Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

No Way Out by Robert Colby

One might describe this as running away from a sure thing.

Tara Welbourne was a new arrival at Lindquist, Holt and Barsdale, a woolen company in New York City where I made my living as a salesman. Fresh from the steno pool, she appeared at my desk one morning for dictation. Her expression eager, she gave no warning of big trouble in her wake. She was as mild and fragrant — and deceptive — as a tropic breeze followed by the wildest of storms.

Just 22, she was very special in the looks department with her wide and wistful blue eyes, her tawny hair spilling around a small heart of a face, sweetly composed. She was rather tall, and about the artful distribution of her figure was that compelling balance of rich abundance and absolute economy.

Tara had come recently to New York from a small, sleepy town in the Midwest. She had brought with her a charging enthusiasm for new adventure, an insatiable curiosity.

A pretty girl who is also unspoiled is usually a jackpot find in jaded old New York, so when I discovered during the small talk between letters that, like myself, Tara was unmarried and at loose ends, I launched our first date.

The first was followed by several more, and soon we were as cozy a pair as you could find. Tara was coming on strong about love everlasting, including hints of a permanent arrangement — like marriage, for instance. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea, so I stalled.

One Monday Tara had brought sandwiches and we were having lunch alone in the filing room of L.H. & B. Tara had been pressing me to save my money for the day when I might want to take a little house on Long Island, buy furniture and settle down. I told her that a bachelor didn’t need a little house on Long Island. To further express my independence, I had remained apart from her over the weekend, dating a gal who had no apparent interest in matrimony.

Faking indifference, Tara had gone with a girlfriend to this party she was presently describing over lunch. The party was hosted by a big spender known as Earl Craddock, Tara said. Earl was a distinguished-looking widower who had a swank pad on the East River. Moreover, she related gleefully, one glance at her had practically blown his mind.

Between dainty bites of her sandwich, I also learned from Tara that Craddock had wall-to-wall money scooped from various enterprises about which he was vague, though he made no effort to conceal his interest in a large bookmaking operation. Most of the action, he informed Tara, came from office workers who like to bet the ponies, people employed by large corporations such as our own Lindquist, Holt and Barsdale.

Having reported these fascinating details, Tara paused, lighted a cigarette and said, “I’ll bet there are a whole bunch of horse players right here at L.H. and B.”

“No doubt,” I said. “Why? You planning to open your own book?”

“Well, not exactly,” she said without so much as a twitch of amusement. “But I thought maybe we could drum up some business for Earl.”

“We could, huh? Why should we line up suckers for Craddock?”

She made a charming face. “Because, darling, he’ll give me a nice fat percentage of the take. I’ll canvass the girls, and if you’ll tout the men, I’ll put the profits in a special savings account — for us. Because some rainy day in the future, who knows what we might need it for. Right? So will you do it?”

Wondering if I would still be around on that ‘rainy day,’ I said, “Since the state seems about to license off-track bookie joints, I suppose the law against taking bets on the nags has become a joke, but I still don’t want to risk making book for Craddock. I’m not looking for trouble.”

“What trouble?” Tara laced her hands around the knee of one exquisite leg and smiled sweetly. “Cliff, dear, we will take no bets. We will do nothing more than inquire softly among our fellow slaves whether anyone would like to place a little wager on the galloping steeds. During lunch hours, a chubby, baldheaded guy by the name of Sammy Kasko will be seated in a rear booth of the coffee shop below. And Sammy, a Craddock runner, will write up the betting slips and take the cash. See?”

“Mmm,” I said. “Well, that’s a horse of an entirely different color. We don’t book, we simply refer. All the same—”

“Really, darling, what’s holding you? Just whisper it around, then step aside and let Sammy take over.”

“OK,” I said. “Seems harmless enough. For you, I’ll give it a little push.”

In a few days I had at least two dozen of the working stiffs below executive level visiting the Kasko booth in the coffee shop. The scheme had taken off like a big bird and the first payoff would soon be delivered. I wasn’t excited over this windfall, however, because my share wouldn’t come due until the day of the big rain — the day after the wedding — right?

Funny the way it all fell together with only a suggestion to the right people. The word traveled so fast you would think the information was spread by way of an office memo. The word not only traveled fast, it traveled far — and that was the rub. It traveled too far, right into the sacred sanctum of Sanford Wickham, the vice-president in charge of sales.

A stuffy little man who was born ancient, Wickham is most dangerous on those rare occasions when he smiles, and he was smiling when I answered the summons to report to his office.

It began with a lecture on the evils of gambling, continued with the accusation, apparently made by some joker who had lost a bundle, that I was the self-elected company bookmaker and that Kasko was my runner.

Allowing no pause to hear my defense, his smile wider, Wickham then pronounced sentence: “Therefore, Hanson, though you have an excellent record in all other respects, under the circumstances I have no alternative but to ask for your immediate resignation.”

Naturally, I did not implicate Tara, and for some curious reason she came out of it unscathed, her job intact. She was tearfully contrite, insisting that it was all her fault. I agreed.

Tara was a walking disaster, and I had to escape while there was still something left for me to salvage. So I avoided seeing her, composing various excuses. At first she pouted and pleaded, but she finally got the message, and for a time she left me alone.

The rent was overdue and everything worth pawning was in hock when I uncovered a job with a small competitor of L.H. & B., at a major cut in salary — after which, life was far from sweet, but it was bearable.

Then I got a phone call from Tara — and an ultimatum. She had been keeping heavy company with Earl Craddock, that moneybags who lifted his coin from bookmaking and from mysterious sources unknown. She was going to marry the man, Tara needled, unless I broke from my shell and returned to her nest with an affidavit of love and a promise of eternal togetherness.

I conveyed to her the impression that I was deeply moved and flattered by her devotion, but to straighten out my tangled finances and recover my emotional stability after the traumatic loss of my job with dear old L.H. & B., I would need time. Give me a year, two at the most, I begged, then we would discuss it again.

That did it! Before you could say Earl Craddock, she had signed up with him and they were en route to Europe on their honeymoon.

I gave an enormous sigh of relief.

Three weeks passed in a beautiful vacuum of orderly routine. Then came a hastily scrawled letter from Tara, mailed in Rome.

Well, I had been overjoyed when Earl Craddock relieved me of the burden of Tara Welbourne, but I didn’t want her a beaten prisoner who might even wind up underground in some “reeking corner of the Far East.” Yet there was not one thing I could do but await the next communique.

It never came, and that was the last I knew of her until nearly four months later when I was returning to New York after a weekend visit with my sister in Baltimore.

On Monday, I climbed aboard one of those fast, early-morning trains, a record-breaking streamliner that takes wing in Washington, D.C., and hurls itself into New York City three hours later, pausing in Baltimore and two or three other cities en route.

For a few minutes, as the train gathered speed, I sat pensively with an unopened newspaper in my hand. I had often thought of Tara, and just then I was wondering what had become of her. A minute later I got up and went in search of the snack bar. I found it two cars forward and it was when I was returning to my seat with a cup of coffee that I saw Tara!

She was peering out a window at the front of the car in one of those facing seat arrangements. There was a man across from her with a magazine in his lap. Another man sat beside her, napping.

Grinning, I sat down in the empty space which faced backward and was diagonally across from Tara. As I waited for her startled reaction, the man at my elbow with the magazine gave me a cool stare.

“This seat is taken, buddy,” he said, and in his soft growl there was a hint of menace.

I ignored him because Tara had turned from the window and now was gazing directly at me. She had allowed her tawny hair to grow longer so that it swept far down below her shoulders, but I could see no other change in her. Although she blinked and her lips parted slightly as she met my grinning stare, her face was otherwise expressionless.

“Tara!” I said, “is it really you?”

“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” she answered flatly. “My name is not — Clara — or whatever, and I don’t know you. We’ve never met.”

“Tara, you’ve got to be putting me on,” I said. “I’m Cliff Hanson. Don’t you remember?”

“Sorry, never heard of you,”

“Ah, come on now, Tara. New York, at Lindquist, Holt and Barsdale. We worked in the office together.”

“Not me — never!” She turned her head back to the window, dismissing me.

The man beside her no longer appeared drowsy. He was bending toward me and his steel-gray eyes were narrowed, but not with sleep. “Don’t push it, friend,” he said quietly. “The lady isn’t buying and you seem to be annoying her. Now, when the lady is annoyed, we become very upset, so I think you ought to fold your tent and steal away without another word. Know what I mean?” A big man with a lean, decisive face and an uncompromising jaw, he was smiling the way dogs smile when they are coiled to fang each other.

I looked down into the steaming container of coffee absently clutched in my hand. For a moment I was tempted to be generous and let him have all of it, but I checked the impulse and merely took a sip while I thought of an answer.

“What business is it of yours, pal?” I asked him. “Are you her father?”

“Yeah, and I’m her uncle,” said the one with the magazine. “It’s no big deal, buddy — a little mistake. So don’t make waves, OK?”

He was smaller and younger, with black hair and black eyes set in a long, swarthy face with a sharp stiletto of a nose. He was about as lovable as his friend, but at least he had spoken in a reasonable tone, so I got up and said, “See you, Tara.”

Her head came around and she gazed up at me briefly before she lowered her eyes and began a minute inspection of her pale-pink nails, but in that pitiful glance there was despair — and recognition.

Moving on to my seat, I sat pondering the problem, trying to build logic from insanity. Apparently, Tara was a captive of those hoods, and quite obviously they were Craddock goons of the sort described in her letter from Rome, perhaps the same watchdogs who had prevented her escape by plane from London.

Therefore, I reasoned, Tara had likely made another run for it when she arrived with Craddock from Europe, but Craddock had uncovered her trail and sent his boys to haul her back again. Now, pretending that I had mistaken her identity, she was actually signaling me that she was in trouble.

A thunderous voice from heaven could not have moved me to become involved with Tara again on any personal level. No way! But this was different. She needed help to escape and I was going to dig for a plan to provide it. Should I ask the conductor to send for the police at the next stop? I didn’t think he would believe my fantastic story, and if he approached Tara, she would be forced to deny it. Further, if the police came aboard, there was always the chance of a shootout in which Tara could get hurt.

No, I would have to rescue her all by myself, and I didn’t have idea number one for accomplishing such a miracle.

Deciding to play it by ear, I gulped my coffee and returned to the scene of the problem. I found an empty seat at the rear of the car, screened myself behind the newspaper and covertly watched.

Craddock’s boys were again at ease — Stiletto-Nose had same in his magazine, Big-Daddy reclined with the droopy eyes of a reptile basking with deceptive innocence under a lazy sun.

For what seemed an interminable wait, the status remained in quo. Then Big-Daddy stirred, and after winding himself up to full height, muttered to his companion and sauntered toward the rear of the car. His destination appeared inevitable, so when he passed my seat I tossed the newspaper aside and crept after him.

Happily, Stiletto-Nose had his gaze fastened watchfully upon Tara, and the passengers of the car were faced the other way. The polite rumble of the train, as it rolled full-tilt around a gentle curve, covered my approach.

When Big-Daddy opened the door to the men’s room. I took one giant step forward and gave him one giant shove that sent him crashing headlong against the unrelenting steel of the interior wall.

The shove carried me right in after him and, as he bounced back, I caught him behind the neck and smashed another helping of steel against his face and head. In the same second, as he began to sag with ugly moans of complaint, I kicked the door shut and locked it.

He almost crushed me in his descent to the floor, for in that tiny space there was hardly room to stand, let alone collapse. I figured that was the end of the game until I saw that he had reached for his gun on the way down and now he was trying to lift and aim it, squinting at me from his battered, bloody face.

I gave his forearm a swift, field-goal kick, scooped up the fallen gun and used the butt to give him what he apparently wanted most — a long, deep sleep, uninterrupted by the distractions of guarding Tara.

After smoothing my jacket and adjusting my tie in the mirror, I stepped out and closed the door tightly behind me.

When I reached my seat I ducked into it quietly, folded the newspaper around Big-Daddy’s gun, and went on up the aisle. As I came to the vacant space beside Tara, I sat down comfortably. With the paper in my lap, I smiled pleasantly at Stiletto-Nose.

“Hi, there!” I said amiably. “Just thought I’d drop by for a little chat. Anything interesting here?”

“You’re gonna drop on your head if you’re not gone in five seconds flat,” he growled as he rose half out of his seat.

I hoisted the fold of the newspaper slightly and let him see the short snout of the .38. He sat down again with the most bewildered expression. “And don’t expect any help from your friend,” I added to the threat of the gun. “He got sleepy in the rest room and I didn’t have the heart to awaken him.

“Tara,” I said from the corner of my mouth, “I want you to sit beside the nice gentleman and show him some real affection. And while you’re being affectionate, I want you to relieve the man of his nasty little gun like this one, which should be concealed somewhere on his person, perhaps in a holster.”

Tara giggled and said, “Oh, Cliff, darling, you are an absolute gem!” Then she shifted to a close position beside Stiletto-Nose. With an arm about him, her free hand patting him lovingly here and there, she soon produced the second .38 which she passed to me inside the discarded magazine of her captor.

I sneaked the revolver into a pocket and sat waiting with a show of cool, though suddenly, in the aftermath of impulsive action at high risk, I was in a sweat of nervous tension and my legs quivered from the strain. I took a deep breath.

The next step would be the last, and I hoped that we could make our escape before that great hunk of fallen muscle was discovered, or awakened, to complicate the situation. Disoriented, I was trying to remember what the next stop would be, when the train slowed and the conductor bawled the answer.

“Phil-a-del-phia next,” he droned. “Phil-a-del-phiaaa.”

“We’ll be getting off here and you’ll be coming along,” I told Stiletto-Nose. “You’re to walk just in front of us and then I want you to stand nice and still on the platform. At the very last second, on command, you’ll say bye-bye and you’ll climb back aboard. Get the picture?”

He shook his head. “I’ll say this — you got guts, lover. But we’ll catch up with you two. You’ll never get away with it.”

I could see that he meant it, and I felt a chill of self-doubt, but I told him to shut up and move out to the exit door. We followed at his heels to the vestibule, the gun peering at his back from the folds of the newspaper. The train halted with a velvet jolt and we stepped off.

We stood silently on the platform as some passengers got off and others got on. During that time, his jaw arrogantly cocked, Stiletto-Nose never took his eyes from me and I could almost see the wheels of his mind spinning away, calculating my destruction. I was quite certain that he had some clever, immediate plan to trick me, and I kept a taut finger against the trigger of the hidden .38. In the end, however, when a conductor far up the platform cried, “Boaard,” and I motioned him on, he obediently climbed the steps, turning once to peer down at us with icy rage, before he vanished abruptly and the train swept out of the station.

Even then, hurrying away with Tara, I darted glances behind us, half expecting the impossible — that by some mysterious back-up arrangement, there were others who would take up the chase.

It was then late morning on one of those days of skin-soaking heat in late spring. We had planted ourselves in the cool sanctuary of a small, side-street bar where we faced each other across the table of a dark, corner booth.

Tara had been drained by the fear and excitement, but after the first frigid martini she began to giggle and then to laugh almost hysterically. Caught up in that nervous storm of glee, I released a few halfhearted chuckles of my own. It was kind of funny if you like black humor.

“Cliff, you were truly marvelous!” Tara howled. “If you only knew what a miraculous lifesaver you are! How in the world did you happen to be on that particular train?”

“My sister lives in Baltimore,” I explained, “and I’ve been visiting her on weekends. I was on my way back to New York this morning, and there you were on the same train with those creeps, who no doubt forced you aboard at Washington. It’s that simple — or is it?”

“Maybe it’s fate,” she said brightly. “If certain people are right for each other, nothing can keep them apart.”

“Yeah, sure, that must be it,” I answered with fake enthusiasm. I had decided to see her safely on her way, then hustle back to the comparative normalcy of my own existence, however dull. Lots of luck. “Now it’s your turn,” I said. “How did you happen to be on that train?”

Her wide blue eyes became shadowed and her soft features grew solemn. “It’s such an ugly, painful story,” she said. “Mind if I skip the details and give you just the awful facts?”

“The awful facts? How ominous. But sure, anyway you like, Tara.”

The waiter brought another round and when he had gone she puffed her cigarette and said in a rush of words, “Soon after we returned from Europe I got into a disastrous fight with Earl. But for Max, a butler-chauffeur who secretly despised Earl and adored me, we were alone in the apartment when I made the fatal announcement to Earl that I was going to leave him and get a divorce.

“Earl said he would never let me go because he had this passion for me, and besides, I knew too much. For a few minutes he shouted me down, then he took me to the bedroom, locked the door and informed me that he was going to teach me a lesson I’d never forget.

“I knew what was coming — another beating, worse than the one he gave me in Rome. I snatched his gun from a drawer and warned him, but he only sneered and kept on moving toward me. So... so I shot him. I meant to hit him in the leg, but my aim was rotten and he... he fell dead at my feet.”

“Impossible!” I said. “There was nothing in the news and anyway—”

“At the sound of the shot,” she continued, her palm extended to silence me, “Max came on the run. He told me he thought Earl got just what he deserved, but that didn’t mean the cops would turn me loose. I would be held for trial and even with a plea of self-defense, there was a chance I would wind up in prison.

“I was plenty scared, and when Max offered to dispose of the body while I rushed off to hide out with a girlfriend in Washington, I agreed with a sigh of relief. Max worked up a cover story for Earl’s little pals — that Earl got a sudden call to San Juan where he had, as they say, a piece of the action, and where he also had some rivals who might be blamed for causing him to vanish permanently. But those hoods didn’t believe Max. They tortured the truth out of him, right down to my hiding place in Washington.”

“So those two hoods on the train came and got you,” I inserted.

“Oh, no!” she gasped. “It wasn’t that way at all! But how could you know?”

“How could I know what, Tara?”

“That since Earl’s buddies figured they were on the right side of the law for once, they simply thought of turning me and Max in to the cops to get their revenge without risk. The New York police had the Washington cops haul me in for questioning, and when I found that Max had let the cat out of the bag, I confessed. So, after some legal red tape, they sent those two plainclothesmen to bring me back to New York for trial—”

“Wait a minute!” I bellowed. “Wait just a damn minute! You mean to tell me that the big one I knocked cold, and his sharp-nosed buddy, were cops!”

“Now don’t be angry, darling. You could always say it was just a little misunderstanding. But I have a feeling they wouldn’t believe you.” She chuckled. “As we got on the train, I begged them to take off the handcuffs, just during the ride in front of all those people. And they smiled and said, well, they supposed they could handle one little girl on a train. Darling, can’t you see the funny side of this?”

“I’ve had bigger laughs,” I snapped.

“Now, don’t you worry,” she said confidently. “Earl was generous, if nothing else. I’ve got plenty of money stashed in a bank under another name. So we’ll hide until this blows over, and then we’ll sneak out of the country.”

“Great,” I said. “Just my style.” But I thought, It’s beginning again. And this time there’s no way out!