Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Money to Burn by Clark Howard

When thieves fall out... and so on and so forth, a familiar proverb so well-known that it hardly bears repetition. Faced with a choice of freezing to death or peeping warm by burning money, what would you do?

It had been snowing for two hours when Phil Madigan woke up at eight o’clock and looked out his hotel room window. The sight of the grey overcast morning filled with calmly falling snow petrified him for a moment so that he could only stare at it dumbly, hardly believing it to be real. But it was real, all right; great big white snowflakes drifting down so serenely, already covering the sidewalks and street and parked cars below. Yes, it’s real, all right, Madigan thought, a wide smile breaking across his face.

He turned from the window and hurried through the connecting bath into Sam’s room. He had to tell Sam right away!

Sam Hooper was sound asleep when Madigan rushed in and shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Sam!” Madigan said urgently, “get up! It’s snowing, Sam! It’s here; the snow’s here!”

Hooper, the older of the two by twenty years, did not have Madigan’s capacity for coming fully awake the first thing in the morning. He had to prepare himself to face the world, and he did so now, twisting and grunting and yawning while his sleepy senses returned.

“What? What’s here?” he said sourly.

“The snow, Sam!” Madigan repeated excitedly. “It’s here! It’s here!”

What Madigan was saying got through to Sam Hooper then and he forced himself awake, jumping out of bed and stumbling along with Madigan to the nearest window. Together they stared down at the main street of the little town, freshly whitened by the snow. They stared with eyes wide and mouths slightly agape, as if they had never before seen such a phenomenon. Then they looked at each other and smiled happily. It was here, they were thinking. The snow was here at last.

They had been waiting for this, the first snowfall, for more than three weeks. It usually came not later than the middle of October but this year it was way overdue, for today was the twenty-third. Hooper had been complaining for the last seven days, since the fifteenth came and went and no snow appeared, that he would wait only one more day and then ditch the job; but each day he decided to wait another, until now, finally, his patience had been rewarded. His eyes shone with an eagerness to get on with the work at hand.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Ten past eight,” said Madigan.

“Okay, let’s get things moving. You check with the weather bureau while I get dressed; then I’ll get everything together while you get ready.”

“Right.” Madigan hurried back into his own room.

Hooper went into the bathroom, washed, and began a fast shave. He could hear Madigan on the phone getting the weather report. Their plans depended on the forecast. Madigan had assured him a hundred times that it would be favourable, that the first snowfall of the season was always a heavy one. It had better be, thought Hooper now, or we’ll get caught just as sure as hell is hot.

He finished up and went back into his room and started dressing. Madigan came in a minute later, grinning like a cat with a mouse under its paw.

“We’re set, Sam! Weather bureau says the snow is expected to continue for at least six more hours. I told you, didn’t I, Sam? Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah, you told me, kid.”

“Hot dog! We’re gonna pull it off, Sam. In a couple more hours we’re gonna have money to burn!”

“Well, we ain’t got it yet,” said Hooper calmly, “and we won’t have it if you don’t get cleaned up so we can hightail it out of here.”

“Sure, Sam, sure.” Madigan hurried into the bathroom, humming to himself.

Crazy kid, thought Hooper. Acting like some college punk that just made the team. He’d better settle down or he’s liable to get a bullet in his gut. Sticking up a bank is serious business.

Sam Hooper was the man to know, if anyone did, just how serious the robbing of a bank could be. This would be his seventh bank. He had made it away clean on four of them, had been caught on the other two. For the two on which he had been caught, he had spent a total of fourteen years in Federal penitentiaries; five on the first, nine on the second. He was now forty-four years old and had thought he was finished with this strongarm stuff.

For the past year, since getting out of Leavenworth, Hooper had led a quiet, law-abiding existence; he had a rented room, ate in cafes, and worked nine hours a day as a leather tanner, a trade he had picked up by courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. It wasn’t much of a life for a guy like Sam, a guy who had lived it up in Miami and Mexico City, been used to fancy cars, fancy clothes, and fancy dames; but at least he was able to look a cop in the eye and not always have to be thinking about some job he could get busted for; at least he could lay down a twenty for change without worrying about the bill being marked; at least he could sleep nights. He hadn’t been setting the world on fire, not by a long shot, but he had been doing all right.

And then the kid came along. Phil Madigan, his name was. A small-timer, a candy store burglar. Madigan was a real sports enthusiast; skin diving, ice skating, skiing, the works. That was how he happened to run up on this job they were getting ready to pull. He had been up in the mountains for some winter sports the previous season and had come across a cabin high up toward the peaks. It was a little place, just one average sized room, Madigan had told him, and it was so far up that it was isolated from the time the first snow fell until the spring thaw about four or five months later. It was owned by a real estate company down in the town of Preston where Hooper and Madigan were now, and was rented out to fishermen during the trout season. A perfect place to hide out, Madigan had said that first time he and Hooper met.

The kid had been referred to Hooper by one of the few contacts Sam still retained in the underworld. Hooper had passed the word around that he was out of business, that he intended to make it as a square after his last bit in prison; but apparently he wasn’t taken too seriously because Phil Madigan turned up at His room one night saying he had a hot bank job on the line and had been told to look up Sam Hooper.

Sam listened to the plan out of a mixture of professional curiosity and sheer boredom, after first making it plain that he had ‘retired’. But the more he listened, the more interested he became. It began to sound as if the kid really did have a sweet one waiting to be picked. So he took down all the particulars of the job and told Madigan he would look it over and let him know in a few days.

For the next two nights he worked the plan over and over in his mind and on paper, trying to find some weakness in it, some flaw which would give him an excuse to dump it; but each time he went over it, he came to the same conclusion: it was a good, sound bank job that looked like it could be pulled off very nicely if handled properly. And even though it was a small town bank, the take would probably be well worth the effort and risk involved.

Sam tried to think over the deal rationally. He knew if he got caught on another bank job he’d be in prison until he was an old, old man. But the temptation was just too much for him. He kept thinking how nice it would be to have a briefcase full of money in his hand and step on a plane for Acapulco again. In his mind danced pictures of new clothes, a shiny convertible, and blondes — great big blondes.

The great big blondes did it. Sam Hooper decided to go the route one more time.

He and Madigan began polishing up the plan. The most important detail — the getaway and hideout — had already been taken care of with the little cabin high up the mountain. The one big obstacle in hitting a bank in that area was getting down the winding mountain highway before a roadblock could be set up at the bottom. This was virtually impossible to do; that was why there had never been a stickup in any of the resort towns that circled the mountain. But Hooper and Madigan would eliminate that problem by going up instead of down. It’s a perfect set-up, Madigan had said. We pull the job on the day of the first snowfall, then beat it up to this cabin. Nobody’ll ever think we’d do that. The place is snowed in for at least four months. All we have to do is sit it out until spring and then just kind of drift down through town one day like we were early fishermen. Before anybody can notice us, well be gone. Sure, it’ll be dull and monotonous up there all alone for four months, but we can hold out. And in the spring, we’ll have money to burn!

Hooper finished dressing and threw his extra clothes in a suitcase. Then he sat down on the bed and gave their guns a final check. They had a .410 gauge shotgun with a sawed-off barrel and two .38 revolvers. Each would carry a revolver; in addition Madigan would handle the shotgun while Hooper collected the money in the bank. Hooper also had a little .25 automatic he carried in his hip pocket as an extra precaution. That was his hole card, his kicker, in case somebody got the drop on them; not even Madigan knew he had it.

“Hey, snap it up!” he yelled to Madigan in the bathroom.

The younger man came in, drying his face with a hotel towel. “All set and ready to get going,” he said.

“There’s your artillery,” Hooper told him, strapping his own shoulder holster in place. “Are you sure everything’s set in the cabin?”

“I told you, Sam, it’s all ready. I made a final check last week. There’s five hundred bucks worth of food laid in; a six-hundred gallon tank of fuel oil; a radio, four decks of cards, about a thousand magazines I got secondhand in the city; and we got checkers, dominos, parchesi — everything but a broad, an’ I could have arranged that, too, if you’d let me.”

“Sure, sure,” said Hooper, “that’s all we’d need. We’ll be at each other’s throats soon enough without having a dame to fight over. You don’t know how it is being cooped up with the same guy day after day.”

Madigan smiled. “We’ll make it, Sam. I know we will. And when it’s all over we’ll have—”

“I know, I know,” Hooper interrupted, “we’ll have money to burn. Come on, let’s get going or spring’ll be here before we even get started.”

Madigan got into his holster and rolled the shotgun up in newspaper. They both put on heavy Mackinaws, fur caps and rubber overshoes. Then they got their luggage and went downstairs to check out.

The bank opened at ten. Five minutes later Hooper and Madigan pulled up outside and parked. They were driving a four-year-old coupe with heavy-duty snow chains on the rear tires. Getting out, they ducked their heads against the windblown snow and crossed the sidewalk to the bank entrance.

There were six people inside; three tellers, the manager, his secretary and one customer. Madigan remained just inside the door, folding the paper back from the barrel of the shotgun so they could all see, what it was.

“Don’t anybody move!” Hooper ordered, leveling his .38. “This is a holdup!” His gaze swept across the three men in the teller cages. “If an alarm goes off, so does that shotgun, understand? Everybody just stand or sit right where you are and look down at the floor!”

When they were all very still, with Madigan moving the shotgun slowly back and forth in an arc that covered the whole room, Hooper slipped the .38 into his pocket and from under his coat drew out a large canvas bag which he quickly unfolded. He hurried behind the railing and methodically emptied the tellers’ cages of all currency. Then he stepped over to the bank manager’s desk and pulled the man to his feet roughly. “Get that vault open!” he ordered coldly.

The big thick outer door of the vault was already standing open. The manager fumbled with a ring of keys to open the barred inner door. When he finally got it unlocked, Hooper pushed him inside and made him sit in a corner while he systematically looted the bank’s reserve safe. Looks pretty good, he thought, as he stuffed the sack with bundles of tens and twenties and a few stacks of fifties and hundreds.

Finished, he stepped back out and snapped, “All right, everybody into the vault! Come on, move!” He glanced at the big clock on the wall as the other five people filed into the vault. They had been in the bank about seven or eight minutes, Pretty good time, he thought.

Hooper slammed the barred door and locked everyone in the vault. “Take a look,” he said to Madigan, hurrying toward the front door. Madigan peered out at the street; he saw nothing but swirling snow. “Looks okay,” he told Hooper.

“All right, let’s go!”

Madigan folded the newspaper back over the shotgun barrel, tucked it under his arm and opened the front door. Hooper stepped past him out of the bank and went directly to the car; Madigan followed him, closing the door gently behind him.

In the car, Madigan tossed the shotgun on the rear seat and started the motor. Hooper kept the sack of money between his knees, his revolver ready on top of it. The windshield wipers threw the loose snow away, giving them each a picture of the street up ahead. It was nearly deserted. Madigan guided the car slowly away from the curb and down the street.

Five minutes later they were out of town and approaching the curve where the highway began its winding descent to the lowlands.

“How’s it look?” Madigan asked excitedly, nodding toward the sack of money.

“Pretty good, I think,” said Hooper. “Looked like maybe fifty or sixty grand.”

Madigan grinned and went back to concentrating on the road. Where the highway curved downward, they turned off into a gravel road almost hidden by the snow. Their chains crunched noisily and caught and the car lumbered up a slight incline. As they gradually moved upward from the highway, Hooper looked back and saw fresh snow already beginning to fill their tracks.

Fifteen minutes later they reached a ridge where the road leveled off momentarily. Madigan shifted to neutral and pulled on the brake. Hooper took a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and they got out. Taking turns with the glasses, they looked back down the mountain. The first section of their tracks leading off the highway were now completely covered and there was a fresh layer of unmarked snow on the highway itself.

“Perfect,” said Madigan. “Just like I told you, huh, Sam? First snowfall is always heavy.”

“Just like you told me, kid,” Hooper admitted. He turned his gaze upward. “How long will it take us to get to the cabin?” “About three hours, from the looks of the snow.”

Hooper turned back to the car. “Well, let’s get going.”

It was nearly two in the afternoon when the car pulled the last steep grade and made the top ridge. They were high up now, in a primitive part of the great mountain range where the sky looked strangely close to them, where there was nothing visible except snow-covered pine trees, where the air was exhaustingly thin, the cold sharp and painful.

Hooper looked back down the road. “Are you sure nobody can follow us up here?”

Madigan shook his head emphatically. “By the time the snow stops, this road and everything around it will be in drifts up to eight feet deep. And it’ll stay like that until the spring thaw. It would be impossible for a car to even go down, much less come up.”

Hooper looked around at the white wasteland on all sides of them. “Where’s the cabin?” he asked.

“Just up ahead.”

The car moved through snow already deep across the rutted, narrow, little road, and crawled slowly around a thick group of trees into a small clearing. There, with three feet of snow drifted up against it, sat the little cabin.

“Home sweet home,” said Madigan as he drove up as close as he could and cut the motor. They got out of the car.

“We’ll have to dig our way in, looks like,” said Hooper.

“Yeah.” Madigan opened the trunk and took out two hand shovels.

“How’s that work?” Hooper asked, indicating the large fuel storage tank mounted on a raised wooden platform next to the cabin.

“There’s a line running into the cabin,” Madigan explained. “It’s got a regular tap like a water faucet. We use the fuel oil for our lanterns, for the stove and for the heater.”

“Sure there’s enough to last?”

“Plenty,” Madigan assured him. “Probably be a hundred gallons left in the spring.”

The two men went to work clearing the snow away. When they got the door open, Madigan took the shovels and put them back in the trunk. “You grab the money,” he said easily, “I’ll unload the suitcases.”

Hooper nodded and got the sack of money from the front seat. He went on inside and looked around. One corner was piled high with magazines. A table in the middle of the room had decks of cards and other games of amusement on There was a radio on a shelf on the wall. In a little alcove Hooper saw cases of canned goods and other supplies. There were two folding cots, each with three new blankets stacked on it. Between them was a large kerosene stove.

Not bad, thought Hooper, considering that it’s only a four-month stretch that we must hibernate.

The door slammed behind him and he turned to see Madigan putting their luggage on the floor. “Get the binoculars out of the glove compartment, will you, Sam,” the younger man said. “If we leave them out there the lenses will freeze.”

“Sure, kid. Then let’s get a fire going and warm the place up, what say?”

Madigan smiled. “Good deal.”

Hooper went back outside and waded the snow over to the car. Opening the door, he reached inside and got the glasses. Have to get this car around back and get it up on blocks someway, he thought. Got to be sure and start it every day, too, so it won’t freeze up. He closed the car door and made his way back to the cabin. There was a thermometer nailed to the wall just outside the door. Hooper saw it was only fifteen above zero. He shivered and pushed through the door.

Just as he stepped inside, Hooper felt the muzzle of the shotgun jab into his back. He stiffened and held his hands very still.

“That’s the ticket, Sam,” said Madigan evenly. “Don’t even think about moving.” He reached around under Hooper’s coat and lifted the .38 from Sam’s shoulder holster. “Okay, Sam,” he said, pushing him away, “go on over there and sit down at the table and keep still so I don’t have to blast you.”

Hooper sat down, feeling the hardness of the little automatic in his hip pocket, very glad now that he had never mentioned to Madigan that he carried his ‘kicker’, his ‘hole card’. He stared coldly across the room at Madigan. “Double-crossing me, kid?” he asked in a measured tone.

“That’s it, Sam,” Madigan said, smiling.

“So you lied to me,” Hooper accused quietly. “You said there was no way out of here until spring.”

“I said there was no way with the car, Sam,” Madigan corrected. The younger man picked up the sack of money and emptied it on the floor. Kneeling down, watching Hooper closely, he used one hand to stuff the currency into a knapsack. When it was packed, he slipped his arms through the shoulder straps, switching the shotgun from one hand to the other as he did so.

“What are you gonna do, hike down?” Hooper asked sarcastically.

“Little too cold for that, Sam,” said Madigan lightly. He backed over to one of the cots and pushed the blankets off onto the floor. Beneath them lay a pair of shiny skis and matching ski poles.

“So that’s it,” said Hooper. “You’re gonna ski down. A regular all-American boy, aren’t you? Don’t you think the law will be waiting for you when you get back down there?”

Madigan was kneeling on the other side of the cabin again, lacing on heavy ski shoes. He continued to watch Hooper closely, the shotgun lying only inches from his hands.

“I’m not going that way,” he told Hooper. “I’m going down the other side. There’s a ski lodge down there. By tonight there’ll be busloads of skiers up here. Nobody’ll notice one more.” He stood up, gathered his skis and poles under one arm and leveled the shotgun on Hooper. “Outside, Sam,” he ordered.

Hooper went back out into the cold, Madigan following him.

“Just stand over there by the door where I can keep an eye on you,” said Madigan as he moved a few yards away from the cabin. Hooper watched while the younger man laid his skis in position on the level snow and knelt between them, cradling the shotgun first on one knee, then the other, while he fitted the skis onto his shoes. Then he stood up and held the shotgun loosely under one arm.

“You gonna kill me, kid?” Hooper asked, tensing himself for a drop to the ground to try and get the .25 out before Madigan could get him with a load of buckshot.

“What for, Sam?” Madigan said easily. “You never did anything to me.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll come after you in the spring, when I get out of here?”

Madigan laughed. “Go ahead, Sam,” he said simply.

Hooper frowned as suspicion flooded his mind. It doesn’t figure, he told himself. The first rule in pulling a double-cross is to make sure the guy you cross won’t ever be able to get even. It’s a trick, he decided. He’s trying to get me off guard for some reason.

“I’ve got to cut out if I’m gonna make the ski lodge by dark,” Madigan said. “You just go on back in the cabin, Sam, and stay put until I get gone. And don’t try following me if you’ve got any sense; you’d never make it on foot. Understand?”

Hooper nodded.

“So long, Sam.”

Hooper backed slowly toward the door, still expecting Madigan to raise the shotgun at any second. But the younger man made no attempt to fire; he just stood waiting while Hooper backed all the way into the cabin and quickly shut the door.

Watching through the window, Hooper saw Madigan swing first one, then the other ski around and move off slowly toward the first slope that would take him down the other side of the mountain. Hooper wet his lips and took out the little .25 automatic, snapping the safety off. He looked back out and decided that Madigan was now about a hundred yards away; too far to chance accuracy with the small bore weapon he had. Got to get closer to him, he thought anxiously.

He hurried to the rear of the cabin and climbed out the back window, dropping nearly waist-deep into a drift. Moving through the snow to the corner, he peered around and saw Madigan still moving smartly along on his skis, now about two hundred yards away. Hooper thought quickly and bolted from behind the cabin, running in a crouch until he reached the line of trees edging the clearing. The snow was not so deep under the trees and Hooper was able to move faster. He began to run through the trees, staying back under their protective covering. He ran until his chest was heaving from the thin air that failed to satisfy his lungs; then he had to rest. He slowed to a walk and moved back toward the clearing. Looking out from behind a tree, he saw Madigan still about fifty yards ahead of him. He leaned up against the tree and counted slowly to thirty, then moved back under cover and started running again.

He ran until he judged himself to be ahead of Madigan, then slowed down and crept quietly back to the edge of the clearing. Madigan was just approaching the place where Hooper stood concealed. They were both almost to the edge of the slope now.

Hooper waited until Madigan went by, then stepped out behind him, the gun leveled. “Hold it, kid!” he said sharply.

Madigan tried to whirl around and raise the shotgun but he got his legs tangled in the skis and his arms in the ski poles, and he dropped the weapon and stumbled into a snowdrift helplessly.

Hooper stood over him laughing, the .25 aimed at his chest. “Outsmarted yourself, didn’t you, punk?”

“Don’t shoot me, Sam!” Madigan begged.

“I’m not,” Hooper told him. “I don’t want somebody finding you with a bullet in you and wondering how you got it. No, I’m going to take care of you in a different way, punk.”

“Give me a break, Sam,” Madigan pleaded.

“Sure, I’ll give you a break,” Hooper said coldly. He reached down and picked up the fallen shotgun by its barrel. Using it as a club, he smashed the stock against Madigan’s skull. The younger man fell over unconscious.

“There’s your break,” Hooper snarled. “A break in the head.”

He put the shotgun down and rolled Madigan over, pulling the money-filled knapsack from his back and removing the unconscious man’s coat to take off the shoulder holster he wore. When it was off, Hooper took the other .38 from the pocket and worked the heavy Mackinaw back onto Madigan’s limp form. Then he grabbed the collar of the coat and began to pull Madigan through the drifted snow, the skis and poles dragging behind him.

Stopping near the edge, Hooper surveyed the slope carefully. It fell in a gentle curving grade that angled off to the right and seemed to wind gradually down-mountain as far as he could see. That was the ski trail Madigan had meant to follow down to the lodge, he decided. But off to the left there was no gentle curve, no slope at all; there was only a steep incline that stretched about thirty feet to a sheer drop down into a deep gorge.

That looks okay, Hooper thought dispassionately. He dragged the unconscious man farther along the edge until he had him right above the incline leading to the drop. There he laid Madigan out on his side, skis straight, poles still attached to his wrists with, thongs.

“So long, double-crosser,” he said softly, and with the toe of his overshoe started Madigan down the slope.

Madigan’s unconscious form slid downward, the drag of his skis slowing but not stopping, him. He moved jerkily, his body weaving and leaving an odd trail in the snow. Seconds later he went over the edge and dropped from sight.

Hooper waited perhaps two minutes but he never did hear Madigan hit bottom. Either it’s pretty damned deep, he decided, or else there’s a lot of snow at the bottom. Either way it didn’t really matter. If the fall didn’t finish Madigan, he’d freeze to death before he woke up.

Hooper went back and got the, shotgun and Madigan’s shoulder holster and the packful of money, and trudged back toward the cabin. It was getting colder now and the light was beginning to fade. The evening air seemed even thinner than it had been earlier and Hooper had to stop twice to rest and catch his breath. When he finally reached the cabin, he saw on the thermometer that the temperature had dropped to two degrees below zero. He hurried on inside.

The cabin was as cold as the outdoors. Hooper was shivering as he put the guns and knapsack on the table and pulled off his gloves. His fingers were numb with cold. He blew into his cupped palms a few times and rubbed his hands briskly. Got to get a fire going, he thought. Got to warm this place up.

He lifted the lid of the stove and saw that it was dry inside. Picking up the kerosene can, he found it empty. He went over to the tap running in from the fuel tank outside and put the lip of the can under it. He turned the tap — and nothing came out.

Hooper stared at the dry nozzle, the empty can, the cold stove. No fuel, he thought dumbly. Then the panic began to rise in him. No fuel—!

Outside, the temperature was down another degree and dropping steadily.