turned to the prisoner.
“How much was the stuff in the bag worth?” he demanded. “Got any idea?”
The other looked up grimly.
“About twenty-five dollars!” he mumbled sullenly.
“What?” Harrigan was staring incredulously. “What d’you mean?”
“The sparklers ain’t in there,” continued the other. “They’re under the seat of the hack that I rode up from the dock in!”
Harrigan gasped.
“I had a hunch,” went on the prisoner, “that I was being trailed, so I took the stuff out of the keister an’ planted it. I took down the license number of the old rattle-trap, an’ was goin’ to get the stuff later if I had to beef the old jehu to do it! I told him to be back here in half an hour, an’ I reckon he’s outside now.”
Harrigan was slowly recovering from his amazement.
“Then what in thunder was in the bag?” he demanded. “It was heavy enough!”
“Yeah, it was heavy, all right!” agreed Slinky. “There was a pair of brass knucks, a black-jack, a coupla gats, a frog-sticker, two boxes o’ cartridges, an—”
“Enough!” broke in Harrigan. “When that shifty-eyed son-of-a-jake, that thinks he’s made a getaway with sparklers, opens that bag, he’ll feel like he’s robbed a hardware store!”
TRUE TO TYPE, by Grover Jones
Originally published in Colliers, September 5, 1936.
“It ain’t much of a trick once you get the knack of it,” said Bayley Miggins, and paused to shower a darkened corner of his print shop with a fine spray of tobacco juice. Tiny Eddie Trent, the banker’s son, grinned up at hi
m. Miggins’ manner of shifting his quid from one cheek to the other interested him more than learning the alphabetic order of the type case.
“This big box—them’s the E’s. Use more E’s than anything else, you know. The D’s—on the left. The I’s—on the right. Now watch.”
Miggins began to set type in his stick. Eddie laughed.
“You’re spelling my first name, aren’t you, Mr. Miggins?”
“Right!” grinned the old printer. “One E—two D’s to the left—an I to the right—and then another E. See how easy it is? Once you smart up on it you can tell what a fellow’s settin’ up clear across the room. I remember once—”
“Eddie!”
The old man and the child looked quickly toward the street door. The latter’s father was glaring at Miggins. A gray-templed, well-dressed man, standing incongruously against a background of small-town street.
“Haven’t I told you not to come in here?”
“Yes, sir,” came meekly from the boy. He moved hesitatingly toward his father. “But Mr. Miggins is very nice, Father. He’s showing me how to—”
“That’s enough! Your mother is waiting for you in the car.”
“Now see here, Mr. Trent!” Miggins slid off his high stool as the boy vanished through the doorway. “I’ve had just about enough of this!”
“Not half as much as you’re going to get!” Trent took a step forward into the room. “We don’t want men like you in this town, Miggins. You’re a bad influence on the community.”
“Bad influence!” roared Miggins—and gave vent to a flow of epithets that were surcharged with brimstone and sacrilege. Trent’s face grew white and taut as the horrific verbiage snapped and crackled from the old printer’s drawn lips. “You and that idiot Jake Stanton across the street! Look at ’im over there—standin’ at his window, his face slit from ear to ear. He knows you’re over here givin’ me hell! A printer, huh? Why, that knuckle-knotted, wart-fingered, ink-splashin’ idiot couldn’t print his own footstep in a tub o’ mud! Laugh at me, will he?” Miggins started for the door. The banker caught his arm.
“Now listen to me, Miggins! I’ve just come from Stanton. I told him the people in this town were outraged at the indecorous language you two hurled at each other day after day. Starting today, both of you get just one week to refrain from these disgusting verbal battles. If you fail, then I am going to put in one of the finest-equipped newspapers and job plants in this town and drive both of you out of business.”
Trent turned and walked out of the print shop. Miggins’ smoldering eyes watched him through the side window; saw him disappear into the next building, an imposing structure that housed the local bank.
So that’s the way it was, huh? Going to make it tough just because he didn’t like Jake Stanton and Jake didn’t like him. Well, Trent was a man of his word, and once he had made a threat he’d see it through if it was the last thing he ever did.
* * * *
The week rolled by and not once did the two men subjugate the townsfolk to the unprintable or unspeakable word.
Trent, the banker, beamed inwardly—and a printing house salesman, out of Los Angeles, returned to his home office a most dejected man.
“You don’t have to thank me,” said Trent to Steven Burnett, owner of the town’s largest department store, as the latter shoved a sheaf of bills and a sack of silver through the wicket. “I knew I had to be firm with both of them. There is no excuse for such profanity in a city as respectable as ours.”
The young cashier just back of Trent smiled as he toiled over a small fortune that represented the pay roll of the Vitrified Brick Plant. He smiled at the positive manner of his boss but deep in his heart he commiserated with the two fiery old printers. His father used to swear like that—and they didn’t come any finer.
A low, rakish car rolled into the town’s main street. It stopped in front of the bank. Four men got out. Sleek, well-dressed young fellows who threw a glance about them as they sauntered across the sidewalk. Two entered the bank and two went into Miggins’ adjoining print shop.
“Morning!” greeted Miggins, sliding down from his stool. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”
“Plenty,” grinned the man nearest him. The end of a revolver suddenly-rubbed up against the printer’s faded vest. “Get right back up on that stool an’ keep workin’. All right, Joe, see if you can get that side door opened.”
“Say—you can’t do this!” spluttered Miggins, his rheumy eyes widened with fright. “This is a holdup, you know.”
“Not for you, it ain’t,” was the snarling reply. “We’re just goin’ to crack that crib next door, that’s all. You don’t seem to remember me, do you, Pop?” Despite his fear, Miggins threw a studied look at the man’s lean features.
“Sure—sure. Now I do. You’re that young squirt that come in last week. Talked to me about some handbills.”
“Brilliant,” grinned the man. “And also about the layout o’ this joint. Nice of you, Pop. Now go through the motions of workin’.”
The old printer took him at his word. Passers-by saw him industriously swinging his right hand from type case to stick.
The second man had wasted no time in the back part of the room. The side door which once had served as an entranceway into the rear of the bank was soon jimmied open. And the man disappeared to join his pals.
Miggins heard frightened voices issuing from the bank. Trent, half hysterical, was begging the robbers not to lock him in the safe.
“We’ll suffocate,” he protested.
“Get in that crib!” growled an angry voice. “Come on now—in you go!” Miggins wished he could do something—and then again he was glad he couldn’t. Why should he feel sorry for Trent? A dictator, that’s what he was. Sticking his nose into other people’s business. ...Yes, but how about Eddie? After all, he was a swell kid and at least entitled to one father. Be kind of hard on him.
Miggins’ eyes wandered. He saw Jake across the street, plugging away at his type case. The latter looked over, saw Miggins and snarled. Miggins began to whistle softly—and his hand moved from section to section of the type case.
“Well, we got it, Snake.” The second man reappeared through the side door. “An easy forty grand or I don’t know my right elbow.” He turned and looked back into the bank. “All right, guys—through this way with it.”
Miggins watched the men stagger in under their heavy load. He saw them cover the box of money with some of the printed matter scattered about on his shelves. Then they started for the door.
“You’d better come along, Pop,” commanded the one referred to as Snake. “Keep talkin’ to us about printin’—see? No smart stuff or we’ll drill you!”
Miggins followed them to the car. He remembered mumbling something about thanking them for their patronage—and then he heard the crack of a gun. A bullet whistled by his ear. The box fell with a thud to the sidewalk. Snake dropped like a stricken ox. Miggins looked back over his shoulder. There he was, standing in the middle of the street —Jake Stanton. Blazing away with an old-fashioned army rifle.
“Drop, you idiot!” screamed Jake to Miggins. “You’re spoilin’ my aim!” Miggins dropped.
The bank robbers were game enough. They flashed their guns but they were a trifle late. The deadly carbine mowed them down. The last one staggered to the car, spitting blood as he ran. Jake let him step onto the running board— then the carbine spoke again.
“Another minute and we would have been dead,” said Trent, wringing Jake Stanton’s hand. His eyes were full of tears. “How can I ever repay you?”
“Thank him,” said Jake, pointing to Miggins, who was biting into a plug of tobacco. “On second thought, you’d better thank yoreself. If you hadn’t stopped me an’ him from cussin’ each other out loud, the fool never would have thought about cussin’ me from his type case. That’s how he spelt out yore bank was bein’ robbed.”
THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY HERE, by James Michael Ullman
As soon as he pulled into the busy downtown street from the parking garage, Herb Crain knew something was wrong. The car seemed unaccountably sluggish. Moreover, the ride was springier than it should be, the engine was too noisy, and at the first red light his foot went down too far on the brake pedal.
“What the hell,” he said.
Beside him, his wife Rose, a short, dumpy woman, scowled. “What’s the trouble now?” she asked. “You’ve been complaining all night. At the restaurant, the meat was cold. At the theater, we were in a draft. And when we had the after-dinner drink, the service was too slow. I don t mind telling you, I’m fed up. After all this is our 34th wedding anniversary. Why are you spoiling it for me? I think—”
“Yeah, sure,” Herb said in an abstracted way. He was a trim, white haired, bantam-sized man in his late fifties, with an affectation for the bow ties he’d worn in his young manhood. Over the years, he had grown so accustomed to Rose’s constant critiques of his behavior that they now made virtually no impression on him.
“But there’s something funny about this car,” he went on. “It doesn’t act right.”
“Ridiculous. You’re so finicky—all those tune-ups, the time you waste poking around under the hood. If you’d spend just half that time thinking about what lies ahead for us...”
The light changed. Herb pressed hard on the gas pedal, but again the response was sluggish.
“...we’d be better off,” Rose continued. “You’re retiring soon. Your pension and Social Security won’t add up to much. You never did start that investment program you’ve always been talking about, so we’ll have to—”
“I,” Herb announced, “am going to stop for a minute.”
“That’s crazy. This is a no-parking boulevard.”
“I don’t care. I want a better look at this car because all of a sudden I’m not sure it is our car.”
Rose was incredulous. “What are you talking about? Five hours ago we drove this car into that garage and they gave us a claim check. Five minutes ago we gave them the claim check and they gave us back the car. The same make, model, year, color, everything. Here...” She opened the glove compartment. “Here’s all our things, just as we left them. Road maps, the first-aid kit, the flashlight, pennies for the parking meters...” She closed the compartment and looked into the back seat. “And there’s the old blanket, so the dog won’t muddy the upholstery.”
The Cutthroats and Criminals Megapack Page 12