by A. A. Glynn
I grabbed his fat neck from behind, crooking my forearm over his gizzard and yanking him backwards towards the french window. From the corner of my eye I could see Joanne over by the window. She had moved fast and was already unfastening the clasp.
Slats and the kid mobster froze into static positions, holding their guns. My move in grabbing Shelmerdine had confused them.
I backed to the window, dragging Shelmerdine’s weight with me. I put the mouth of the gun behind one of his ears.
Then I spotted the package of papers in the centre of Shelmerdine’s desk. I should have grabbed that before I grabbed Shelmerdine.
I must have still been woozy, not quite out of the character of Big Chief Hole-in-the-Head.
“Run for the car on the main driveway,” I shouted to Joanne Kilvert, and I heard the clatter of her heels on the paving outside the window.
Then I gave the whole of my bluff away, proving that no copies of the original papers had been sent to the Crime Commission, by angling back over the room, prodding Shelmerdine before me, to retrieve the package.
And, cautiously, the door was being opened by the remainder of the mobsters who brought me to the mansion and who had obviously been waiting in the hall.
CHAPTER SIX
I muffed it badly.
The very fact that I was going after the package of papers on Shelmerdine’s desk was proof that my story about copies of the documents being on the way to the Crime Commission was so much bluff.
I kept on pushing my hostage towards the big desk anyway, holding the automatic close to his ear.
The mugs who came spilling into the room halted in their tracks when they saw what was going on. Tescachelli had managed to pick himself up and was standing uncertainly in the centre of the room, fingering his streaming nose. Slats and the youthful hood, like the armed monkeys who came rushing in from the passageway outside, stood motionless with guns in their hands.
“Don’t try shooting, any of you,” I warned them. “In the first place, Mr. Shelmerdine objects to anything so sordid as gunfire wakening his wife and kid; in the second, one attempt to shoot from you monkeys ends with a slug in Shelmerdine’s head.”
I reached the table while the hoods stood around petrified.
At my back I felt a light summer breeze drifting in through the open french window, reminding me that Joanne was somewhere out in the night.
Shelmerdine spotted my fast talk as so much bluff when he realised why I was shoving him back towards the desk. He started to gurgle something: “The papers—he was ly—”
I turned off his gurgle by forcing my forearm harder against his Adam’s apple.
I was faced with a problem when it came to taking the package from the centre of the desk. I had to have a free hand to do so and, holding the big-shot mobster by the neck with my left arm and my gun in my right hand, meant I had to forfeit one or the other.
So I got rid of Shelmerdine. Crooking my knee into the small of his back, I loosed my grip about his neck and shoved him hard, in the direction of the frozen hoodlums over by the door.
I gave him all the force I could muster, and he went staggering across the room as though he had been fired from a catapult, hit the cluster of armed hoods and sprawled to the floor, panting and making a noise like a wounded duck.
I grabbed the package from the desk, turned and hared for the open french window. There was a confused scuffle at my back, and I heard Shelmerdine wheeze something about no shooting.
But one of the hoodlums ignored his warning and fired just as I was running out of the window. I heard the slug go spanging into the ornate beading close to the drapes.
That was the signal for the remainder of the hoods to open up. Shelmerdine’s taboo on shooting was thrown to the winds and, just as I was clear of the window, running out beyond the oblong of light thrown from the lighted room, a crackle of gunfire zipped into the darkness.
I was on a lawn in the darkness, running in a mad zigzag, and trying to figure out the geography of the place to find the main drive and the car.
I came to a clump of bushes, heard a cacophony of yells at my back and ducked low as a gun barked. Still running and still crouched, I dived into the shrubbery and went crashing through a thick tangle of branches. Whoever was coming after me was close behind, but I didn’t look back. I kept on beating my way through the clump of greenery, clutching the package of papers in one hand and the gun taken from Tescachelli in the other.
I came out on a path. Up ahead, a voice called: “This way, Lantry!” A feminine voice. Joanne.
I went haring across the path in the direction of the voice. The hoods were crashing through the shrubbery behind me. After the path came a strip of lawn and, beyond that, I caught sight of the car, standing on the main drive with its motor running.
Joanne had reached the car and already had it warmed up. I could see her blanched face watching from the window.
I zigzagged for the car; the pony express never moved faster.
Another gun blasted behind me and the slug went sailing past my ear, like a hot hornet—and too near. I figured it was time I did some shooting, so I turned as I ran and blasted a couple of shots at the hoodlums at my back, then concentrated on zigzagging for the car.
I reached it. Joanne Kilvert was holding the off-side door open, and she put the saloon into motion as I threw myself into it. The car was in the position in which the Shelmerdine mobsters had left it when they took me into the house. It was facing the mansion, and Joanne had to put it into a sharp swerve to bring it around to face the big ornamental gateway down there at the end of that driveway as long as 42nd Street.
A fusillade of shots zipped around the saloon as she completed the circle. One of them starred the rear window.
“Give it the gun!” I yelled to the girl, as she pulled the saloon round for the straight run. Then I leaned from my window and fired two or three times at the vague figures out in the darkness.
Mrs. Shelmerdine and the youngster would be well awake by this time, I figured. I wondered whether she was at that moment stalking downstairs in her dressing-robe to start henpecking Athelstan.
Joanne Kilvert was a good driver. She jockeyed the car along the length of the drive without using the lights. We made the ornamental gates. “Head for anywhere but Rollinsville,” I told the girl, “the cops there are Shelmerdine’s puppets—and they have damned big clubs!”
She swung the vehicle off in the opposite direction to that which led to Rollinsville.
“Where will this road take us?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I never had a lot of time to study the geography of these parts.”
She spoke thickly. The cold she had caught as a result of the soaking rain of the previous day was a heavy one, and she was still clad in only the light summer dress.
She was bearing up well, but, with that cold, she must have been feeling even worse than me—and I felt like something somebody had chewed and spat out. I was hungry for one thing; the last time I ate was at the Kay’s house where we breakfasted. I guessed Athelstan Shelmerdine’s hospitality would not run to providing the girl with a meal while she was his unwilling houseguest.
There was a panicky confusion racing around in my head. I had the package of incriminating papers in my pocket, and I had to get them to the Crime Commission somehow. At the same time, I was wanted in connection with the shooting at South Bend. The four-State search system would be in action. I was hot stuff, and I had a pocketful of hot stuff that had to be placed before the Commission somehow. Then there was the girl.
Shelmerdine thought she and I knew too much about his activities, and his way of dampening our ardour would be concrete weights for two, and a couple of splashes in some quiet corner of Lake Michigan when the moon was hiding behind a cloud.
“Boy,” I thought, “were two people ever in such a mess?”
Joanne kept driving for a while. The road was not too good, but we could not risk using the headlamps. There was a silence behind us
that was far too ominous for my peace of mind.
I took over the wheel, and we burned up the road for several miles without seeing another vehicle, a person, or a lighted window. Joanne sat huddled on the seat beside me, looking a little scared, but nothing like the jittery youngster I picked up in the rainstorm.
I wondered how things were with Jack and Beth Kay in South Bend. If all had gone smoothly, Jack would have contacted Walt Toland in Chicago by that time, and there should soon be some action from my Chicago branch office. Driving blind through the night, along that rutted road, I tried to figure out a plan of action.
Chicago was the obvious place to make for with that red hot package, but we would have to reach the Windy City by making a detour around South Bend. Anywhere in the Midwest was hot for me since that shooting at Jack Kay’s house, but South Bend was the storm centre.
In the gloom I saw a narrow dirt road branching off the one on which I was driving. As I passed it, I realised how it was almost hidden by high, wild hedges on either side. An idea struck me, and I jerked the saloon into reverse.
“What are you doing?” asked Joan Kilvert, alarmed.
“Remember the time we turned up that dirt road when Shelmerdine’s hoodlums were after us yesterday?”
She nodded.
“Well, we’re working the same gimmick, but with variations.”
I pulled the saloon into the opening of the side road. It was little more than a cart track, and the car jounced heavily over ruts and rocks. I pulled it sharply across to the overhanging greenery fringing the road and braked with the windows hard against the shrubbery.
“Okay, we’ll wait here for a little while,” I told Joanne. “Keep your eyes glued on that rear window, and I predict you’ll see some activity.”
About ten minutes ticked by. We sat in the darkness, twisted about in our seats, watching the road we had left.
Powerful headlights streamed along it suddenly as the roar of engines sounded from the direction of Shelmerdine’s little palace.
Two cars, heavy shadows with white lights raying from them, went rocketing by, disappeared into the darkness, and the combined tune of their powerful motors died away.
“The dogs are out, girlie,” I grunted. “It’s my guess Shelmerdine has sent his search parties to every point of the compass. This territory is going to be plenty hot for two people whose names I need not mention. How many cars are there around Shelmerdine’s place?”
“Five or six, I guess,” Joanne replied. “That’s counting this one.”
“Which means there are at least two more scouting around some other area. Then, there are a bundle of cops in Rollinsville who belong to Shelmerdine. We’ll have to watch out for those boys.”
“What’s our next move?” she asked.
“To get to Chicago pronto, like a couple of mice getting out of a closet full of cats. I told Jack Kay to call Walt Toland, head of my Chicago agency, and tell him what had happened, so the chances are we’ll have some World Wide operators around here in a few hours. I might be able to contact them in some way, but our best hope is to keep moving Chicago-wards.”
* * * *
We sat in the car for about twenty minutes more. There was no sign of life on the road ahead of us, and the land was shrouded in silent darkness. I decided to risk moving from the hiding-place, started up the motor and sent the saloon nosing slowly forwards, to bring it into a turn that set its face towards the road we had left earlier.
I still drove without lights. Clear of the rutted minor road, I headed in the direction we had originally taken once more. I had a secret dread of encountering the two cars that Shelmerdine had sent in that direction, returning. I guess Joanne had the same fear by the way she peered through the windshield and into the darkness ahead, but she kept her fear well hidden.
At length, we came to another small road, branching off to the left.
I turned the car into it.
“I’m going to try angling around to the north on a wide detour,” I told the girl. “We’ll keep to the smaller roads and try to make Chicago, avoiding the towns around here and South Bend.”
She didn’t reply. I glanced at the slight figure on the seat beside me and realised she was asleep.
I thought of the strain she had been through during the previous few hours and did not disturb her. She was curled up in the seat breathing gently, like a tired child. I remembered the way she stood under that tree when we hid from the Shelmerdine mugs in the rain of the previous night. Anybody’s kid sister, but so darned full of guts!
She was getting at me through the chinks in my armour again, and I knew that the trickiest chore Mike Lantry ever faced was right before him—to get that girl out of Athelstan Shelmerdine’s territory alive and with the package of papers for the Crime Commission’s attention.
I drove steadily, still without lights, along that bumpy side road. As I drove, I thought of the mess I had put myself into, with every cop for miles looking for my scalp. I thought of the dirty piece of underworld I had virtually dragged out of the gutter and into the home of the Kays. I thought of Lucy waiting in New York to meet Joanne at the railroad station. I thought of Walt Toland and the boys at Chicago who, if Jack had put my message through, would come snooping around the vicinity of Shelmerdine’s house. But we couldn’t wait that long.
Dawn began to split the sky and gradually flushed upwards.
Joanne was still sleeping.
Against the rosy sweep of the dawning day, I saw the barns of a farm in the distance and drove towards them almost unconsciously. At the back of my mind floated the notion that there might be a telephone at the farm, and I could call Toland in Chicago with news of my position.
Then a bolder thought struck me. The farm was isolated, well off the beaten track; it might be possible for us to buy a meal there if we carried out a little play-acting.
I jockeyed the saloon along the country road until we reached the point where the yard of the farm opened on to it.
There was nothing special about the place. A clutter of high barns and smaller buildings ringed the yard, which was littered with a scatter of milk cans and crates. A depression vintage Ford truck stood in the centre of the yard, half-loaded with hay bales, and a horse who looked as old as Methuselah’s cat regarded us from over the half-door of a rickety stable.
I gave Joanne a nudge, and she rose to wakefulness, looking around her in alarm. I braked the car close to the farmyard gate.
“I’m going to try for a meal here,” I said. “We’ll have to pretend we’re married. We’re heading for South Bend in a roundabout way, and we’ve come up from Kokomo. Call me Al, or something, just in case these farm folk have heard any police broadcasts. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed.
I straightened my tie and tried to make my suit look a little less tired. There was a weight in either pocket of my jacket: the gun in one and the package of papers in the other.
Joanne rubbed the sleep from her eyes, straightened rebel strands of hair with her slender fingers, and smoothed the wrinkles out of her dress.
“If only I had a compact,” she lamented, gazing at herself in the driving mirror.
“At a time like this,” I snorted, “please don’t trouble about trivialities.”
“Trivialities,” she said, shocked, as if powder compacts were the most important things in the world. It came out “triviadities” because of her cold in the head, and I grinned.
“Women! C’mon, let’s take the stage.”
We walked across the yard. The farmhouse was a white frame structure standing off to one side. We mounted four plank steps giving on to a porch which had a rocking-chair standing on it and roses climbing prettily around its rails. Knowing the way farming folk live, I guessed it was not too early to find some sign of life around the house, so I tapped politely at the white-painted door.
There was a shuffling of feet on the other side of the door, and it swung open slowly.
Standing there
was an old man who looked like the dear old dad of the heroine in a TV soap opera. He wore faded blue coveralls, what hair he had was snow-white, and he had a pair of steel-rimmed glasses balanced on the tip of a button of a nose. He regarded us with mild blue eyes, faded to about the same shade as his coveralls.
I turned on the charm of a nice guy in a TV soap opera, just to match his part. Joanne stood demurely beside me.
“Excuse me, sir, I wonder whether my wife and I might buy some breakfast from you. We’re heading for South Bend, and we got a little way off the beaten track.”
The old man beamed.
“Why, sure,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and bellowed: “Hey, ma, it’s two people wanting to know if we can fix ’em breakfast.”
From deep in the soul of the house a woman’s voice said: “Yes, bring ’em in.”
The farmer ushered us into a neat room. A large table stood in the centre, and the indications were that breakfast was just over.
A buxom woman issued from a doorway across the room and regarded Joanne and myself for a moment, then re-entered her sanctum. The farmer nodded to a couple of ladder-backed chairs, and we seated ourselves. The old-timer led off with some small talk about the weather, then asked where we came from.
“Kokomo,” I told him.
He nodded and said he’d been there a couple of times.
The woman entered again. This time she was carrying food: eggs, ham, cereal, bread, biscuits, and coffee. I didn’t know how she contrived to rustle up breakfast as fast as that at such short notice, but it smelled good, and I wasn’t going to ask any questions.
We ate.
The farmer’s wife seated herself in one of the ladder-backed chairs and watched us. She was a stout woman in a black dress and white apron. In spite of her buxom build, there was a certain prudishness about her. She looked at Joanne often.
She sniffed a couple of times, too.
“Do you have a telephone here?” I asked the farmer. “I’d like to make a call as soon as possible.”
He nodded to a small door which I hadn’t noticed before.