The Fifth Grave

by Jonathan Latimer

  Gus Papas looked at Ginger. “Pug Banta says there is.”

  Waterman took his arms from around Ginger. “Gus,” he said; “you have known me for a long time. You will believe me when I tell you this girl is named Mrs. Smith.”

  I said to Gus: “He wants an excuse to get in.”

  “Hokay,” Gus said. “I tell him to get the hell out of here.”

  He started the radio again and went out. Ginger walked around Waterman and came over to me. She was scared. “Sit down,” I said. “We’ve been talking about explosives.”

  “Very interesting business,” Davison said.

  Waterman hung over the back of Ginger’s chair. He wanted her to dance again. “Come on, dear,” he said.

  “You probably don’t know, Mr. Waterman,” I said, “but they’ve found nitroglycerine to be very effective in putting out oil field fires. Its effect is like that of a giant blowing out a candle. However, it’s very dangerous to use.”

  “Who gives a damn about oil fields,” Waterman said.

  I heard angry voices by the door. I heard some one cursing. Then there was a sound of pounding. Somebody swore again, and a shot was fired. There was a moment of absolute silence; then a volley of shots and a crashing of glass.

  “My God!” Davison said.

  Gus Papas ran on to the porch. “Get inside,” he yelled, waving his arms at us. “They shoot you here.”

  We hurried inside. Papas herded us into his office. Waterman asked: “What’s the matter, Gus.”

  “Some people try break in.”

  “By God, they can’t do that. Have you got a gun, Gus?”

  “You stay here. You no wanta get shot.”

  “Sure I do,” Waterman said.

  There was a new burst of shooting. Papas ran out of the room, closing the door on the run. “If this isn’t the damnedest thing!” Davison said.

  The woman, Winnie, said: “I want to get out of here.”

  “So do I,” Jonesy said.

  There was a silence.

  Winnie’s voice whined: “I never could stand guns.”

  “It’s quiet,” Davison said. “Let’s go now.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said.

  I tried the door while they thought this over. It wasn’t locked. “I’l take a look around,” I said.

  Nobody said anything. Waterman sat on a table by Ginger. She watched me, trying to figure out what it was all about. She slid off the table and came over to me.

  “Why won’t they let Pug in?” she whispered.

  “Gus is afraid he isn’t housebroken,” I said, going through the door.

  She started to follow me. Waterman caught her arm. “Don’t go, dear. Stay with papa.”

  She looked as though she’d like to bite him, but she stayed. I went to the front room with the rugs and the heads of animals. Two men were kneeling under windows with the glass shot out. One of them was the bartender. Another man was lying on the floor by the fireplace. I walked over to him. He’d been shot through the shoulder. His coat was off and somebody had tied a towel over the wound. One of the men by the window said: “You’d better duck, mister.”

  I bent down. “Where are they?”

  “Back of the cars, I guess,” the bartender said. “I can’t see ’em.”

  “How many?”

  “About ten.”

  The other man took a snap shot at something. I fell flat on the floor. There was a jerky series of shots outside and the rest of the glass went out of the windows.

  They gave us a burst with a machine-gun. Then a voice called: “Gus. Gus Papas.”

  Papas crawled into the room. He crawled with a pistol in his hand, banging it on the floor each time he put the hand down. I moved so I would be behind him if it went off. “Gus Papas,” the voice outside called.

  “What you want?”

  “Either we come in, or we blast you.”

  “Go ahead,” Gus said. “Blow ’im up.”

  “Look, Gus,” said another voice. “We just want to take a look around. We won’t hurt you. Or your joint.”

  “Why shoot my windows out?”

  “Because you shot at us.”

  “Sure I shoot. Why you try to break my door down?”

  “Let’s let ’em have it,” said another voice. “You can’t reason with a Greek.”

  “Come on, Gus. Use your head.”

  “You go ’way,” Gus said.

  There was a shot out in back. The machine-gun let go in front, bringing down an elk’s head over the fireplace. It damned near scared me to death. I had my revolver out before I realized what had happened. There was a lot of shooting out in back. The parley had just been a fake to give Pug’s men time to close in on the place. There was another burst in front. The man with the bartender by the windows yelped with pain and dropped his rifle. A splinter of wood had torn a gash in his cheek. He started to run across the room towards Papas’s office, but a bullet brought him down. He thrashed around on the floor, bleeding from his cheek. I started to crawl across the room. I wanted to get to the office. I saw Ginger and Waterman standing by the door, and the others behind them.

  “Go back,” I shouted.

  Waterman pushed Ginger back and started for the windows on hands and knees. He went past me. “This isn’t your fight,” I said.

  There was shooting on all sides of the house. The bartender was firing out his window. I could hear another tommy-gun in back. Gunpowder smoke began to fill the room. Waterman kept on crawling.

  “Don’t be a damn fool,” I called after him.

  Papas had gone I don’t know where. Ginger and the others were standing well back in his office. Waterman reached the windows and picked up the rifle the wounded man had dropped. He stood up and began to fire at the parked cars. A man came up right in front of him. He had been hiding under the window. He poked a pistol at Waterman and let him have the load. It was as though somebody had opened up Waterman’s stomach with an axe. He bent over and hit his head on the floor. Winnie screamed. I braced myself against the floor with my left elbow and squeezed the trigger. There was the explosion and the whunk of lead hitting bone. Part of the man’s face tore away and he slid out of sight. Waterman lay on the floor, bent like a pretzel. There was heavy shooting out in back. I crawled to the door of Papas’s office. The two men were trying to quiet Winnie.

  “Don’t, Winnie; don’t,” Jonesey was saying.

  Ginger stared at me, her face excited. “Scared?” I asked her.

  “Get me a gun.”

  I peered into the trophy room. The bartender was still shooting out his window. I could just see him through the smoke. I saw Waterman and the two wounded men on the floor. The tommy-gun began to work again; the bullets knocking pieces off the fireplace.

  “If you think I’m going to let you go out there, you’re nuts,” I told Ginger.

  Winnie had calmed down a little. “Is he dead?” she asked between sobs.

  “He’s fine,” I said.

  There was a shout outside and the shooting stopped. The silence seemed strange. I put my revolver away and found a pack of cigarettes. I lit one for Ginger, and then one for myself. The smoke burned my mouth.

  “I guess we beat ’em off,” I said.

  CHAPTER 7

  Like hell we had beat them off. We found that out when Davison went into the trophy room to look at Caryle Waterman. The bartender by the window motioned him to bend down, but he didn’t pay any attention. He walked over to the body and just as he looked down at it somebody outside let go at him. I saw the flash and heard the crack of the bullet, and when Davison went down I thought he’d been shot, too. But he crawled back to the office like a crab.

  “God!” he said when he stood up. “That was close.”

  Winnie asked: “Caryle?”

  “He’s dead.”

  She must have known it, but it was a shock anyway. She began to cry. “We’ll all be killed,” she sobbed. “All of us.”

  “Now, there,” Jones
y said, patting her back.

  Ginger sat on Papas’s table and crossed her legs. She had long, slender legs. I wished we were alone. Blood always excites me. “It looks like a stand-off,” Ginger said.

  “So far,” I said.

  “What are they trying to do?” Davison asked. “I never heard of anything like this.”

  I took my eyes off Ginger’s legs. “Gangsters,” I said.

  “But they’ve gone out of style,” Davison said. “They don’t have gansters any more.”

  “Suppose you go out and tell them that,” I said.

  Winnie said: “Why don’t we call the police?”

  That was a good idea. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it. I lifted the phone on Papas’s desk. It was dead. I tossed the phone on the floor. The crash made everybody jump. I heard a noise in the trophy room. I looked out the door and saw Gus Papas crawling across the floor. He caught hold of the first wounded man, the one by the fireplace, and dragged him along. He brought the man into the office.

  “Oh, boy! this is terrible,” Papas said cheerfully.

  He started to pick the telephone off the floor. “No use,” Ginger said. I looked at the wounded man. He wasn’t going to die. The bleeding from his shoulder had stopped.

  “We hold them off,” Papas said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Got three men in back,” Papas said. “And me and the bartender here. They don’t get in.”

  He looked pretty happy. He had proved he was a hell of a fighter. He had driven off Pug Banta.

  Winnie was sobbing again and the men were trying to comfort her. I crawled across the trophy room to the bartender by the window. He was peeking out through one of the curtains.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Get your own window,” he snarled.

  I crawled to another window. By moving the curtain a little I could see out. There was a fire going in back of the cars. I could see the moving shadows of men by the gasoline pump. They were careful to keep out of range of the cabin. After a while two men with torches left the fire. The flames of the torches rose high. They had been soaked in gasoline. The men moved towards us, keeping behind the cars. I saw the bartender raise his rifle. We waited while the men crawled along, their torches lighting up trees and bushes and the parked cars.

  Suddenly two machine-guns began to rake the house. I could feel the curtain twitch from the lead. The men with the torches ran for the cabin. I bent my wrist around the window, keeping my body back, and fired where I thought they ought to be. Papas and the bartender were firing, too. I saw a torch sail through the air and land ten feet short of the front door. The shooting stopped. I peeked through the curtain. The other torch was lying near the cars. Somebody must have hit the guy who had it. Papas leaned out his window and took a shot at something. The machine-gun opened up again.

  I lay on the floor, listening to the flying lead. I thought we were lucky. The torches could just as well have hit the cabin. We’d look fine trying to put out a fire while they sprayed us with tommy-guns. But that was over. We’d got two of Pug’s men. He wouldn’t want to waste many more. Now he’d probably go away.

  I crawled back to the office. Winnie had fainted. She was lying on the table and Ginger was washing her face with a damp cloth. The two men were watching Ginger. The wounded waiter was on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

  “What happened?” Davison asked.

  I told him. Both the men were scared. “I fought in the war,” Jonesy said; “but it wasn’t like this.”

  Winnie began to moan. I went through Papas’s desk and found a pint of some Greek liquor. When Winnie came to, I made her drink some, and then I had some myself. It was terrible; it tasted like the stuff that oozes out of pine trees. Resin, I guess.

  “I’ll take one,” Ginger said.

  I gave her a drink. She made a face. Winnie sat up and Jonesy put an arm around her. “Have they gone?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Jonesy said. “It’s all right now, dear.”

  The liquor had authority. I felt it in my stomach. I took another drink. Davison and Jonesy watched me. They didn’t want any liquor.

  “We’ll have to get the police,” Davison said.

  “You go,” I said.

  “They’ve gone, haven’t they?”

  “You find out,” I said. “I’m staying here.”

  “Me, too,” Ginger said.

  I gave her a drink, and then had another. I was getting a buzz out of the liquor. I sat on the table beside Ginger. Gus Papas crawled to the door. “Hey,” he said to me.

  He wanted me to come out. I crawled to a window in the trophy room, following Papas’s legs. He held the curtains apart an inch for me.

  “What they do?” he asked.

  I could see the figures moving near the line of cars. The bonfire had gone down and it was hard to make out anything. I didn’t know what they were doing. It looked as though they were carrying buckets of something somewhere. That didn’t make any sense. I heard the sound of the gasoline pump working. They were carrying gas.

  “Damned if I know,” I said.

  I heard the sound of a bucket hitting the ground. Then two men lit torches at the fire.

  The bartender spoke from his window: “They’re goin’ to try that again.”

  “Under cover of the car,” I said.

  “Is good idea,” Gus Papas said.

  We got ready to let them have it. I thought we could stop them. They’d have to come out from behind the car to throw the torches, and we could wing ’em. I saw one man get in the driver’s seat. It was queer; the men with the torches were ahead of the car, not behind it. I heard the starter, and then the car began to move. It was pointed right for the front door. I heard the motor race.

  “What the hell,” the bartender said.

  Suddenly the car jumped ahead; the driver leaped out; the two men threw their torches at the moving car; it burst into flames, picking up speed as it came at us. The car was soaked in gasoline.

  “And it’s my car, too,” I said.

  It came at us in second gear, moving fast enough to make the flames roar. The fire shot fifty feet in the air, thick and yellow. The car was still picking up speed. I heard the sound of the tommy-guns, but right then I didn’t give a damn. I wanted to leave. I got up and ran to Papas’s office.

  I must have looked wild. They stared at me. “Come on,” I yelled at them. “We’ve got to get out.”

  I grabbed Ginger’s hand and we ran for the screened porch. They followed. I never saw Gus Papas or the bartender. Just as we reached the porch the car hit the front door with a crash. There was a burst of flames, a hot wind, and an explosion that knocked us to the floor. I lost Ginger’s hand. For a second I lay flat listening to the crackle of flames. I knew I had to get up, but I couldn’t. I made myself get up. I got Ginger to her feet. She was dazed. I didn’t look for the others.

  “Follow me,” I told Ginger.

  I didn’t see a door so I went right through the screen, hitting it doubled up. A whole section of screen came loose. I landed on my hands and knees. Ginger stepped through after me. I got up and we ran for the lake. The whole sky was light with the flames. There was still shooting out in front. I ran into the lake, the water sloshing around my ankles, and got hold of a rowboat. I lifted Ginger in, and got in myself. I put the oars in the locks and rowed away from shore. I couldn’t make any speed. It was like rowing in a dream. I rowed like hell and we barely moved. I was scared for the first time. Then I saw what the trouble was. I went by Ginger to the bow, and pulled up the anchor. I rowed into the shadow of some willow trees, and then I rested.

  “A nice quiet evening,” Ginger said.

  We looked at the cabin. The flames were on the roof now, and over one whole side. Against the purple sky I saw a big cloud of black smoke. I didn’t hear any shooting. The cabin was a goner; all the fire departments in the world couldn’t save it. I couldn’t see any one, not even on the shore. I wondered if Win
nie and the others had got out.

  It was very still on the lake. The rowboat did not move at all. I could see Ginger’s face and hands in the light of the burning cabin. Her hair glowed from the reflected light. She looked beautiful and mysterious.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  I moved to her seat. “I’ll show you,” I said. I swung her across my knees and kissed her. She fought. She jerked away and slapped my face, and when I held her hands she bit my wrist.

  I let her sit up. She pulled down her skirt and straightened her dress. “You’re quite a cave man.”

  I felt the blood on my wrist. “You have a bad effect on me, baby.”

  “I think all gals do.”

  “Not like you, baby.”

  I went back to the oars. I sucked the blood from my wrist and then I began to row across the lake. I thought it would be a good idea if we got the hell out of the neighbourhood. Maybe we could pick up a ride on the main road. There would be trucks.

  “Are you sore?” Ginger asked.

  “No.”

  “Next time, ask.”

  “It’s more fun the other way,” I said, rowing.

  “The jails are full of guys who think that,” Ginger said.

  The lake was only about half a mile wide. I beached the boat in the mud and carried Ginger to the shore. We walked across a field to a dirt road and down it to the main highway. In the distance I saw the red glow that was Gus Papas’s cabin. We stood on the side of the road to wait for a lift. There were crickets under the trees.

  “How’d you mix up with Banta?” I asked.

  “I was broke, needed a job.”

  “I’d call it more than a job.”

  “Yeah?” Ginger said. “Well, it hasn’t been.”

  “And you don’t really like him?”

  “What do you think?”

  The lights of a car lit up the road. The car was coming very fast from Paulton. I heard the scream of a siren and I pulled Ginger to the side of the road. We watched the car go by from behind a bush. It was doing a good seventy miles an hour. We got back on the cement just as the tail light faded away. “What’s this to you, anyway?” Ginger said. “What do you care about my troubles?”