The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  It was impossible, with all the precautions he had taken, that that devil in human form should sense the distance he was about to put between them once and for all, come after him this time. If he did, then he was a mind-reader, pure and simple; there would be no other way to explain it.

  It had been troublesome and expensive, but if it succeeded, it would be worth it. The several unsuccessful attempts he had made to change hotels had shown him the futility of that type of disappearance. This time he hadn’t made the mistake of asking for his final bill, packing his belongings, or anything like that. His clothes, such as they were, were still in the closet; his baggage was still empty. He’d paid his bill for a week in advance, and this was only the second day of that week. He’d given no notice of departure. Then he’d strolled casually forth as on any other day, sauntered into a movie, left immediately by another entrance, come over here, picked up the reservation they’d been holding for him under another name, and closed himself up in this phone-booth. He’d been in it for the past three-quarters of an hour now.

  And his nemesis, meanwhile, was either loitering around outside that theatre waiting for him to come out again, or sitting back there at the hotel waiting for him to return.

  He scanned them as they filed through in driblets; now one, now two or three at once, now one more again, now a brief let-up.

  The minute-hand was beginning to hit train-time. The guard was getting ready to close the gate again. Nobody else was passing through any more now.

  He opened the booth-flap, took a tight tug on his hat-brim, and poised himself for a sudden dash across the marble floor.

  He waited until the latticed gate was stretched all the way across, ready to be latched onto the opposite side of the gateway. Then he flashed from the booth and streaked over toward it. “Hold it!” he barked, and the guard widened it again just enough for him to squeeze through sidewise.

  He showed him his ticket on the inside, after it was already made fast. He looked watchfully out and around through it, in the minute or two this took, and there was no sign of anyone starting up from any hidden position around the waiting rooms or any place near-by and starting after him.

  He wasn’t here; he’d lost him, given him the slip.

  “Better make it fast, mister,” the guard suggested.

  He didn’t have to tell him that; the train didn’t exist that could get away from him now, even if he had to run halfway through the tunnel after it.

  He went tearing down the ramp, wig-wagging a line of returning redcaps out of his way.

  He got on only by virtue of a conductor’s outstretched arm, a door left aslant to receive him, and a last-minute flourish of tricky footwork. He got on, and that was all that mattered.

  “That’s it,” he heaved gratifiedly. “Now close it up and throw the key away! There’s nobody else, after me.”

  “They’d have to be homing pigeons riding a tail-wind, if there was,” the conductor admitted.

  He’d taken a compartment, to make sure of remaining unseen during the trip. It was two cars up, and after he’d reached it and checked it with the conductor, he locked himself in and pulled down the shade to the bottom, even though they were still in the tunnel under the city.

  Then he sank back on the upholstered seat with a long sigh. Finally! A complete break at last. “He’ll never catch up with me again now as long as I live,” he murmured bitterly. “I’ll see to that.”

  Time and trackage ticked off.

  They stopped for a minute at the uptown station. There was very little hazard attached to that, he felt. If he’d guessed his intentions at all, he would have been right at his heels down at the main station, he wouldn’t take the risk of boarding the train later up here. There wouldn’t be time enough to investigate thoroughly, and he might get on the wrong train and be carried all the way to the Mid-West without his quarry.

  Still, there was nothing like being sure, so after they were well under way again, he rang for the conductor, opened the door a half-inch, and asked him through it: “I’m expecting to meet somebody. Did anyone get on just now, uptown?”

  “Just a lady and a little boy, that who—?”

  “No,” said Blake, smiling serenely, “that wasn’t who.” And he locked the door again. All set now.

  Sure, he’d come out there after him maybe, but all he, Blake, needed was this momentary head-start; he’d never be able to close in on him again, he’d keep it between them from now on, stay always a step ahead.

  They stopped again at Harmon to change to a coal-powered engine. That didn’t bother him, that wasn’t a passenger-stop.

  There was a knock on the compartment-door, opposite West Point, and dread came back again for a moment. He leaped over and put his ear to it, and when it came again, called out tensely, making a shell of his two hands to alter his voice: “Who is it?”

  A stewardess’ voice came back, “Care for a pillow, sir?”

  He opened it narrowly, let her hand it in to him more to get rid of her than because he wanted one. Then he locked up again, relaxed.

  He wasn’t disturbed any more after that. At Albany they turned west. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, or maybe it was already Ohio, he rang for a tray and had it put down outside the locked door. Then he took it in himself and locked up again. When he was through he put it down outside again, and locked up once more. That was so he wouldn’t have to go out to the buffet-car. But these were just fancy trimmings, little extra added precautions, that he himself knew to be no longer necessary. The train was obviously sterile of danger. It had been from the moment of departure.

  Toward midnight, way out in Indiana, he had to let the porter in to make up the two seats into a bed for him. He couldn’t do that for himself.

  “I guess you the las’ one up on the whole train,” the man said cheerfully.

  “They all turned in?”

  “Hours ago. Ain’t nobody stirring no mo’, from front to back.”

  That decided him. He figured he may as well step outside for a minute and stretch his legs, while the man was busy in there. There wasn’t room enough in it for two of them at once. He made his way back through sleeping aisles of green berth-hangings. Even the observation-car was empty and unlighted now, with just one small dim lamp standing guard in the corner.

  The whole living cargo of humanity was fast asleep.

  He opened the door and went out on the observation platform to get a breath of air. He stretched himself there by the rail and drank it in. “Gee,” he thought, “it feels good to be free!” It was the first real taste of freedom he’d had since he’d walked out of Head—

  A voice in one of the gloom-obscured basket-shaped chairs off-side to him said mildly, “That you, Blake? Been wondering when you’d show up. How can you stand it, cooped up for hours in that stuffy two-by-four?” And a cigar-butt that was all that could be seen of the speaker glowed red with comfortable tranquillity.

  Blake had to hang onto the rail as he swirled, to keep from going over. “When did you get on?” he groaned against the wind.

  “I was the first one on,” Rogers’ voice said from the dark. “I got myself admitted before the gates were even opened, while they were still making the train up.” He chuckled appreciatively. “I thought sure you were going to miss it.”

  He knew what this was that was coming next. It had been bound to come sooner or later, and this was about the time for it now. Any number of things were there to tell him; minor variations in the pattern of the adversary’s behavior. Not for nothing had he been a detective for years. He knew human nature. He was already familiar with his adversary’s pattern of behavior. The danger-signals studding it tonight were, to his practised eye, as plainly to be read as lighted buoys flashing out above dark, treacherous waters.

  Blake hadn’t sought one of his usual tinselled, boisterous resorts tonight. He’d found his way instead to a dingy out-of-the-way rat-hole over on the South Side, where the very atmosphere had a furtive cast to it. The
detective could scent “trap” a mile away as he pushed inside after him. Blake was sitting alone, not expansively lording it over a cluster of girls as was his wont. He even discouraged the one or two that attempted to attach themselves to him. And finally, the very way in which he drank told the detective there was something coming up. He wasn’t drinking to get happy, or to forget. He was drinking to get nerve. The detective could read what was on his mind by the very hoists of his arm; they were too jerky and unevenly spaced, they vibrated with nervous tension.

  He himself sat there across the room, fooling around with a beer, not taking any chances on letting it past his gums, in case it had been drugged. He had a gun on him, but that was only because he always carried one; he had absolutely no intention of using it, not even in self-defense. Because what was coming up now was a test, and it had to be met, to keep the dominance of the situation on his side. If he flinched from it, the dominance of the situation shifted over to Blake’s side. And mastery didn’t lie in any use of a gun, either, because that was a mastery that lasted only as long as your finger rested on the trigger. What he was after was a long-term mastery.

  Blake was primed now. The liquor had done all it could for him; embalmed his nerves like novocaine. Rogers saw him get up slowly from the table. He braced himself at it a moment, then started on his way out. The very way he walked, the stiff-legged, interlocking gait, showed that this was the come-on, that if he followed him now, there was death at the end of it.

  And he knew by the silence that hung over the place, the sudden lull that descended, in which no one moved, no one spoke, yet no one looked at either of the two principals, that everyone there was in on it to a greater or a lesser extent.

  He kept himself relaxed. That was important, that was half the battle; otherwise it wouldn’t work. He let him get as far as the door, and then he slowly got to his feet in turn. In his technique there was no attempt to dissimulate, to give the impression he was not following Blake, patterning his movements on the other’s. He threw down money for his beer and he put out his cigar with painstaking thoroughness.

  The door had closed behind the other. Now he moved toward it in turn. No one in the place was looking at him, and yet he knew that in the becalmed silence everyone was listening to his slow, measured tread across the floor. From bus-boy to tawdry hostess, from waiter to dubious patron, no one stirred. The place was bewitched with the approach of murder. And they were all on Donny Blake’s side.

  The man at the piano sat with his fingers resting lightly on the keyboard, careful not to bear down yet, ready for the signal to begin the death-music. The man at the percussion-instrument held his drumstick poised, the trumpeter had his lips to the mouth-piece of his instrument, waiting like the Angel Gabriel. It was going to happen right outside somewhere, close by.

  He came out, and Blake had remained in sight, to continue the come-on. As soon as he saw Rogers, and above all was sure Rogers had marked him, he drifted down an alley there at that end of the building that led back to the garage. That was where it was going to happen. And then into a sack, and into one of the cars, and into Lake Mich.

  Rogers turned without a moment’s hesitation and went down that way and turned the corner.

  Blake had lit the garage up, to show him the way. They’d gotten rid of the attendant for him. He went deeper inside, but he remained visible down the lane of cars. He stopped there, near the back wall, and turned to face him, and stood and waited.

  Rogers came on down the alley, toward the garage-entrance. If he was going to get him from a distance, then Rogers knew he would probably have to die. But if he let him come in close—

  He made no move, so he wasn’t going to try to get him from a distance. Probably afraid of missing him.

  The time-limit that must have been arranged expired as he crossed the threshold into the garage. There was suddenly a blare of the three-piece band, from within the main building, so loud it seemed to split the seams of the place. That was the cover-up.

  Rogers pulled the corrugated tin slide-door across after him, closing the two of them up. “That how you want it, Blake?” he said. Then he came away from the entrance, still deeper into the garage, to where Blake was standing waiting for him.

  Blake had the gun out by now. Above it was a face that could only have been worn by a man who has been hounded unendurably for weeks on end. It was past hatred. It was maniacal.

  Rogers came on until he was three or four yards from him. Then he stopped, empty-handed. “Well?” he said. He rested one hand on the fender of a car pointed toward him.

  A flux of uncertainty wavered over Blake, was gone again.

  All Rogers said, after that, was one thing more: “Go ahead, you fool. This is as good a way as any other, as far as we’re concerned. As long as it hands you over to us, I’m willing. This is just what we’ve been looking for all along, what’s the difference if it’s me or somebody else?”

  “You won’t know about it,” Blake said hoarsely. “They’ll never find you.”

  “They don’t have to. All they’ve got to do is find you without me.” He heeled his palms toward him. “Well, what’re you waiting for, I’m empty-handed.”

  The flux of uncertainty came back again, it rinsed all the starch out of him, softened him all up. It bent the gun down uselessly floorward in his very grasp. He backed and filled helplessly. “So you’re a plant—so they want me to do this to you—I mighta known you was too open about it—”

  For a moment or two he was in awful shape. He backed his hand to his forehead and stood there bandy-legged against the wall, his mind fuming like a seydlitz-powder.

  He’d found out long ago he couldn’t escape from his tormentor. And now he was finding out he couldn’t even kill his tormentor. He had to live with him.

  Rogers rested his elbow in his other hand and stroked the lower part of his face, contemplating him thoughtfully. He’d met the test and licked it. Dominance still rested with him.

  The door swung back, and one of the gorillas from the club came in. “How about it, Donny, is it over? Want me to give you a hand—”

  Rogers turned and glanced at him with detached curiosity.

  The newcomer took in the situation at a glance. “What’re ya, afraid?” he shrilled. “All right, I’ll do it for you!” He drew a gun of his own.

  Blake gave a whinny of unadulterated terror, as though he himself were the target. He jumped between them, protecting Rogers with his own body. “Don’t you jerk! They want me to pull something like that, they’re waiting for it, that’s how they’re trying to get me! It didn’t dawn on me until just now, in the nick of time! Don’t you see how he’s not afraid at all? Don’t you notice how he keeps his hands empty?” He closed in on the other, started to push him bodily back out of the garage, as though it were his own life he was protecting. It was, in a way. “Get out of here, get out of here! If you plug him it’s me you kill, not him!”

  The gun went off abortively into the garage-roof, deflected by Blake’s grip on his wrist. Blake forced him back over the threshold, stood there blocking his way. The gorilla had a moment or two of uncertainty of his own. Blake’s panic was catching. And he wasn’t used to missing on the first shot, because he was used to shooting down his victims without warning.

  “I’ve drawn on him now, they can get me for that myself!” he muttered. “I’m gonna get out of here—!” He suddenly turned and went scurrying up the alley whence he’d come.

  The two men were left alone there together, the hunter and the hunted. Blake was breathing hard, all unmanned by two close shaves within a minute and a half. Rogers was as calm as though nothing had happened. He stood there without moving.

  “Let him go,” he said stonily. “I don’t want him, I just want you.”

  Rogers sat there on the edge of his bed, in the dark, in his room. He was in trousers, undershirt, and with his shoes off. He was sitting the night through like that, keeping the death-watch. This was the same night as the s
piked show-down in the garage, or what there was left of it. It was still dark, but it wouldn’t be much longer.

  He’d left his room door open two inches, and he was sitting in a line with it, patiently watching and waiting. The pattern of human behavior, immutable, told him what to be on the look-out for next.

  The door-opening let a slender bar of yellow in from the hall. First it lay flat across the floor, then it climbed up the bed he was on, then it slanted off across his upper arm, just like a chevron. He felt he was entitled to a chevron by now.

  He sat there, looking patiently out through the door-slit, waiting. For the inevitable next step, the step that was bound to come. He’d been sitting there like that watching ever since he’d first come in. He was willing to sit up all night, he was so sure it was coming.

  He’d seen the bellboy go in the first time, with the first pint and the cracked ice, stay a minute or two, come out again tossing up a quarter.

  Now suddenly here he was back again, with a second pint and more cracked ice. The green of his uniform showed in the door-slit. He stood there with his back to Rogers and knocked lightly on the door across the way.

  Two pints, about, would do it. Rogers didn’t move, though.

  The door opened and the boy went in. He came out again in a moment, closed it after him.

  Then Rogers did move. He left the bed in his stocking feet, widened his own door, went “Psst!,” and the boy turned and came over to him.

  “How much did he give you this time?”

  The boy’s eyes shone. “The whole change that was left! He cleaned himself out!”

  Rogers nodded, as if in confirmation of something or other to himself. “How drunk is he?”

  “He’s having a hard time getting there, but he’s getting there.”

  Rogers nodded again, for his own private benefit. “Lemme have your passkey,” he said.

  The boy hesitated.

  “It’s all right, I have the house-dick’s authorization. You can check on it with him, if you want. Only, hand it over, I’m going to need it, and there won’t be much time.”