Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  His voice squeaked. “You mean to say I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars right here in my pockets?”

  “I mean you have.”

  “Then who… ?” he glanced at the mirror again—and now he was afraid.

  Chillingly afraid.

  The girl said, “If you turn in, the firemen will call the cops—and they’ll get it, after all.”

  “Corrupt police,” he murmured bitterly.

  “Corrupt police, nothing! They were just carrying out orders. It’s somebody bigger than cops, who would get that money—or a piece of it.”

  For a moment, he merely drove. He had started at a careful thirty. He had notched it up to thirty-five, from nervousness. He dropped back, as self-discipline.

  “The car behind us,” she went on, after a pause, “could be a lot of people. But it is most likely somebody who knew the police were going to spring their raid early in order to snatch Double-O’s money. And that, most likely, would mean the Maroon Gang. Have you ever heard of them?”

  “Yes, I have,” he said jerkily. “There’s an excellent monograph by Longreve and Bilchard on the Maroon Gang. Organized in the prohibition era by a man named—”

  “Never mind the lecture! If that’s who it is—and if they think we have the money—which they must—we’ll be lucky if we’re alive tomorrow morning.”

  He turned into Dade Boulevard—the tranquil canal on one side, the empty, night-hung golf course on the other. He cast a reluctant glance at the fire station.

  Thought, he kept assuring himself, was imperative. The men, in the following car were—by his own definition—virtually incapable of thought. He found, however, that thinking was difficult, under these circumstances.

  For one thing, he could not drive up to the nearest police station, like any ordinary citizen in distress. That would mean some sort of infamous “confiscation” of the funds now in their care. Illegal funds, to be sure, but Professor Burke disliked to surrender a quarter of a million dollars either to hostile gangsters or corrupt politicians.

  He drove out onto the first of the many bridges which connect the Venetian Islands with Miami and Miami Beach.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Think,” he said. “It’s too late! My house isn’t far ahead. If we go there, they’ll get us there. If we go on, they’ll stop us—probably in the dark stretch where the street divides.”

  Up ahead, at the side of the road, a red eye gleamed. A siren growled.

  Instinctively, he slowed. There were signals to show that one of the two drawbridges on the causeway was about to be raised. With the tail of his eye, he caught sight of a moonlight excursion boat moving toward the span.

  The girl said, “Step on it!”

  He did so—as he saw what she meant.

  The bridge siren growled loudly. He perceived that they would get under the first gate. He heard a bellow from the bridge tender. Their wheels hummed on the steel lattice of the lift-spans. The far gate ticked the top of the car. The headlights of the pursuing sedan wobbled as brakes stopped it. The bridge tender blew a whistle. But they were going fast. Across Rivo Alto Island—across more bridges—and onto Di Lido. The car behind them was held up.

  He stopped—under a street light.

  The girl moaned. “Keep going! We might duck them in Miami ! We’ve got a couple of minutes, anyhow!”

  The professor spoke tersely. “In the glove compartment! Postage stamps! When I put them in my pockets, they stick together in this steamy climate. When I put them in the compartment, I forget them.” He had taken out his fountain pen. He also took out his wallet. He transferred its contents into the least bulky envelope. “This Mr. Double-O Sanders’ address?”

  She had opened the compartment. “He lives at the Bombay Royale Hotel on Collins Avenue.” At their side, she saw the green, metal mailbox. It was for this—not light—that he had stopped. He was already scribbling.

  He handed one to her and she licked it. She pressed firmly, with a shaky hand.

  “It’s pretty heavy …”

  “Stick a lot of stamps on it! You’ll find fifty threes, there.”

  She tore, and stuck on, a lot. The next was ready. Then the third. She ran with them to the box and hurried back to the car. He let in the clutch.

  “Turn right at the next corner. What an idea!”

  He drove two blocks. They could hear the siren purr as the bridge opened. She pointed out a large house, looming whitely among still larger trees. A wall surrounded it—a white wall with an iron gate.

  He swung the car around and parked on the grass, under the thick limbs of a sea grape. He left his lights on, purposely. “Do they know you live here?”

  “If it’s anybody from the Maroon Gang, probably.”

  “Then, listen,” he said. “They don’t know me. We’ve driven very slowly—and rather erratically—all the way. If they know you live at this address, they will probably drive by here. We will have had very little time to dispose of a large sum of money. For all they can be sure of, we may never have had the money. Our drive together may have had a—romantic—rather than a commercial—reason. If we were now to give that possibility some verisimilitude… .”

  In the dashboard light, her handsome eyes flickered a little. Her hands went to her hair and did something. It tumbled around her shoulders like suddenly sickled wheat. She wiped her lips on a small handkerchief and dropped it. “Might as well look as if we’d prepared for it,” she said.

  Then she kissed him.

  It was necessary to get the right amount of lipstick—not too much, but enough—in the right places, she thought.

  Cars began moving on the Venetian Way, two blocks below. One slowed, and turned. It was the large, dark sedan. It picked up speed—evidently as their lights were observed.

  “You better have your arms around me,” she said.

  “Do you always—kiss people that way?”

  The sedan crossed to the wrong side of the road, and stopped, bumper touching bumper. Five men got out, fast. They had handkerchiefs tied under their eyes. All of them held guns. One—the fattest-said, “Out, Miss Maxson, please. Out, whoever you are, if you please. Be quick!”

  The professor spoke indignantly. “Really, I haven’t a dime. Well—a dime, perhaps.

  Some change. My bills—frittered away at the club. The young lady—”

  “Out!” said the fat man.

  Professor Burke got out. He was swiftly searched.

  “You will stand between our car and the wall. If a car comes on this street, kneel.

  If you yell—zut!”

  The accent was French. But what kind of French? Belgian? The Professor waited for more words, as he and the girl moved between the wall and the big, black car.

  “Now, Miss Maxson. Where is the money?”

  “What money?”

  The fat man with the accent slapped her face.

  Professor Burke had never before seen such a thing. He walked up to the Frenchman. “See here, my good man. More brutality of that sort and I shall either compel you to shoot me or make mincemeat of you. Violence is intolerable. Violence to a: lady is beyond countenancing.”

  There was a long silence. Finally the, fat leader said, “Just who are you?”

  “Professor Burke, the socio-psychologist.”

  There was more thought. “Who is La Cavour, then?”

  The “ou” sound was Germanic. Alsatian, the Professor suddenly felt sure.

  “Phillippe La Cavour is a second-rate French criminal psychologist, born in Lyon, and guilty of some atrociously superficial hypothesizing—”

  “What, precisely, are you doing here?”

  “Isn’t it rather painfully obvious?”

  The fat man turned. “Miss Maxson, you were the only one in Double-O’s club not on the list to be taken to Headquarters. I assumed you would have the club’s valuables.”

  “You assumed a lot.”

  The masked face turned farther
. “The car—boys! Upholstery and all. A couple of you make sure they didn’t toss it over the wall.”

  Time passed.

  Professor Burke tried to back up far enough to see the license number. A wobble of the gun and a soft, “Ah, no!” stopped him. He looked the car over, trying to fix the details in his mind. He was not very good at the years of cars. The wheels showed traces of a white mark which makes sticky ruts on certain minor roads in South Florida. Some vegetation was caught in one of the door hinges. By leaning against the car and clinging to that hinge, he was able to remove a sample of the vegetation. Hedge or driveway shrubbery, he thought. He shifted his position and put it in his pocket.

  The sound of upholstery being rent by a knife came from the coupe. Rustlings were heard as two of the men inspected the ground under the shrubbery behind the wall.

  A car approached. They knelt. The men ripping up the coupe put out their flashlights and sat down. The car swept on.

  Eventually, the fat man sighed. “I could, of course, have made an incorrect guess.”

  “Several,” the professor said emphatically.

  The Frenchman ignored that. “Naturally, I regret the damage to your car. You seem, however, to be a man fond of unusual risk.” He looked thoughtfully at the girl. “So you will not mind this comparatively trifling misfortune. Good night, Professor.”

  “Bon soir,” the professor said. “Mauvais rêves.”

  The four men had given up. Their leader beckoned with his gun. They climbed into the sedan. Their car could be heard on the now-silent causeway as it gathered speed.

  “Come in,” the girl said, after they stopped listening. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

  “Thanks, but I think not. Bedelia will be worried.”

  “Bedelia? The little woman?”

  “My landlady,” he said in an injured tone.

  She kissed him suddenly. ”Thanks. See you.” The gate hanged behind her.

  It was uncomfortable, driving on the hacked upholstery, with bare springs protruding here and there.

  Chapter VI

  Men who receive their early, ethical training from a woman and who, as a result, respond automatically to feminine suggestion, are inclined to resent the fact and to feel dominated. Professor Burke could not repress a sensation of almost childish glee as he drove up to Bedelia’s home.

  The night was still, the stars were wan but numerous, and the air was sweet with the various flowers that had accumulated around Bedelia’s house from years of trading among garden club members. A light glowed in her living room-like the light that burns in windows for sailors. When his wheels touched the drive, a light came on in the car porte. Bedelia appeared, enormous, anxious, and swathed in decorous kimono.

  “Good heavens, Martin, it’s nearly two o’clock!”

  He stepped out of the car. She saw the lipstick and followed it here and there on his composed features. Then she saw the ripped upholstery.

  “Mercy!” she gasped. “What was she—a tigress?”

  Over a pot of coffee, he told her the story. He omitted, however, his first reactions to Miss Maxson and his later sensations when she had kissed him. These were, beyond doubt, the most important elements.

  “So—as you can see—” he summed up, “the whole fantastic affair demonstrated that mere intelligence is sufficient to deal even with criminals of the stature of that fat Alsatian.”

  “Plus a lucky break in the matter of a drawbridge… .”

  “I include that. The causeway drawbridges are constantly being raised for passing boats. Quite frequently, even at night. But here—also—it was a matter of intelligence.

  Miss Maxson’s. She simply capitalized on an opportunity.”

  “And if the bridge hadn’t gone up?”

  “We would doubtless have contrived other measures.”

  She poured more coffee and stared at him. “Martin, do you realize that you carried your life in your hands? For such a sum—for a fraction of it—a gang like that would have murdered you both without a scruple!”

  “Possibly.” He glimmered his eyes at her. “But ‘all’s well that ends well.’ I shall be able to make the experience into a separate lecture. I have here materials to demonstrate the essential stupidity of the criminal, the superiority of the resourceful mind, and the futility of such imbecile pastimes as gambling.”

  “But it wasn’t! You won eight hundred dollars!”

  “Not ‘won,’ Bedelia. Dishonorably accumulated. And it’s gone.”

  “You mean—you don’t expect to get it back?”

  “Certainly not! Double-O Sanders is, after all, a gambler. I enclosed my winnings-and the balance of the money I had from you-simply because I hated it to fall into the hands of whoever operated the following car.”

  “And you aren’t going back to the Club Egret?”

  “Whatever for?”

  She slowly shook her head. There were times when what he regarded as clear thinking, or proper behavior, seemed obtuse to her—and more than obtuse: downright dumb.

  The morning was clear and rather cool: towards dawn, a very slight high pressure front moved in from the northwest. People had wood fires going on their hearths and in iron stoves. These sent over the inhabited rim of the peninsula a drift of pine smoke which carried far out to sea. Inland, the pungent aroma drifted over the campus of the University, about which there was a definite vacation motif.

  Professor Burke conducted his last two recitation classes with unusual vivacity.

  His students, being themselves in good spirit, attributed it to the same cause: imminence of the holidays. Had they known that on the previous night he had defied and successfully outsmarted five members of the Maroon Gang, with the aid of a blonde who looked not unlike a movie star, they would have been flabbergasted beyond precedent.

  They had, of course, no such knowledge. He intended to divulge it months later—when he was thoroughly detached from it. A professor could mention gambling “last year” with decorum. “Last night” was far too recent.

  At noon, he finished his seminar on freshman socio-psychology and started across the footpath through the Bermuda grass to the College Inn Tearoom. Here, he encountered Miss Marigold Macey—because she had been waiting for him.

  “Hello,” she said. “I wanted to ask you a couple of questions.” This was a mild deceit for he was meant to presume the questions referred to his science.

  He said, “I was just about to have lunch. Perhaps… ?”

  “That would be divine!”

  Professor Burke did not, as a rule, dine with students. Their “gay banter” seemed, to him, insufferable twaddle. Miss Macey, being somewhat older, might be looked upon as an exception.

  The tearoom smelled like the hot raisins in its infinitudes of muffins-a large chamber with oak pillars where the waitresses were semicostumed in starched, colored aprons. They found, luckily, a table for two.

  Miss Macey had seen to it that her curly-casual hair-do was in proper condition, her lipstick was on straight, and her white sandals were immaculate. As she had said to Wally Stratton, she was not an extraverted Southern belle. Thus she was not able to sit on his desk casually—pat his hand, hold his arm, call him “honey” in a becloyed manner, bat her eyes at him, or switch herself about. The circumstances did not leave her without certain resources.

  After they had ordered lunch, she looked up at him with a polka tempo in her large, brown eyes. “I’m getting a great deal out of your course, Professor Burke.”

  “I’m delighted!”

  “I really wanted to apologize for being so impertinent, yesterday. I wish I hadn’t been.”

  If she only knew! he thought. He beamed at her. “Argument is the staircase on which knowledge climbs.” It sounded fuddy-duddyish. He wondered what fuddy-duddy had said it—and realized he had coined the maxim himself! “You know,” he said, in a less sententious tone, “it’s very dull when there isn’t any—criticism or resistance. You get the feeling that you’
re not really teaching anybody anything. Just setting up echoes from sources that won’t retain the sound at all.”

  “I never thought of that. It must be discouraging.” She returned to her “impertinence.” “What I did yesterday was very unfair. Nobody in his right mind expects a professor to do the sorts of things he presents in theory.”

  He found himself trembling, slightly. Miss Macey possessed the power to affect him. And what she had just said supplied a perfect opening for an exchange of such affects. He ate a forkful of creamed chipped beef. “As a matter of fact,” he finally said, “and in the strictest confidence, I—understated the case yesterday. I wouldn’t want it to get beyond you—”

  Her lips were parted. The expression in her eyes now was entirely uncontrived.

  “Of course not!”

  “—but I’ve had a good deal more—ah—vivid experience with the world of crime-with gangsters, gambling, and so on-than most people.”

  “No! You—Professor?”

  He raised one shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve won—and lost—” he added hurriedly, “at roulette. Not—recently, of course. I’ve seen gunplay—”

  “Gunplay! Where?” He was unsure that the use of firearms merely for hold-up constituted “gunplay” in the technical sense. He hastened away from the subject. “One or two of the nation’s foremost criminals know me. At least one is somewhat beholden to me.”

  “Why—that’s the most wonderful ever!”

  He frowned. “Wonderful?” He was beginning to feel that he had overstepped. But the effect on Miss Macey was a pleasing radiance. The brevity of his sleep on the previous night had, no doubt, made him slightly toxic—and the toxins had perhaps produced a lightheadedness.

  “Wonderful—of course,” she said. “But you know”—her eyes were disturbingly bright—“I think I sort of suspected it. I had a hunch that inside—underneath—you were entirely different.”

  “No man,” he replied, “keeps all the cards of his personality face up.” He felt the figure was particularly apt. “No man—and especially, no professor.”

  “Couldn’t you come over to my house, sometime? Dad and Mother would love to meet you. I’ve often talked to them about you. Or—wouldn’t it be fair for me to get an extracurricular education from you?”