Even as the thought hit him he picked up the sound of footsteps in the hall. So soon? Was he to have no chance at all? The window was no good—it was nowhere near the fire escape—and the closet was the first place anyone would look. But now there was a knocking nobody would answer, and then the turning of the doorknob. His only chance was to stand behind the door when it opened and pray for a break-But it wasn’t the law that walked into Malone’s room. It was a redheaded man in a wrinkled suit.
• • •
Trace Cooper was the last person Danny expected to see—in this room or anywhere else. He’d figured Trace to be just a guy who’d gone along for the ride until it got boring, and then took off down a mountain trail without so much as a “go to hell” to the kid he was leaving alone with a sadistic sheriff. Cooper belonged over a hundred miles away, bending an elbow probably, but here he was walking into Malone’s room as casually as if he’d made an appointment.
He walked as far as the bed and froze in his tracks. Danny had let the crumpled hat fall to the floor after uncovering Malone’s face, and nothing hid the story now. Trace took it all in: the little man in the raincoat with the ventilated head, the empty pocketbook, the wad of currency on the bed. He even moved closer and straightened out each wrinkled bill—Danny counted seven of them—and then felt for some sign of pulse. That was silly; anybody could see Malone was beyond telling tales.
Suddenly Danny saw the light—tales, that was it! Malone had been around to the men’s room at Mountain View just about the time the old doctor must have been killed. He might have witnessed the murder and cut and run to save his own skin, or he might have seen someone leaving in enough of a hurry to make his knowledge dangerous. He had money, sure, but without serial numbers a twenty-dollar bill was just a twenty-dollar bill. It was all Danny could do to keep from blurting out his new-found wisdom; but now Trace was moving about, poking at that untidy suitcase on the floor, opening and closing the empty dresser drawers, and displaying the attitude of a man not so much taken by surprise as annoyed by some small thing he couldn’t put his finger on. But the dresser had a mirror, and the mirror had a reflection.
Trace’s back stiffened. “You crazy fool!” he said. “Put that damned gun away before somebody gets hurt!”
Danny had forgotten the thing in his hand. It did look conspicuous in view of that body on the bed.
“I didn’t shoot him!” he sputtered. “He was like that when I got here!”
“And when was that?”
“Just before you came in. Just a couple of minutes ago.”
Trace turned about slowly, and the question in his eyes didn’t make his meeting any cozier. “And how did you get here?” he asked. “How did you know where to find Malone?”
It was a loaded question, and Danny’s denial was quick. “I didn’t know. I saw him on the street and followed him.”
“Just now?”
“A little while ago. But when I started to turn into the hotel somebody hollered at me. I thought it was a cop and started running. I just now got back.”
Trace was listening. Whether or not he was buying this story was another question, but he was listening. “If you’re not going to shoot me, would you mind pointing that gun some other way?” he said. “It makes me nervous.”
“It makes me nervous, too,” Danny retorted.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re not going to turn me in. I’ve got troubles enough with one murder I didn’t do; I’m not going to be stuck with this one!”
“With this?” A crooked grin played about Trace’s mouth. He stepped over to the bed again and scrutinized the hole in Malone’s head. It was a small hole, neat and round and colored with blood and powder burns. “With that blunderbuss of Virgil’s you’d have blown his head off at such short range,” he said. “Now suppose we stop trying to scare each other and find out what happened here. This man hasn’t been dead long.”
Maybe it was just a line to put Danny off guard, or maybe he really didn’t suspect the obvious. Danny had a few questions of his own he wanted to ask—what Trace was doing here, for instance, and how he’d known where to find Steve Malone—but he wouldn’t ask them. Instead he’d go into that story about seeing Malone from the yard next door, and tell about the car in the alley and the creaking gate. He would have rehearsed his whole day if there’d been time, because that’s how it was with Trace Cooper. He gave you a grin and a couple of encouraging words, and you poured your heart out.
“How long ago was all this?” Trace wanted to know, and Danny was trying to figure that, too, when a siren wailed out of the distance and he started like a scared colt. Even Trace couldn’t blot out the facts of death.
“Expecting somebody?” Trace asked. A body on the bed didn’t seem to mean a thing.
“I’ve got to get out of here!” Danny said. “I almost forgot—I slugged a guy down at a drive-in.”
“You what?”
“I slugged him. I had this gun on him and was going to make him drive me over the border. Then I spotted Malone and decided to follow him instead.”
At least Trace didn’t need a diagram to get the idea. “Bright boy!” he cried, heading toward the door. “Keeping you from hanging yourself is going to be the toughest case Laurent ever took on.”
That was the first Danny heard of Alexander Laurent, and although the name added to his collection of questions in need of an answer, there was no time for conversation now. They were back in that dark hall with the door closed on Malone’s last drunk when the siren and the police car behind it made a simultaneous halt in front of the hotel. Trace peeked over the front stair railing and drew back quickly. “Where’s that back stair?” he whispered, but Danny was already leading the way. They could hear loud voices waking up the bewildered night clerk as they slipped out the back way, and there was no time for anything but breathing until they reached the black alley behind the hotel.
But the alley was a long way from a point of safety. “Maybe I can slip around and catch Arthur’s attention,” Trace suggested, but the gun Danny was still using for courage got in his way. When the chips were down, Danny trusted nobody, even if it meant hiding in alleys all night. Where Trace went he was going, sensible or not. It was an impasse, and they were stuck with it until a flatnosed vehicle slid into view at the end of the alley.
“Arthur!” Trace yelled, and took off at a sprint with Danny on his heels. It was the first time either of them had seen a delivering angel in a jeep, but on a night such as this anything was possible.
It was almost twelve hours to the minute from the time Danny had parted company with Virgil Keep that he was back on the road to Cooperton—and under protest since his own wish was to head for the border. “Haven’t you pulled enough boners for one day?” Trace objected. “Don’t you know that’s exactly where you’re expected?” Partly because of this logic, and mostly because Arthur seemed no more impressed by the gun than his companion, Danny acquiesced. Arthur wasn’t favorably impressed by any part of this operation, and that was natural enough. Whisking a fugitive away from the outstretched arms of the law was a dangerous pastime, and Arthur’s ancestors weren’t distinguished pioneers of anything but a marked lack of privilege. It was he who insisted on the bottom of the back seat for Danny, and on the heavy tarpaulin that transformed him into a shapeless lump on the floor boards.
That was how they left Junction City, with the sirens screaming up in the darkness behind them, and the network of police cars getting the radioed message that Danny Ross had struck again. And so the way was cleared for them, and the road back to Cooperton left as empty and open as Trace had expected.
• • •
Once they were rid of the city Danny crawled out of the tarpaulin and looked around. The moon was still up, and the sky had an epidemic of stars. The whole earth seemed as peaceful and quiet as if the troublesome part of creation had never been made, and strange unnatural acts like murder couldn’t happen. But murder had
happened—twice in two days—and nobody concerned with this affair could fail to see a certain significance in Steve Malone’s death. But to Danny that significance was one thing; to another man, Arthur Jackson, for instance, it could be something quite different.
“You’re playing with dynamite,” Danny heard him tell Trace. “Why do you suppose Malone was killed?”
“An interesting question,” Trace murmured. “Maybe he saw something back at Mountain View.”
“That’s what I was thinking, and maybe what he saw was Danny Ross. Have you thought of that?”
Danny hadn’t thought of it, but the moment Arthur spoke the words he knew it was going to be a popular idea. “It’s a possibility,” Trace conceded. “Oh, hello. Are you back with that thing again?” He’d turned halfway around and was looking at Danny, sitting on the edge of the back seat now with that gun pointed straight ahead. “If we hit a bump, and I promise you we will, that gadget’s liable to go off and then who’ll get you out of this mess?”
“Is that what you’re supposed to be doing?” Danny asked.
“That’s what I am doing. Did you ever hear of a man named Alexander Laurent? No, of course you didn’t. Laurent hasn’t practiced for five years, and five years ago you probably weren’t reading newspapers except to follow the Tigers.”
“The Cubs,” Danny corrected, and Trace cocked a shaggy red eyebrow at him. It wasn’t a very smart remark from a kid who claimed to be from Detroit.
“Alexander Laurent,” Trace continued, “is one of the greatest criminal lawyers of all time. He never lost a capital case in over a hundred trials, and he could name his own fee anywhere in the country. But then five years ago Laurent retired and bought a ranch about ten miles from Mountain View.”
Trace fell silent for a moment. “What does that make me?” Danny demanded.
“About the luckiest guy in the world. You see, Danny, Alexander Laurent knows all about you, and he doesn’t think you killed Charley Gaynor. He’s on your side, with me working as middleman—that’s why you’re with us right now instead of in the Junction City jail.”
Now Danny recalled that crack of Trace’s when they made the quick exit from Malone’s hotel. Other things added up too: the way this jeep had followed him around all morning, and the way it disappeared about ten miles from Mountain View.
“Is that where you went this morning?” he asked, and Trace nodded.
“He’s a smart man, Danny,” he said. “He put me on to looking for Malone in Junction City. I just followed a trail of bars until I came to that hotel; but I sure didn’t expect to find you there.”
“Or Malone dead,” Arthur muttered. “But maybe Alexander the Great can dope that out over an iced mint julep.”
“Wait a minute,” Danny broke in, “what’s this all about, anyway? I haven’t any money for a lawyer. I haven’t anything but that two hundred the sheriff took off me yesterday.”
“Laurent doesn’t want your money,” Trace said.
“Then what does he want?”
“The truth. The answer to who did kill Doctor Gaynor.”
That lopsided moon sliding over toward one black wall of mountains brought Trace’s troubled frown out of the darkness. It was the same expression Danny had seen back in Malone’s room when he was adding up all those zeros. “I wonder what Raney pays a common laborer for two weeks’ work,” he murmured, and there wasn’t going to be any answer because Trace was talking to himself. But he wasn’t talking to himself when he asked, “Think back, Danny, did you see Malone talking to anybody back at Mountain View? Did he talk to the doctor, for instance?”
“How should I know,” Danny answered. “They both went out before I did.”
“And so did Jim Rice?”
“Sure, that’s what I told the sheriff. What are you driving at?”
“I haven’t any idea,” Trace confessed. “All I know is that Steve Malone had a hundred and forty dollars in twenty-dollar bills, and from the looks of things he must have spent plenty before we got there. But he didn’t have old Charley’s wallet. I’ve seen that wallet.”
“He probably chucked it,” Arthur suggested. “What’s the difference, anyway?”
“A little matter of evidence, for one thing. If we could find that wallet someplace where Danny has never been-”
“It’s a big country,” Arthur said.
It was a big country all right. Big and wide and lonely—and frightening, like those scenes painted on the walls of the dinosaur room in the Field Museum. Danny crawled back in the tarpaulin again, as if the night was really as icy as it seemed at the moment. Nobody had to paint pictures for Danny Ross. He knew the hole he was in was a lot deeper now than it had been a dozen hours ago. If only Trace had told him about Laurent sooner! If only he’d known it was more than just himself against the world! But was it really? He balanced the gun in his right hand, and the weight of it still made him feel better than anything Trace had said. He’d keep it handy, anyway, just in case they tried any funny business at Cooperton.
• • •
It was long after midnight when the signboard with the population figures showed up on the shoulder. The only lights showing were a few widely spaced naked bulbs hung overhead across the highway, because at this hour Cooperton was as dead as a churchyard—and it had one of those, too.
“Remember, you two,” Danny called up to the front seat, “you’re not turning me over to that sheriff!”
Trace yawned. He’d slept most of the way in, and came out of his slumber with much stretching of arms. “Relax,” he murmured. “I’ve got just the hiding-place for you.”
“Not the farm!” Arthur insisted. “If Virgil finds out you were in Junction City tonight, that’s the first place he’ll look.”
“You give Virgil entirely too much credit—”
Trace got no farther. It was exactly then that Arthur slammed on the brakes and Danny fell on his face to the floor boards. “Keep your head down!” Trace muttered as he started to rise, and a heavy hand on the top of his head added persuasion to the directive. But not before Danny caught a glimpse of what had caused the sudden stop. They were just even with the cemetery, but that wasn’t a stone figure pinned in the beam of the headlights; it was a woman.
“Oh, Mr. Cooper! You gave me such a start!”
The Cooper came out Cupper, but Danny would have recognized Ada’s voice, anyway. Everything she said sounded like an apology.
“You gave us a fright, too,” Trace said. “We weren’t expecting pedestrians at this hour. What are you up to, anyway?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Ada answered. “Lately I don’t sleep well at all, and it seems such a waste of time just to go on tossing and turning when it’s so nice outside. Have you noticed how lovely the mockingbirds sing these nights, Mr. Cooper?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“You should. We miss so much out of life by just not noticing things.”
There were a few things Danny would just as soon Ada didn’t notice right now; a few lumps under the canvas in the back seat. He was hoping Arthur would get the jeep rolling again, but Trace had to go right on making conversation.
“Does Virgil know you’re out?” he asked.
“Heavens, no! He’s away looking for that poor boy. I thought it was him coming back when I saw your lights—that’s why I got excited and ran in front of your car. Virgil thinks it’s wicked for me to go walking about like this, but Virgil thinks so many things are wicked. I wonder if that isn’t the most sinful thing of all—thinking all the pleasant things are wicked.”
Ada was talking to herself by this time. Danny could hear her voice getting fainter and fainter in the distance and there was no reply when Trace called out, “Can’t we take you home?” Leave it to Trace to invite a passenger at a time like this! For a moment there was no sound at all except a mockingbird singing in the cemetery.
“That settles it!” Arthur announced, kicking the jeep into motion. “The farm is out!
If that buzzy dame tells Virgil she saw us on the road—”
“She’ll get herself into a peck of trouble,” Trace finished.
But Trace didn’t put up an argument when Arthur held his ground. The farm was risky. Ada Keep wasn’t noted for her discretion; she might easily blurt out the story without realizing what she was saying. And she might even have caught a glimpse of Danny crouched in that back seat, a glimpse to be remembered when the mockingbirds were through singing.
So they took Danny to their crude little farmhouse at the edge of town, fed him eggs and coffee and thick slabs of bacon, and then made up a bundle of food and blankets. The last moonlight was fading when the jeep took to the road again. There was a deserted cabin at a place called Peace Canyon, and so long as it had a bed in it, Danny was satisfied.
CHAPTER 11
TRACE WAS UP EARLY in the morning. The day was going to be difficult enough without the added worry of Danny’s safety, a worry not a little agitated by the uncertainty of what Ada Keep might have told her husband. There was only one way to set his mind at ease on that score, and only one way to seek out an answer to a new question that had been bothering him since that midnight ride. Both ways led straight to Virgil’s office.
As could be expected, Virgil was not in good humor.
“I knew I should have stayed in bed,” he muttered, at the sight of Trace coming through the doorway. “Didn’t you cause me enough trouble yesterday without coming back for more?”
“Trouble?” Trace echoed innocently. “What did I do?”
“What did you do? In the first place, you got me to take that kid out to Mountain View. That wasn’t so bad because there was me and a couple of my men to keep an eye on him, but then you had to insist on that wild-goose chase up to Raney’s mine!”
“It wasn’t a wild-goose chase. We learned there was a man in a raincoat.”
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