by A. A. Glynn
I felt distinctly uneasy.
“Ain’t that old man Whitley’s heap?” asked the cop, nodding to the truck.
I leaned from the cab window, keeping my head artfully low and my face turned so he couldn’t see the scar.
“Yeah,” I told him over the din of the motor.
An amused quirk came to the corners of the policeman’s mouth.
“Beats me how he keeps that wreck in working order,” he opined.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been dead for some years, I guess, but it’s reluctant to lie down.”
The cop grinned again. He looked as though he might be a friendly guy—if he wasn’t decked up in the uniform of Shelmerdine’s partisan police force, complete with revolver and the inevitable table-leg-sized club.
“You’re new around here, huh?” he asked, looking at me closely. “Don’t recollect seeing you before.”
“I’m Whitley’s new hired man,” I lied, “workin’ for him only a few days.”
The motor of the old rattle-trap went on chugging under the quivering bonnet. The cop went right on looking at me.
I took a sly look at the crossroads. There was a marker pointing in the direction we had come with the legend: “Rollinsville” and another pointing north. It said: “Stokestown and State Highway.” A third arm pointed off along the intersecting road, marked “Uffotsberg.”
My dopy brain began to tick over. I wanted to keep clear of both Uffotsberg and Rollinsville. The state highway, which I could reach by way of the road straight ahead, was the one leading to South Bend and on to Chicago. I was in no hurry to go to South Bend, either, but I might fool the cops in my present get-up and in the old truck.
Meanwhile, I had to get away from this too friendly patrolman.
“What brings Rollinsville police over this far?” I asked innocently.
The motorcycle cop’s eyes widened.
“Ain’t you heard? Every cop for miles is on the look-out for a guy who murdered a fellow in South Bend. The same guy is supposed to have robbed the Shelmerdine mansion last night.”
I gave a meaningless grunt. I figured that maybe the Rollinsville police department was not entirely under the rule of the Shelmerdine combine. The chief and the senior officers would be pawns of Shelmerdine’s political grafting, but there would be a number of square officers. So the story the up-and-up officers had been told was that I had robbed the Shelmerdine home!
I simulated surprise.
“Well, what d’you know!” I exclaimed. “Nobody ever tells me anything.”
“He’s some fool of a private detective playing at being a cop,” the patrolman told me. “We’ll get him sooner or later.”
“Yeah,” I said. I tuned up the motor, indicating that I wanted to be on my way. The cop removed his foot from where he had placed it on the running-board and waved his hand in a cordial farewell.
“So long,” said he.
“So long,” said I.
The truck clattered slowly across the intersecting road, the cop stood at the crossroads watching it go, I could see him in the driving mirror.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I was over the crossroads and hoped the girl was still hidden by the bales of hay.
I kept the truck headed at a steady roll in the direction of Stokestown and the state highway, went about three hundred yards from the crossroads, then trouble caught up with me.
The engine blinked out.
With a shuddering growl, the museum piece came to a stop. I swore under my breath, climbed down from the cab, went around the front and opened the hood.
There was a roar from the direction of the crossroads, I looked along the road and saw the friendly cop coming along on his motorcycle.
“What’s happening?” asked Joanne’s voice from the midst of the hay bales.
“Quiet,” I warned her. “The engine’s acting up and it looks like that cop is coming to offer us some help.”
I was tinkering under the hood when he pulled up beside the old Ford. He put one foot to the ground and sat the purring motorcycle.
“Anything drastic?” he asked.
I had just located the fault, a disconnected lead, probably brought about by the excessive vibration, and was in the act of refastening it. Turning my face about, I looked at the patrolman from under the raised hood.
I was just in time to see his eyes light on my Oxfords, visible under the legs of the old coveralls. Then, I realised that, from this angle, he could see the scar on the side of my face.
His eyes bugged slightly. He swung his leg over the motorcycle, left the machine resting on its stand, and advanced on me. His face was set into hard lines, and he was going after the revolver at his belt.
“Wait a minute, mister,” he began in a voice like hailstones on a tin roof. I didn’t wait a fraction of a minute.
The jig was up, that was obvious, so I came out from under the hood of the old Ford fast, and I came out swinging.
I handed the cop a hard crack across the jaw, which stopped him from going through with drawing his gun. He staggered back towards his purring machine, half sagging at the knees. I went right after him and swung out another fistful of knuckles, taking him square on the point of the chin.
He folded and hit the roadway with a slight groan.
It was a pity; he was a nice, helpful guy, probably one of the best on that lousy Rollinsville force, but he had spotted me, and I couldn’t risk being pulled in.
The cop lay there, sprawled out beside his still buzzing machine, quite still on the ground. One of the hay bales stirred on the rear of the truck, and Joanne’s face peered out of an aperture between two of the bundles.
“What’s happened?” she wanted to know.
“I’ve slugged the cop, knocked him cold. He spotted me, my shoes gave me away first, then he saw the scar on my face.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Get out of here quickly and make sure he takes a long time in getting word of our movements back to his friends.”
I dragged the unconscious cop across the deserted road and laid him out on the grass verge. The big Colt in his holster looked like a better investment against my running into any shooting than the automatic with the half-spent clip I already carried, so I took it and pushed it into the pocket of the coveralls.
Next, I crossed to the motorcycle, cut its motor, pulled out its spark plugs and hurled them far into the field. That would keep him from reaching his buddies in a hurry.
Over where he lay in the grass tract running alongside the road, the cop groaned.
“Too bad it had to happen to a nice guy like you, Clancy,” I said to the half-conscious form. “I guess Chief Richards will fire you for this, but you’d be better off digging ditches than working on that stinking Rollinsville force.”
The cop grunted again and made a feeble movement.
I climbed into the cab of the Ford again after swinging the crank. My temporary repair job on the broken wiring worked. With Joanne Kilvert still hidden in the bales of hay, I piloted the truck in the direction of Stokestown and the state highway.
The weight of the purloined Colt in my coveralls was very comforting.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stokestown.
Not much of a place, but we made it without running into further trouble.
It was another single-street town with brick stores, frame houses, and a little square, shaded by sycamore trees, where the oldsters of the town sat on green-painted benches. It was the sort of place that only came alive on the fourth of July.
The old Ford truck rattled its way along the street and I didn’t see one cop. Uppermost in my mind was the need to contact the Chicago office of World Investigations. The attempt on that ancient phone at the Whitley farmhouse had been hopeless, but I figured there was a chance that I would find a telephone somewhere in this sleepy little burg.
The few folk on the street paid little attention on the old truck with its load of hay bales, I guessed beaten
-up old vehicles, belonging to small farmers, were nothing unusual out in this rural retreat.
I saw an attractive sign swinging outside a neat brick building: “The Busy Bee Café.” It brought tempting visions of hot coffee and, most of all, a telephone. There was an alley to one side of the eating-house, wide enough to take the truck. I decided to risk a call at the café, swung the truck into reverse and backed down the alley. I braked.
The alley was deserted and quiet. Out round the back of the truck, I told Joanne we were taking a rest and helped her out of her hiding place.
She came down off the back of the truck gratefully, brushing wisps of hay from her dress and hair.
We walked cautiously around to the main street and into the café.
There was a counter along one side and a half-asleep youth in a white coat was draped across it. There were half a dozen tables with checkered tablecloths and a small telephone booth was squeezed into one corner.
The youth stirred leisurely into consciousness.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Coffee?” I asked Joanne.
“Coffee,” she agreed.
“Coffee,” I ordered.
The youth yawned and slowly got around to rustling up two cups of coffee. I crossed to the telephone booth while he was about it.
I had just enough nickels for the long-distance call to Chicago. The instrument went through the usual preliminary buzzings and clickings while I stood impatiently staring out of the window of the booth, across the café and out of the window fronting the street.
The Chicago agency answered.
“Lantry,” I announced. “Is that Walt?”
A splutter of surprise came from the other end. “No, this is O’Toole. Walt and four of the boys are running around some part of Indiana looking for you. Your friend in South Bend called and told us where you went. What’s been happening? Where are you?”
“Take it easy, O’Toole,” I said. “Let me do the talking. I’m in a place called Stokestown, a one-horse burg off the state highway. Can you get into radio contact with Walt Toland and his boys?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell him I’m in Stokestown with the girl and the papers. The police are on my tail for shooting a hoodlum in South Bend and the Shelmerdine bunch are after me, too. Tell Walt I’m heading for Chicago in an old Ford truck loaded with hay. I don’t know how long this will last, though. I had to slug a cop, and when he gets to squawking about what happened to him, I expect to have plenty of trouble on my hands.”
“You’re in Stokestown, heading for Chicago in a hay truck, Ford,” checked O’Toole.
“Yeah,” I said, “and tell Toland and his boys to come running in this direction. Shelmerdine threatened to dip the girl and myself into Lake Michigan—with concrete boots. We gave him the slip, but it can’t happen a second time. Oh, and ring Lucy in New York. Tell her she can quit waiting for that train now, the Kilvert girl isn’t coming.”
“Check,” said O’Toole.
There was a concentrated clicking and buzzing. My time was up and I’d had my money’s worth.
I joined Joanne back at the counter. The youth in the white coat was well on the way to becoming half asleep again.
The girl clutched my arm urgently.
“Mike, while you were in the call box, I saw a Cadillac go past the window. It looked like the one belonging to Tescachelli, the one they took me away from South Bend in.”
I felt a cold stab at that and took a sip of coffee.
“Maybe you were mistaken. There are a lot of cars of that type around.”
Her eyes were on the window of the café; outside, Stokestown inhabitants moved slowly about their main street. I drank my coffee slowly, watching passing pedestrians and cars.
I began to wonder whether the cop I slugged had succeeded in contacting his pals; then again, maybe the girl had been mistaken about the Cadillac being Tescachelli’s.
But she wasn’t.
The big Cadillac came nosing into view, moving slowly along like a tired bug. I had a brief glimpse of Ike Tescachelli at the wheel.
Instantly, I realised that when the car had travelled past the café, its occupants had caught sight of the old truck parked in the alley, turned, and travelled back.
It halted close to the kerb on the opposite side of the street. I grabbed Joanne and moved her quickly towards a section of blank wall at one side of the window.
“Do you think they saw us?” she asked, alarmed.
“I don’t know, but they saw the truck for sure, and they’ve pulled up across the street.”
I felt for the comforting weight of the Colt I had removed from the cop’s holster, and my hand came into contact with the package of papers taken from Shelmerdine’s safe.
The youth in the white coat snapped himself into wakefulness, he regarded us quizzically as we pressed ourselves against the wall, out of view from the street.
“You got a back way out of here?” I asked him.
He jerked his head towards a small door at the rear of the counter.
“Only that way, through the kitchen and into the alley.”
“Look,” I said, “would you be good enough to step over to the window and take a look out on the street. Tell us if there’s a big Cadillac parked right across from here, and whether the guys in it show any signs of coming across here?”
He gave me another quizzical look.
“Private dicks,” I said, nodding in the general direction of the street, “the lowest form of life in the universe. You know how it is, her father objected to her marryin’ a plain farmin’ feller like me, and he put those cheap investigators on our tail when we ran away.”
Joanne backed up my barefaced lie with a sweet smile.
The youthful counterhand was won over and I thanked the powers that built a romantic soul under his homely face.
“Uh-huh,” he agreed and crossed to the window.
“Don’t make it too obvious that you’re on the look-out,” I cautioned.
He didn’t. He deserves credit for having the interests of what he thought to be true love close to his heart.
“They’re sittin’ in the car right across from here,” he reported.
“Taking their time,” I groaned. “They know we’re in here and they’ll have put a man at the back, too.”
Joanne gave me a startled look. I shoved my hand in the pocket of the coveralls and fondled the revolver.
Inside my skull, my brains ticked over. I figured I had the picture in its right perspective. The cop must have recovered, made it to a telephone, and contacted his chief. That official would immediately contact Shelmerdine and, since the partisan police of Rollinsville could not wander this far off their own territory, Shelmerdine’s torpedoes had been sent after us.
And here we were—trapped.
I wondered how soon we could expect help from Walt Toland and the Chicago agency boys who were somewhere in Indiana on the look-out for us.
There were brains behind that counterhand’s docile front.
“I can get you out, even if there is a guy watchin’ the back door,” he informed. He made that peculiar backward motion with the hand that railroad porters, cabmen, and others with oddly flexible wrists are capable of on occasion.
I caught on and told him I could spare two dollars if his idea was good enough. I didn’t tell him I wouldn’t be able to pay him if it wasn’t.
He had a good old-fashioned regard for money. His eyes lit up and he moved quickly away from the window.
“Listen,” he began, “a pal of mine does some light truckin’. I can call him up and get him to call to the back door with his truck. There are some long fibreboard crates out in the kitchen, empty. It’ll be a squeeze, but you could get into one each, an’ Chuck an’ I will carry you out into the truck an’ drive off. The guys who’re watchin’ will never know—two bucks in it for Chuck, too,” he added hastily.
“Two bucks in it for Chuck,” I agreed.
; “Get busy, pal, those guys might be in a mood to wait all day—on the other hand, they might come busting right in here and cause a scene.”
The counterhand crossed to the telephone booth.
He left the door wide open and we could hear him instructing Chuck. Chuck, too, must have shared his romantic soul, or maybe he just had the same regard for a couple of bucks. Either way, there seemed to be no argument from his end of the wire.
The white-coated youth came out of the booth.
“Chuck says okay,” he announced.
I pulled my billfold from the coveralls and eased out four greenbacks. “For you and Chuck,” I said, handing them across. “One more thing, do you have any wrapping paper and string?”
He moved back behind the counter, rooted underneath for a while and produced some stout wrapping paper and a length of grubby string.
“And a pen?” I asked.
“Pencil do?” he queried. I said it would.
I retired to a table well out of sight of the window. Watched by Joanne, I wrapped up the package of papers that were dynamite under the foundations of the Shelmerdine crime outfit, and fastened the parcel with string. I addressed it to Walt Toland, care of World Investigations, Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, and wrote: “Postage to be paid by addressee” in big letters across the spot where the stamp should go.
“The safest way of making sure mail gets delivered,” I told Joanne. “Uncle Sam’s mailmen are so eager to collect the money due for delivery that they never let an item addressed like that out of their sight.”
The counterhand went around the café ostensibly straightening up the tables, but keeping his weather eye out on the street.
“They’re still sitting out there,” he reported.
“Playing the waiting game,” I grunted, “and there’ll be one or more out back.”
Business must have been slow with Chuck’s trucking concern. He lost no time in arriving.
He was a beefy fellow, built like a tank. The notion of helping out a pair of eloping lovers seemed to appeal to him, he came through from the kitchen, grinning widely.