“Dammit,” Ray said softly. “I pulled the wrong wire. Sorry, Honey.”
“You cut my connection.”
“I thought that was the hot wire from the battery. Got mixed up it’s so dark.”
I lowered the phone into the cradle and surveyed the darkness. “Fine time to pull the wrong wire. We might have had some help inside an hour.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here.”
“Hope so.”
Thunder broke in the mountain sky, rattling across the valley angrily.
“The starter, Honey!” Ray yelled. “Try it now!”
I clamped it down to the floorboard, making the engine roar up into the night. Ray crawled out from under the dash and grasped the steering wheel.
“Let’s get out of here!”
The convertible jerked forward, whirled around in front of the temple and headed toward the camp road.
“Turn on the lights,” I said. “You’re liable to hit somebody.”
“I shouldn’t,” he returned, snapping them on, “but—”
Rain slashed at the windshield as we zoomed up the road, the wipers wedging two slim holes in the storm.
“Looks as if they might have given up the search,” Ray said, squinting out of the side window.
“I hope so.”
“There’s still the gatekeeper.”
I nodded.
When we reached the gate, our headlights illuminated the huge hairy-chested man standing before the barrier, waving his arms. Ray didn’t slow up.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I shouted.
“We’ll scare him out of the way.”
“You’ll hit the fence,” I broke. “Those timber’ll bend us into putty!”
At the last instant, Ray slammed on the brakes skidding to a stop a few feet from the camp’s exit. The bald gatekeeper didn’t waste any time yanking open my door. He reached in after me, but I kicked him in the throat and he fell back into some brush, cursing.
Ray Spensor leaped from the car and lifted the gate’s heavy cross-beam out of its niche, then tossed it on the side of the road. But the gatekeeper caught Ray before he could swing open the gate. Bellowing like a wounded bull, Drummond swung Ray around as lightning zig-zagged down into the valley and exploded fiercely in a grove of trees beyond the fence.
Both men stiffened in their tracks as the fireball burst, outlining them hugely in the rain. Then Ray Spensor jabbed his right hand into the other man’s face. The stocky gatekeeper didn’t even flinch, but brought his own fist hard across Spensor’s jaw. The football player dropped in the muddy road.
I climbed from the car. The gatekeeper leaped on the fallen man, gouging at his face with his fingernails. Ray kicked, rolled, grasped a small piece of a broken tree branch and swung savagely. The wood caught Drummond, splintering on his bald skull. The ponderous gatekeeper straightened, then fell hard in the middle of the road. Ray scrambled to his feet, stumbled forward and swung again. Blood spurted from the gatekeeper’s head. He swung again wildly and missed. I caught his arm.
“You’re going to kill him!” I shouted.
Ray Spensor stared at me, into the headlights, and shook his head. Rain streamed down over his face and shoulders. His mouth was bloody. He wiped his hand across his jaw dazedly, then tossed down the splintered branch, nodding.
We dragged Drummond into a shack beside the gate.
“He’s hurt,” I said. “We can’t leave him like this.”
“It was either him or us,” Ray said grimly. “What do you think he would have done to you if he’d yanked you out of the car?”
“I don’t think he would have split my skull. One crack on his noggin was enough, Ray.”
“I—I’m sorry.” He wiped at his bloody face. “I guess I lost my head for a second. He was trying to dig my eyes out.”
I noticed a phone on the wall of the shack. It was a special extension without a dial, which obviously buzzed another phone somewhere in the camp when the receiver was lifted.
“Is the gate open wide enough for us to get through?” I asked.
Ray crossed to a window and looked out into the downpour. “Almost.”
“Okay,” I said. “Drive on through to the other side and wait for me.”
“What are you going to do, Honey?”
“Notify somebody at the camp.” I started for the phone.
He grasped my arm. “Don’t! They’ll be on our necks in two minutes!”
“We’ll have to take that chance.”
His eyes narrowed harshly. “Do you want to wind up in the Playground?”
“No,” I said, “but I don’t want to wind up as an accessory to a manslaughter either.”
“That was an accident,” Ray said, staring down at the unconscious gatekeeper.
“Sure it was an accident. An accident that you didn’t kill him. Now drive that car through to the other side and re-lock the gate.”
He hesitated, released his hand from my arm and swore. “All right, only it’s your funeral.”
Lightning stroked the dark sky again as Ray jogged back to the car, his head bent against the rain. He pushed the gate open wide enough, climbed behind the wheel and then shot an angry glance at where I stood in the shack’s doorway. Finally he drove on through the opening.
I crossed to the telephone and lifted the receiver. After a moment, the connection snapped and a voice spoke curtly, “Yes, Drummond.”
“Who’s this?” I demanded.
“Adam Jason. Who—who’s this?”
“Your blessing in disguise.”
“Honey! Are you at the gate?”
“No thanks to you,” I said.
“Where’s Drummond?”
“He met with a little accident. You’d better send out your head fixer right away.”
“Tunny’s in a rage,” Adam blurted. “He’s frothing at the mouth.”
“Give him a shot of anti-rabies serum and put him in a cage where he belongs.”
“You nearly fractured his skull.”
“He tried mine for size first. Listen, Adam, I really wanted to help you, but you’re working for the wrong side. Take my advice and get out while the getting’s good.”
“What do you mean, Honey?”
“I just got a peek at your sports arena. Tunny had me scheduled for the main event. Believe me, your athletic program is about to blow up in your face.”
“You’re not sitting so pretty yourself. Your friend Fred Sims was here a few minutes ago. He says a warrant for your arrest has been issued through the Sheriff’s office.”
“You’re lying, Adam.”
“That’s what you think. Sims was down in San Berdoo early this afternoon. He came back in a rented car. The word is that some new evidence has cropped up in the Spensor murder that links you.”
“I don’t believe it.”
A horn honked loudly. Ray was becoming impatient.
“Are you trying to detain me, Adam?”
“No, Honey. Listen, I’m fed up with Tunny and his tin god religion. I want out, but I’m afraid to make the break. I need your help.”
I laughed grimly. “I’ve heard that song before, Adam. If you really want my assistance come to my office—fully clothed.”
His voice lowered. “Please, Honey, don’t leave me behind. I’ve got a feeling Tunny is going to—” The phone clicked on the other end.
“Hello, hello.” I jiggled the hook. “Hello, Adam?” There was no response. I dropped the receiver in its cradle slowly, glancing around the small room. A shiver ran up my spine. I had a feeling Adam was in trouble, but I couldn’t go back now. The risk was too great.
Ray Spensor came into the doorway, hair matted on his forehead from the rain, an angry scowl on his mouth.
“You going to stay here all night?” he demanded.
“Maybe,” I said, studying the injured gatekeeper. “I’m worried about him, Ray.”
“He’s breathing, isn’t he?”
I knelt d
own and felt Drummond’s pulse. “Yes, but—”
He grasped my arm. “Come on!”
I jerked loose. “I’ve had enough strong arm, thank you. Now lay off!”
He shrugged, grimly wiping water from his eyes, and moved toward the door. “Okay, I’ll go alone. I told you how Tunny feels about me. I’m not taking any chances.”
“That’s my car, buster!”
“I don’t care whose car it is. I’m getting out.”
He vanished in the darkness and downpour. I straightened, my gaze shifting to the unconscious man and then I looked around for a blanket to put over him. I found one in a corner closet. By the time I reached the door, the tail lights of my convertible were disappearing in the stormy night.
I bit my lips. I knew that was the last train. Rain spilled off the eaves, splattering on the shack porch. I turned and examined the gatekeeper again. He was bleeding badly from the gash in his skull. I was glad I hadn’t left him.
After a few minutes another car drove up the road from the camp and parked outside the shack. I found a small hatchet in a drawer and raised it over my shoulder threateningly.
Footsteps dragged slowly outside. Then Fred Sims appeared, his cane bent under him, hat pulled low against the downpour. He stood in the doorway for a long instant surveying me, then his mouth slid into a wry smile.
“Who’s carving?” he said.
I winced, realizing what he meant. I was half-crouched over an unconscious, bleeding man, a hatchet poised in my hand.
“Don’t move, Fred. This instrument wasn’t designed for turkeys—or a close shave.”
“I can see that,” he said lowly, frozen in the door. “You did a pretty bum job on him.”
“He’s not one of my most recent customers,” I answered. “You want to try your luck?”
The newspaperman’s head jerked awkwardly. “No, thanks. I use a Gillette myself. How are you fixed for blades?”
“Don’t con me, Fred. What do you want?”
“You,” he said quickly. “The Sheriff of Los Angeles County requests your presence for Thanksgiving dinner. He wants to roast you.”
“He’ll have to wait in line,” I said, not moving an inch. “This is my busy season. I’m on everyone’s holiday menu.”
“Honey,” he said,” studying me in my hunched-over, half-naked position, “aren’t you going about this case in a rather unorthodox manner?”
“For what I’ve got to work with I’m doing all right. Where do you stand, Fred?”
He squinted narrowly. “I scooped all the major papers. Now it appears I’ve got another first.”
“It all depends upon your viewpoint,” I said. “When you make the news you’re always first.”
He rapped his cane on the wood floor briskly. “Then you should have been a news reporter, Honey. You’re generally always there, aren’t you?”
“Depends,” I said. “If I take a shower I usually pick my own stall. How about you?”
His face tightened perceptively. “I prefer baths myself. What’s next on the agenda?”
“Mountain cabins,” I said testily. “Ones with creaking doors and naked dames tied to the floor. How are you fixed for those?”
“They’re running out of my ears,” he answered, shifting slightly in the doorway, “since you’re the one who’s talking. Come on, Honey, relax.”
I didn’t move. “Is that what the president said to you when he pinned on the medal.”
“What medal?”
“The one that has five stars and a blue field. Funny isn’t it, Fred? Most guys receive that tribute posthumously, when they’re already lying in a field.”
Rain continued to slash behind him, filling the night with its noise and confusion.
His eyebrows lifted. “Now you’re conning me, Honey. I didn’t ask for the Congressional.”
“Did Angela Scali?”
“Keep her out of this!”
I straightened slowly, still holding the hatchet. “You knew her, didn’t you, Fred?”
“No!”
“You’re lying, newsboy. You know you’re lying.”
His eyelids pinched so tightly they almost closed. “You’re out of bounds, Honey!”
“Not in the football game I’m playing, I’m not. Where’s your ribbon, Fred?”
His hand reached instinctively to his breast pocket, then lowered. “You’re crazy, Honey. I come in here and you’re bent over a bleeding man. What am I supposed to think?”
“What’d you think in that cabin when you—”
“What cabin?” he demanded angrily. “You having hallucinations?”
“Maybe.”
“Then let’s bury the hatchet!”
“Where, Fred?”
“I don’t care where, just so long as it isn’t in my back.”
He made a quick move in my direction, snapping his cane down on the light switch. The room was plunged into black. I took one step, stumbled over the unconscious gatekeeper and sprawled on the floor. In the glare of a bolt of lightning. I saw Fred come toward me. I rolled, hooked my foot under his cane and flipped him over on his side. The newsman hit the floor with a vicious thud.
“You shouldn’t have done what you did, Honey!” Fred shouted, above the storm’s roar.
“Fred, so help me I’ll use this hatchet if I have to. Don’t move!”
He lifted himself on his left elbow, grunting from the effort, and swung at me with his cane. The tip grazed my sleeve.
“Fred, I’m warning you!”
He swung again. This time I caught the piece of hickory in mid-air and ripped it from his hands.
“You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you?” he shouted.
“Fred, you’re out of your mind!”
I threw his cane against the wall, then dashed out the door. Two sets of headlights were moving up the road from the camp. I slipped behind the wheel of Fred’s car and started the engine. It was a sleek, new sedan and still smelled fresh from the factory.
I pulled through the gate quickly, skidding on the muddy road, and turned toward the Mountain Highway. Rain teemed down, blinding me, slashing over the wind-shield in never-ending sheets. Thunder exploded violently in the night.
I was almost too stunned to cope with the storm. The gate shack incident with Fred Sims had been too much. Again he’d come at me with his cane. Again he’d tried to beat my brains out. Fred Sims. It seemed utterly impossible after all we’d been through together.
The headlights dwindled behind me and disappeared. I reached the Mountain Highway and turned into the downhill lane. At the first big curve I clamped down on the brakes. My foot sank to the floorboard. The sedan careened around the curve, skidding over the white line. My heart leaped into my throat. The brakes were gone.
NINE
There was a ripping crash as the sedan struck a guard-rail on the downhill side of the highway, twisting back across the slick pavement, skidding out of control.
I tried the hand brake, but the metal handle came loose in my fingers. The cable was severed!
The grade at this point was perilously steep and narrow, carved sharply from the mountains. A cliff swung into my headlight’s glare, rising straight and rocky in the rain. The wheel twisted in my hands.
Crash! The right front fender grazed the bluff, shooting up a shower of stones and pebbles that ricocheted off the windshield.
Another set of headlights loomed in front of me as the highway straightened for a few yards before another curve. They sliced ominously through the furious downpour, moving up the mountain slowly on the downhill side of the white line.
I was in the wrong lane! The wheel wouldn’t respond as the sedan skidded again on the wet pavement, veering out toward the guardrail. I snapped it viciously and the car spun sideways directly into the oncoming lights, grazing the rail, metal rending and tearing against the steel guard.
My hands flew instinctively to my face as the other vehicle’s horn blared wildly, lights looming like two angry
eyes. Suddenly the windshield seemed to explode and something ripped past my head with an ear-splitting frenzy. The seat jerked, tore loose from its mountings, throwing me hard toward the dashboard. My cheek brushed against the steering wheel as it twisted sideways mashing me down on the floor. The car spun violently, tipped, rolled, the sound of its death splintering around me in a hideous roar of steel and glass.
Then it was over, and there was nothing to hear except the rain and a slowly turning wheel that grated somewhere on a broken axle.
I felt around slowly, hardly able to believe I was still alive, not convinced in the futile darkness that life did exist in my bruised body. The broken steering column was bent around me like a pretzel. That much I could feel in the dark. I could feel, too, that the car was tilted forward on its frame as if the front end had dug a gaping hole in the ground, or was hanging downward into some awesome void.
By the time I’d unscrambled myself, I heard the distinct clatter of footsteps running hard on wet asphalt.
Then a voice cried out anxiously in the night, “Hey! Hey! Hey, down there, are you all right, for God’s sake?”
I knew then why the car was tipped so severely. I crawled from under the battered dashboard and felt rain slamming down on my face. The door on the driver’s side was gone and beneath its opening was a wide, seemingly unending space. I was over the side of the mountain.
“Is anybody alive down there?” the voice rose again.
“Yes!” It surged from my throat.
A flashlight cone erupted in the dark, spilling over the sedan, lighting my face through the persistent rain. More footsteps rang on the highway.
“What’s happened?” another voice demanded.
“A car went out of control. Nearly hit me. Somebody’s alive. Look at that, will you!”
A man swore. “The guardrail went clean through the front and rear windows. We’d better get some help fast before that damned thing breaks!”
I was beginning to get the picture. I’d missed the other vehicle, but the guardrail had apparently snapped and punctured my car like a sausage on a skewer. That was all that was holding me from a horrifying plunge down the mountain.
Honey West: A Kiss for a Killer Page 8