F. B. I. Showdown

by Gordon Landsborough

  They got a dozen up, though they were sweating heavily by the time they had finished. And by this time, too, there was a heavy stink of a crude oil fire in a burner below them. Dryway came clambering up, swearing because he had got filthed up.

  Humble said, “Shut up, Tom. If we get away with this, it is worth a few ruined suits.”

  Dryway got to work again on the tackle and succeeded in hoisting the lid. Then the sullen convicts were driven to the task of lifting up the carboys and emptying the acid sludge into the sulphonator.

  When that was done and the fumes were rising as the heat got through the metal skin of the pressure pot, Humble rapped. “Now sling Old Mouthy in, and the can after him.”

  Bronya knew what was in that sack, knew also the contents of that can. And she knew their importance not only to these men, Dryway and Humble, but also to many other Warren Bridge people—and to the Law as represented by the police and the F.B.I. outside.

  She was in a panic, watching the convicts cross reluctantly to seize hold of that sack. Then she saw a distant movement down among the pots, and desperately she played for time. She called, “I think I ought to tell you. I wasn’t lost—I came here with three carloads of Feds.”

  That stopped them, every one. They turned, and she saw she had their attention. She played boldly, sensing rather than seeing that approaching figure.

  “There’s an army of them camped outside. You’ll not get away with this.”

  Dryway rapped. “The blazes with her. Get these parcels in and then we can talk to her.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw someone stand upright, and there was the gleam of light on a gun barrel. Gladness overwhelmed her.

  For exactly five seconds.

  Then a voice came through that was thin and dry as the crackling of nutshells. It said, “Looks like I came in time. Get your hands high, the lot of you.”

  Bronya saw a smallish man, a man of such indeterminate age that he could have been anything from twenty to forty. He was wearing ill-fitting clothes and heavy boots, like those on Egghead’s and Delcros’s feet.

  She heard Johnny Delcros gasp, “Joe Guestler! What—”

  And his hands clawed very high, very quickly. Egghead stood in a crouch, ready to spring, his face drawn in white fury. He said, “How the hell did you get here?” and Guestler was so cocky he told them.

  “You shoved old Rocky Whitwam and his mate into that laundry bin, back at the jail, didn’t you? They found me there, unconscious. When you’d gone, they got me out. I told Rocky I’d started to come after you and got knocked out coming down the chute, and he told me you were coming to see his brother to collect a million. That was a double-cross. I told Louie Savannah, and he had to decide on a jailbreak that day so’s to get his hands on that dough. Only he went and broke his ankle.”

  Johnny said, looking down the shed, “Where’s Jud Corbeta? He got away with you, didn’t he?”

  Guestler nodded. “He’s down in the yard, keeping watch.”

  Plump Geordie Humble asked, “You seen any G-men around?” He was anxious.

  Guestler looked contemptuous. “Not a smell of one. I guess the dame’s tryin’ to frighten you.” Then he went on to tell them how he had tracked them—and why.

  “We got there in time to hear all that talk by those fellars back in Rocky’s brother’s house. And we didn’t get much line on a million, so when thirty grand was mentioned, we thought that would do nicely for us. We slept in a car in a garage at the Whitwam place, then came out here in another car we picked up yesterday. Looks like we got here in time.”

  “In time for what?” demanded the belligerent Humble.

  Guestler said, smiling coldly, “Think, brother: in time to collect thirty grand,”

  Humble shouted, “The hell, you’re not going to find any thirty grand. I took good care to hide it when I got outa the car.”

  Guestler looked across at Egghead and Johnny. “Looks like I need your help,” he said, and there was regret in his voice. “This is one thing I can’t do and watch you all the time. You’re a coupla dirty, double-crossin’ chisellers, but I’m big an’ I’ll forget it.”

  Egghead and Johnny were already beginning to understand and were lowering their hands. Guestler said, “We split four ways, huh?”

  Egghead and Johnny nodded, faces relaxing into tight smiles, Johnny said, heartily, “Sure we’ll split four ways, Joe.” But nobody looked at each other. For everyone was thinking: that four into thirty grand didn’t go too well, and maybe there’d be a few less at the share-out. Egghead took the gun from Humble.

  Joe Guestler said, “This guy came prepared to pay up thirty grand. I guess it’s stashed somewhere around, but we ain’t got time to pull this joint to pieces. Instead, let’s pull this guy to pieces until he talks. Hang him inside that acid bath!”

  Dryway started to come forward, but that gun swung and sent him cowering back, along with the shaken Bronya. Egghead and Johnny walked towards the plump Geordie Humble. He had guts. In desperation he lashed out.

  Johnny Delcros slipped under the blow and started to belt him about the face. When he’d got the bewildered chemical manufacturer staggering, he and Egghead grabbed him and slung him into the acid bath.

  He started screaming. It was too much for Bronya and she started screaming, too. Anyway, she thought it was one way of trying to bring help.

  It wasn’t enough for Egghead, to have Humble hanging there with his legs in the acid. He started slapping him across the face and shouting, “You two-timing—! Where’ve you hidden that dough? Come on, talk!”

  Humble changed his mind about not speaking and opened his mouth to say where the money was hidden.

  Then something big dropped on top of Bronya and flattened her to the stage flooring. Simultaneously several guns roared.

  Bronya saw Egghead reel, and the movement knocked Humble into the big metal pressure pot, and they heard him scream until his head went under the acid inside. Twice after that they heard him scream, and then he was silent.

  But no one could go and help him.

  Bronya found herself rolling inside the arms of someone. She knew it would be Lief Sorensen, without seeing his face. It was painful, going under that heavy weight on the unyielding metal flooring, but after her recent plight she wouldn’t have minded if they’d rolled a hundred yards.

  Then they were behind cover, and Sorensen rolled clear and got to his knees. Now she could see that the G-men had crept up close along the various gantries and were firing their automatics whenever they saw a target. Tom Driveway was crouching in a corner, white-faced, and hoping to hell he wouldn’t stop a stray.

  For the fight was between the three cornered convicts and the G-men now. They were behind the cover of a sulphonator, and they would take some shifting. That was, until Sorensen created a diversion.

  He looked up, nodded, then dived head first across to the shelter of a nearby pressure pot, firing as he went through the air. Someone else dropped lightly down onto the gantry. It was Ben Arcota, Bronya saw. 1t was a long drop, but Ben was perfectly poised and upright when his feet hit the deck, and his gun was blazing non-stop. Sorensen came staggering painfully back at that—he had hurt his shoulder in that dive—and his gun gave out its last two rounds.

  Egghead sat down and started coughing over a smashed chest. Johnny Delcros twisted to his feet, clawed at nothing, and then pitched over the iron railing on to the ground floor, twelve feet below. Joe Guestler said, cynically, “Okay, I’ve had enough,” and dropped his gun.

  * * * *

  Everyone walked very slowly across the waste lot towards the cars that were being driven up. After that acid-ridden atmosphere, it felt good to be out in the sunshine again. Sorensen and his assistant were helping Bronya along, though after the first few strides she felt all right again, and in fact said she thought they probably needed help and not she. So they all walked together in contentment. Bronya said, “I see a good idea in ballet for G-men, Ben. The w
ay you dropped over that railing....”

  Sorensen said, with dignity, “May I point out that I was first to make that drop?”

  And Bronya said, “May I point out that you’ve been having to help me walk this last hundred yards in consequence? You’re quite a weight, Mr. Sorensen.”

  They laughed. It was very easy to laugh now, they found. So Sorensen said, with fairness, “You don’t know anything about ballet, Bronya. We were in a hell of a mess. We found we couldn’t get in after you because a fellow took up guard just inside the yard. So Ben here said for me to throw him over that wall and he’d deal with the watcher. Which we did. You should have seen him as he flew through the air with the greatest of ease, and by the look of him he must have landed full weight on the unfortunate Jud Corbeta.”

  They got into the car, while the police chief said, with heavy satisfaction, “Now, that was a nice bit of work. I’m goin’ to remember all that. All that’s left is for a judge and jury to do a bit of tidying up—there’s the Conscience of America, those danged old interfering idiots, the lynch mob, and three escaped convicts. They’ll get tidied up all right, I reckon.”

  Then he saw that Sorensen and the girl weren’t listening, so he complained, “Am I talkin’ to myself? What are you two fixing?” suspiciously.

  Sorensen held Bronya’s hand and told him. “I’m fixing for Ben to go back to the field office to report without delay.”

  That straw head came round in wide-eyed surprise. “The hell,” said Ben Arcota, and he was suspicious, too. “Maybe you’ll tell me why?”

  Said Sorensen calmly, “You don’t think I want you around the place when I’m fixing to stay out at Bronya’s over the weekend, do you? She says her father’ll like me.” Butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.

  And her father did. But not as much as his daughter, of course.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gordon Landsborough was born in 1913 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. On leaving school at fourteen to help support his family, he attended night classes, eventually becoming a chemist with the research department of ICI. Continuing his studies, he turned to journalism and worked on a number of papers and journals in the north of England. In 1938, he started up ARP News, a magazine promoting air raid precautions to a war-nervous England.

  He moved to London in 1939, and in 1940 he started up Reveille as the official newspaper of the Ex-Services’ Allied Association. It was bought by the Mirror Group in 1947.

  In 1940 he joined up with the London Scottish Regiment, serving for a time in the deserts of North Africa. Many years later his experiences would be incorporated into a number of bestselling war novels.

  Returning to London, in 1949 he was appointed editor of Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd, a very undistinguished lowly publisher of pulp fiction. With Landsborough at the helm, the publisher soon took a turn for the better. In 1951 he rebranded them as ‘Panther Books’, publishing a regular series of all types of genre novels, most notably science fiction, and he also launched the famous British SF magazine, Authentic Science Fiction. As part of his editorial duties, Landsborough wrote numerous westerns, crime, and foreign legion thrillers, mostly under his personal pseudonym of Mike M’Cracken. His own personal memoirs on this period of his career can be found in the book Vultures of the Void: The Legacy by Philip Harbottle.

  In 1954 Panther Books became one of the leading British publishers, switching from original genre novels to paperback reprints of bestselling hardcover novels from other publishers. Their format was improved, and only the finest cover artists were hired, including in particular “Cy Webb” (Reginald Heade) and “Peff” (Sam Peffer), Harold Johns, and Josh Kirby. Nonfiction titles predominated, especially Second World War books, and the fiction titles were by famous bestselling writers, internationally known.

  Landsborough had earlier tsken a break from Hamiltons to pursue his own career as a writer, eventually producing about 100 books over the next thirty-five years. His publishing expertise was well known within the trade, however, and he was employed as an advisor to several publishing companies

  In 1957 Landsborough started up Four Square Books, backed by Godfrey Phillips, the tobacco company. Michael Geare, who was employed by him in 1957 as sales manager, said of him that “He was a gifted, clever, likeable chap, and really knew everything about book publishing. On one occasion when we were a book short on the list, he took five days off and wrote the book himself. It wasn’t half a bad paperback, either.” Four Square Books was very successful, and were sold to New English Library in 1962.

  Landsborough went on to create several successful imprints, most notably the children’s paperback company, Armada Books (later bought out by Collins Books), The Armada Books list included, somewhat controversially, Enid Blyton, whose books at that time was frowned on by libraries and academics, but still sold in their hundreds of thousands. His list also included his own adaptations for children of the Tarzan and the Beau Geste series of books, and stories written for children based on the popular television series Bonanza.

  Later in the 1960s he started up another children’s publishing company, Dragon Books. This was also acquired by Collins (Armada).

  Always a very generous and public-spirited man, during the 1960s Gordon Landsborough helped several charities and friends set up publishing ventures, including Trust Books, New Zealand Books, and Viking Books.

  During this time he continued writing, including a dozen books under his own name, the bes-selling of which in 1956 was Tobruk Commando. In 1956 he also published a book about the Battle of the River Plate with sales revenue going to the survivors’ fund, and in 1961 (under the pseudonym Alan Holmes) the book of Tony Hancock’s film The Rebel. In the 1970s he continued to write, producing another five books, including the popular Glasshouse Gang series.

  In the early 1970s he worked on freelance publishing ventures in Hong Kong and Australia involving tourism and travel.

  In the mid 1970s he returned to England and turned his hand to bookselling, opening up a remainder bookselling business, Bargain Books. This mushroomed into a highly successful business, with four stores.

  Throughout his life, as well as helping friends and family set up publishing and bookselling businesses, Gordon Landsborough spent much of his spare time helping charitable causes, particularly for war veterans. In the late 1970s he bought a large shop in Staines and, at his own expense, turned it into a community centre for senior citizens.

  He held strong views about many social and political issues and actively campaigned for many of them, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

  Gordon Landsborough died in 1983, aged 70, survived by three sons and two daughters.

  In recent years several English publishers have been reissuing the best of his western and crime and foreign legion novels, and many of his dynamic detective thrillers are being published in the USA for the first time by The Borgo Press.