“Saroukian, an Armenian firm.”
“What’s the matter, ain’t they even got their own delivery truck?”
“Nah, we used to,” said Larry professionally, “but we gave it up. Business been bad.”
The ground grew higher as they got back inland; the marshes gave way to isolated thickets and clumps of trees. The truck ate up the road. “Got the time?” said Larry. “I’m supposed to get it there by nine thirty.”
“It’s about nine now,” said the driver. “Quarter to when I started.” Then he looked over at Larry across the obstacle between them. “Who d’ya think you’re kidding?” he said suddenly.
Larry froze. “I don’t get you.”
“You ain’t delivering that nowhere. Whatever it is, it’s hot. You swiped it. You’re taking it somewhere to sell it.”
“How do you figure that?” said Larry, and curled his arm around it protectively.
“I wasn’t bom yestidday,” sneered the driver.
Larry suddenly hauled it over his way, across his own lap, and gave it a shove with his whole body that sent it hurtling out the side of the truck. It dropped by the roadside and rolled over a couple of times. He got out on the step to go after it. “Thanks for the lift,” he said. “I’ll be leaving you here.”
“All right, bud, if that’s how you feel about it,” agreed the driver. “Hell, it’s not my look-out, I wasn’t going to take it away from you—.” Without slowing up he reached out and gave Larry a shove that sent him flying sideways out into the night. His red tail-lights went twinkling merrily up the road and disappeared in the dark.
Larry had fortunately cleared the asphalt roadbed and landed in the soft turf alongside. None too soft at that, but nothing was broken, his palms and knees were just skinned a little. He picked himself up and went back to where the rug was. Before he bent for it he looked around. And then his swearing stopped. Even this hadn’t gone wrong, had come out right, very much right. He was so close to the inn that the reflection of its lights could be seen above the treetops off to one side. And the clump of pines would be even nearer, a five-minute walk from where he was. All that driver had done was save him the necessity of getting out in front of it and giving himself away.
But now, as he stooped over his grisly burden, he was horrified to see that one of the cords had parted, that a pillow had fallen to the road and that the body had slid down till the forehead and eyes showed beneath the blond hair that cascaded over the roadway. Larry looked up as a pair of approaching headlights floated around a distant comer. Hurriedly he worked the body back into position, shielding it with his own form from any curious glances that might be directed at him from the oncoming car. He had managed to get the pillow stuffed back in position and was retying the burst cord as the car whizzed by without even a pause of interest. Larry heaved a sigh of relief and, shouldering the load, got going again. This time he kept away from the side of the road, going deeper and deeper among the trees. It made the going tougher, but he wasn’t coming up the front way if he could help it.
The glare from the roadhouse grew stronger and kept him from losing his bearings. After a while a whisper of dance music came floating to him through the trees, and he knew he was there. He edged back a little closer toward the road again, until he could see the circular clearing in the pines just ahead of him. It was just big enough to hold a single car, but there wasn’t any car in it. He sank down out of sight with what he’d carried all the way out here, and got to work undoing the cords that bound it. By the time he was through, the rug and the two pillows were tightly rolled up again and shoved out of the way, and the body of the woman who had died at five that afternoon lay beside him. He just squatted there on the ground next to it, waiting. In life, he knew, Doris had never been the kind of woman who was stood up; he wondered if she would be in death.
When it felt like half the night was gone—actually only about twenty minutes had passed—a sudden flash of blinding light exploded among the trees as a car turned into the nearby clearing from the road. He was glad he hadn’t gone any nearer to it than he had. As it was he had to duck his head, chin almost touching the ground, for the farflung headlight beams to pass harmlessly above him. They missed him by only two good feet. The lights swept around in a big arc as the car half turned, then they snapped out and the engine died. He couldn’t see anything for a minute, but neither could whoever was in that car. Nothing more happened after that. When his eyes readjusted themselves he knew by its outline that it was the right car. Then there was a spurt of orange as the occupant lit a cigarette, and that gave his face away. Same face Larry had seen with Doris. It was the right man, too.
Larry stayed where he was, didn’t move an inch. To do so would only have made every twig and pine needle around him snap and rustle. He couldn’t do anything anyway while the man stayed there at the wheel; the first move would have to come from him. True, he might get tired waiting and light out again—but Larry didn’t think he would. Not after coming all the way out here to get her. No one likes to be made a fool of, not even by a pretty woman. When she didn’t show up he’d probably boil over, climb out and go up to the inn himself to see what was keeping her. It became a case of seeing which one of them would get tired waiting first. Larry knew it wasn’t going to be himself.
The cushions of the roadster creaked as the man shifted his hips around. Larry could see the red dot of his cigarette through the trees, and even get a whiff of the smoke now and then. He folded his lapels close over his shirt-front and held them that way so the white wouldn’t gleam out and give him away. The red dot went out. The leather creaked again. The man was getting restless now. About ten minutes had passed. The creakings became more frequent.
All of a sudden there was a loud honking blast, repeated three times. Larry jumped and nearly passed out. He was giving her the horn, trying to attract her attention. Then the door of the car cracked open, slammed shut again, and he was standing on the ground, swearing audibly. Larry got the head of the corpse up off the ground and held it on his lap, waiting. About a minute more now.
Scuffling, crackling footsteps moved away from the car and out onto the road. He stood there looking down it toward the inn. Larry couldn’t see him but the silence told him that. No sign of her coming toward him. Then the soft scrape of shoe-leather came from the asphalt, moving away toward the inn. He was going up to the entrance to take a look in. Larry waited long enough to let him get out of earshot. Then he reared up, caught the body under the arms, and began to struggle toward the car with it, half carrying and half dragging it. The car was a roadster and Larry had known for a long time what he was going to do. The underbrush crackled and sang out, but the music playing at the inn would cover that.
When he got up to the car Larry let the body go for a minute and climbed up and got the rumble-seat open. It was capacious, but he had a hard time getting the stiffened form into it. He put her in feet first, and she stuck out like a jack-in-the-box. Then he climbed up after her, bent her over double, and shoved her down underneath. He dug the wrist-watch with her name on it out of his pocket and tossed it in after her. Then he closed the rumble-seat and she was gone.
“You’re set for your last joy-ride, Doris,” he muttered. He would have locked the rumble, to delay discovery as long as possible, if he had had the key. He took the powder-compact with her snapshot under the lid and dropped it on the ground in back of the car. Let him deny that he’d been here with her! Then he moved off under the trees and was lost to sight.
A few minutes later he showed up at the door of the inn, as though he’d just come out from inside. The doorman was just returning to his post, as though someone had called him out to the roadway to question him. Larry saw a figure moving down the road toward the clump of pines he’d just come from. “What was his grief?” he asked, as though he’d overheard the whole thing.
“Grot stood up,” the doorman grinned. He went back inside and Larry went down to the edge of the road. The headligh
ts suddenly flared out in the middle of the pines and an engine whined as it warmed up. A minute later the roadster came out into the open backwards, straightened itself It stayed where it was a moment. A taxi came up to the inn and disgorged a party of six. Larry got in. “Back to town,” he said, “and slow up going past that car down there.”
The man in the roadster, as they came abreast of it, was tilting a whiskey bottle to his lips. Larry leaned out the window of the cab and called: “Need any help? Or are you too cheap to go in and buy yourself a chaser?”
The solitary drinker stopped long enough to give Larry a four-letter word describing what he could do with himself, then resumed.
“Step on it,” Larry told the driver. “I’m expecting a phone call.”
When he let himself into the house once more, something stopped him before he was even over the threshold. Something was wrong here. He hadn’t left that many lights turned on, he’d only left one dim one burning, and now— He pulled himself together, closed the door, and went forward. Then as he turned into the living room he recoiled. He came face to face with his father, who’d just gotten up out of a chair.
Weeks looked very tired, all in, but not frightened any more. “I took the next train back,” he said quietly. “I’d come to my senses by the time I got there. What kind of a heel do you take me for anyway? I couldn’t go through with it, let you shoulder the blame that way.”
Larry just hung his head. “My God, and I’ve been through all that,” he groaned, “for nothing!” Then he looked up quickly. “You havon’t phoned in yet, or anything—have you?”
“No. I was waiting for you to come back. I thought maybe you’d walk over to the station-house with me. I’m not much of a hero,” he admitted. Then he straightened up. “No use arguing about it, my mind’s made up. If you won’t come with me, then I’ll go alone.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Larry bitterly. “Might as well—I made a mess of it anyway. I see that now! It never would have held together. The whole thing came out wrong. I left the rug I carried her in, there under the trees. A dozen people saw me with it. I showed myself at the inn. I even told the taxi driver I was expecting a phone call. That alone would have damaged your alibi. How was I supposed to know you were going to call, if it wasn’t a set-up? And last of all my prints are all over her powder-compact and her wrist-watch. A big help I turned out to be!” He gave a crooked smile. “Let’s go. And do me a favor, kick me every step of the way getting there, will you?”
When they got to the steps of the headquarters building, they stopped and looked at each other. Larry rested his hand on his father’s shoulder for a minute. “Wait here, why don’t you?” he said in a choked voice. “I’ll go in and break it for you. That’ll be the easiest way.” He went in alone.
The sergeant on duty looked across the desk. “Well, young feller, what’s your trouble?”
“The name is Weeks,” said Larry, “and it’s about Doris Weeks, my stepmother—”
The sergeant shook his head as though he pitied him. “Came to report her missing, is that it?” And before Larry could answer the mystifying question, “Recognize this?” He was looking at the wrist-watch he’d dropped into the rumble seat less than an hour ago.
Larry’s face froze. “That’s hers,” he managed to say.
“Yeah,” agreed the sergeant, “the name’s on it. That’s the only thing we had to go by.” He dropped his eyes. “She’s pretty badly hurt, young feller,” he said unwillingly.
“She’s dead!” Larry exclaimed, gripping the edge of the desk with both hands.
The sergeant seemed to mistake it for apprehension and not the statement of a known fact. “Yeah,” he sighed, “she is. I didn’t want to tell you too suddenly, but you may as well know. Car smash-up only half an hour ago. Guy with her must have been driving stewed or without lights. Anyway a truck hit them and they turned over. He was thrown clear but he died instantly of a broken neck. She was caught under the car, and it caught fire, and—well, there wasn’t very much to go by after it was over except this wrist-watch, which fell out on the roadway in some way—”
Larry said: “My father’s outside, I guess I’d better tell him what you told me—” and he went weaving crazily out the doorway.
“It sure must be tough,” thought the sergeant, “to come and find out a thing like that!”
(1935)
Dead on Her Feet
“And another thing I’ve got against these non-stop shindigs,” orated the chief to his sUghtly bored listeners, “is they let minors get in ‘em and dance for days until they wind up in a hospital with the D.T.‘s, when the whole thing’s been fixed ahead of time and they haven’t got a chance of copping the prize anyway. Here’s a Missus MoUie McGuire been calling up every hour on the half-hour all day long, and bawling the eardrums off me because her daughter Toodles ain’t been home in over a week and she wants this guy Pastemack arrested. So you go over there and tell Joe Pastemack Fll give him until tomorrow morning to fold up his contest and send his entries home. And tell him for me he can shove all his big and little silver loving-cups—”
For the first time his audience looked interested, even expectant, as they waited to hear what it was Mr. P. could do with his loving-cups, hoping for the best.
“—^back in their packing-cases,” concluded the chief chastely, if somewhat disappointingly. “He ain’t going to need ‘em any more. He has promoted his last marathon in this neck of the woods.”
There was a pause while nobody stirred. “Well, what are you all standing there looking at me for?” demanded the chief testily. “You, Donnelly, you’re nearest the door. Get going.”
Donnelly gave him an injured look. “Me, Chief? Why, I’ve got a red-hot lead on that payroll thing you were so hipped about. If I don’t keep after it it’ll cool off on me.”
“All right, then you, Stevens!”
“Why, I’m due in Yonkers right now,” protested Stevens virtuously.
“Machine-gun Rosie has been seen around again and I want to have a little talk with her—”
“That leaves you, Doyle,” snapped the merciless chief.
“Gee, Chief,” whined Doyle plaintively, “gimme a break, can’t you? My wife is expecting—” Very much under his breath ho added: “—^me home early tonight.”
“Congratulations,” scowled the chief, who had missed hearing the last part of it. He glowered at them. “I get it!” he roared. “It’s below your dignity, ain’t it! It’s too petty-larceny for you! Anything less than the St. Vgdentine’s Day massacre ain’t worth going out after, is that it? You figure it’s a detail for a bluecoat, don’t you?” His open pgdm hit the desk-top with a soimd like a firecracker going off. Purple became the dominant color of his complexion. “I’ll put you all back where you started, watching pickpockets in the subway! I’ll take some of the high-falutinness out of you! I’ll—I’ll—” The only surprising thing about it was that foam did not appear at his mouth.
It may have been that the chiefs bark was worse than his bite. At any rate no great gmioimt of apprehension wais shown by the culprits before him. One of them cleared his throat inoffensively. “By the way. Chief, I imderstand that rookie, Smith, has been swiping bsinanas fi:^m Tony on the comer again, and getting the squad a bad name aft«r you told him to pay for them.”
The chief took pause and considered this point.
The others seemed to get the idea at once. ‘They tell me he darned near wrecked a Chinese laundry because the Chinks tried to pass him somebody else’s shirts. You could hear the screeching for miles.”
Doyle put the artistic finishing touch. “I overheard him say he wouldn’t be seen dead wearing the kind of socks you do. He was asking me did I think you had lost an election bet or just didn’t know any better.”
The chief had become dangerously quiet all at once. A faint drumming sound from somewhere on the desk told what he was doing with his fingers. “Oh, he did, did he?” he remarked, very slowly and ve
ry ominously.
At this most unfortunate of all possible moments the door blew open and in breezed the maligned one in person. He looked very tired and at the same time enthusiastic, if the combination can be imagined. Red rinmied his eyes, blue shadowed his jaws, but he had a triumphant look on his face, the look of a man who has done his job well and expects a kind word. “Well, Chief,” he burst out, “it’s over! I got both of’em. Just brought ‘em in. They’re in the back room right now—”
An oppressive silence greeted him. Frost seemed to be in the air. He blinked and glanced at his three pals for enlightenment.
The silence didn’t last long, however. The chief cleared his throat. ”Hrrrmph. Zat so?” he said with deceptive mildness. “Well now, Smitty, as long as your engine’s warm and you’re hitting on all six, just run over to Joe Pastemack’s marathon dance and put the skids under it. It’s been going on in that old armory on the west side—”
Smitty’s face had become a picture of despair. He glanced mutely at the clock on the wall. The clock said four— a.m., not p.m. The chief, not being a naturally hard-hearted man, took time off to glance down at his own socks, as if to steel himself for this bit of cruelty. It seemed to work beautifully. “An election bet!” he muttered cryptically to himself, and came up redder than ever.
“Gee, Chief,” pleaded the rookie, “I haven’t even had time to shave since yesterday morning.” In the background unseen nudgings and silent strangulation were rampant.
“You ain’t taking part in it, you’re putting the lid on it,” the chief reminded him morosely. “First you buy your way in just like anyone else and size it up good and plenty, see if there’s anything against it on moral grounds. Then you dig out one Toodles McGuire from under, and don’t let her stall you she’s of age either. Her old lady says she’s sixteen and she ought to know. Smack her and send her home. You seal everything up tight and tell Pasternack and whoever else is backing this thing with him it’s all off. And don’t go ‘way. You stay with him and make sure he refunds any money that’s coming to anybody and shuts up shop good and proper. If he tries to squawk about there ain’t no ordinance against marathons, just lemme know. We can find an ordinance against anything if we go back far enough in the books—”
Darkness at dawn : early suspense classics Page 26