Collection of Stories

Shot With Luck

Thrilling Detective, April, 1950

Don Rixey gnawed gloomily at the combination Ham and Lamburger. “Certainly is terrible.” he said. “Certainly is.”

Annalou Kenyon turned from the grill, tossing taffy-bright curls in mock indignation. “If you’re finding fault with my cooking, before we’re even married!”

“Not the san’wich!” He poked impatiently at the nickeled napkin-container on the counter. “Your not bein’ able to get off tonight.”

“Is it my fault—” her dimples deepened, her pert mouth firmed — “if my relief happens to have an uncle who manages to get himself shot in that terrible payroll holdup this morning and is in the hospital practically at death’s door?!”

“I didn’t say it was.” The candid blue eyes in the square, amiable face watched her hungrily as she moved from the malted mixer to the fountain. “I only said it was a tough break you can’t go with me to look at that apartment tonight.”

“I don’t see that it matters so terribly much.” She slit open a couple of buns, deftly. “Even if it wasn’t rented by the time we got out there — which it probably would be — and even supposing we could afford the rent — which we probably couldn’t — what would we put in it, besides us?!”

“That’d be enough for me.” He grinned. “The best things in life are free.”

“Huh!” Annalou wrinkled her nose at him. “That three-room Bride and Groom Special at Mammoth Furniture isn’t, though!”

“I’ve enough to make the down payment.” He reached across the counter to grab her. “And a license.”

Annalou squealed prettily. “Quit! Before I let you carry me across any threshold, there are a few other trifling little items to be considered, Mister Rixey. Such as dishes, silver, linens, blankets, curtains, rugs—”

“I bet I could worry along without a rug, if I had you.”

“Hmph! The future Mrs. Donald Rixey doesn’t intend to start housekeeping on any shoestring. I’d like to see that apartment, too, but what would we use for money?”

“Money isn’t everything.” He finished the burger, sipped his coffee.

“I never noticed it was any handicap.” Annalou served a couple of bobbysoxers down the counter. When she came back: “I wish I knew where we could get our hands on a great big hunk of it, that’s all!”

“Maybe I’m in the wrong business, baby.” Don tapped the newspaper which lay propped against the salt-and-pepper rack. “Maybe I oughta get me another set of tools an’ go in competition with the guy. He got his hands on a great big wad of it, all right!”

“Don’t you ever say a thing like that, Don Rixey! Even kidding!” She squinted at the big, black headlines:

Don finished the java. “The radio repair biz isn’t what you’d call a gold mine, these days, exactly. Still an’ all, it’s better’n that racket. Trouble with that is, even though he’s got his hands on a lot of moola, he won’t be able to hold onto it. Cost him dough to make his getaway. He’ll have to shell out to somebody to hide him for a while. If they catch him, his lawyers’ll get it all. And, anyhow, he won’t be able to spend it, where he’s going.”

“They’re sure to catch him,” Annalou peeled lettuce leaves off a head of iceberg. “They got a good description of him. Half a dozen people saw him.”

“I just missed seein’ him myself.” Don glanced in the back mirror at a couple who’d taken the two stools at the far end of the counter. “I was over at Clark-McGeekin’s yesty, tuning up their interoffice amplifiers. Might just as easy been this morning!”

Annalou shivered. “Oooh! Makes my skin crawl, just to think about it.” She went over to take the order.

“Strawberry ice-cream,” the girl ordered. She was about twenty — tall, slim, haughty — with a thin, small mouth that was a slash of carmine in a long, pale face. “And none of that marshmallow goo you put on it, to imitate whip cream. Just plain ice-cream, understand?”

Annalou was coldly polite. “Yes, miss.” She turned to the man. He was older than his companion, maybe thirty; well-dressed, good-looking in a short, plump and mustached way.

“Gimme one of these Combination Ham ’n Lamburgers. Plenty a pickle-willie, huh?” His soft brown eyes surveyed Annalou’s trim figure in lazy admiration. “An’ lissen, cutie, — no mustard but a big, thick slice a raw onion, huh?”

“One combo with raw.” Annalou scribbled it on her pad, blandly.

Don laid a quarter beside his cup. “You’re gonna be busy. I’ll be hittin’ the breeze.”

“You going out to that apartment without me?” Annalou slammed the refrigerator door, slapped the cake of meat on the french top with a sizzle of grease.

“Say not. No fun in that. I’ll go back to the shop, rewind a couple armatures — see if I can earn enough to pay for one pillowslip, maybe.”

“Be back at nine?” she asked wistfully.

“On the dot.” He swung around, pushed off the stool, went out to his truck.

As he shut the screen door behind him, he heard the girl with the red wound of a mouth laugh and say “Patsy” to the man beside her.

Don eyed the extra-body-length job parked beside his half-tonner — a sleek, black Cadillac with double aerial whips slanting jauntily over its gleaming top.

You seem to be doin’ all right for yourself, Patsy, Don thought. But you could have twice your dough an’ here’s one gent who doesn’t envy you! Money ain’t everything — not by a darnsight! I wouldn’t swap girls with you for all the rice in China...

He was putting a coat of shellac on a two-gang condenser when the phone made him jump. Who’d be calling him here at the shop? Not his friends. They all knew he spent Satty peeyems with Annalou...

“Regal Radio Repairs; Don Rixey talkin’.”

“Oh, Mister Rixey! I’m in the most awful jam!” A girl’s voice, high-pitched, gushy and affected. “I’ve a whole bevy of guests here and everybody’s been dancing, having a perfectly marvelous time... and then blooie... my stupid ole radio set goes on the blink.”

“Like to help you. But I couldn’t get to it tonight.” Why’d these emergency calls always come just when he was ready to quit? “I’m closing up—”

“But you’ve simply got to help me! I mean you really have to! I’ve all these people here... I’ve tried to call a dozen repair men and you’re the only one who answered. Please, Mister Rixey! I’m sure there’s hardly anything the matter with the ole fool set... probably only a silly little tube or something you can fix in a minute!”

“Where you live?” If she was way across town, he wouldn’t bother with it no matter how she squawked. He’d promised to get back to Annalou at the Outside Inn by nine and it was eight-thirty already.

“Forty-two Chestnut. At Highland. Know that big apartment house at the corner?”

“Sure, Which apartment?” Chestnut was only six blocks over; he could make it there in a hop-skip.

“Three B... name’s Garnet... Mrs. Francine Garnet, How soon can you make it, Mister Rixey?”

“Oh, five minutes or so. What kind of set you got?”

“It’s a Klaravox... one of those console things...”

“Okay. Be right over.”

It might be a five-dollar job at that. The Chestnut Street address was pretty ritzy — anybody who owned one of those big Klaravox boxes ought to be willing to pay more than a two-buck service fee, for overtime work, and a rush call. Annalou could use that five for her hope-chest fund.

He put some extra toggles and trimmers in his kit, checked the chart for the tube numbers and added them — took along his loan-out portable in case there might be something he couldn’t fix offhand.

He parked his truck in front of the apartment. That ‘Ring Regal for Rapid Repairs — Main 4266’ sign on the side of the panel looked a little out of place, jammed in between the snazzy station wagon and that convertible with its canary-yellow leather upholstery — but maybe the free advertising would drum up a little extra business. He could use it...

There was no one in the lobby. No row of mailboxes, as in more modest apartment houses.

The elevator was upstairs. He’d walk up the two flights anyhow, rather than risk some gold-braid flunky snooting him by asking why he hadn’t used the service entrance.

The door to 3B was open a couple of inches. The radio across the hall was tuned up full blast on the night ban game; he couldn’t hear any partying inside the Garnet apartment. He thumbed the buzzer.

“Come in...” Mrs. Garnet’s voice, from somewhere inside.

“Radio man.” He pushed into a small, shadowy lobby with bulbous gilt antique mirrors and spindly-legged gilt chairs.

“Come right in here.” She was evidently calling from the living-room beyond the arched doorway.

He took off his hat, marched in. He got two steps beyond the arch when the roof fell in on him!

An overpowering screeching in his brain, as if some gigantic oscillator was vibrating out of control. A searing flare like a million flash bulbs exploding simultaneously. Then Voom! Blackout!

Instantly, the nerve-torturing screech again. The piercingly painful light once more. It penetrated his closed eyelids — or did it?

He opened his eyes. Dazzling light blinded him with a nauseating glare. The light wouldn’t stay still. Kept zooming up close to him, then receding. He tried to recoil from it, found he couldn’t. He was flat on his back. The light was a chandelier overhead.

Walls swam dizzily into focus. The screeching became a fierce, grinding ache at the back of his head.

“Hey!” He managed a thick-tongued mumble.

No answer.

“HEY!” Cold fear numbed him as memory poked through the haze of pain. “What happened?”

Still no answer. He rolled on his side. He still had his kit. No. It wasn’t the leather handle of the repair kit — it was cold metal. A gun!

He dropped it as if it were a live wire. Stared at it as if it really was alive. A heavy, blue-steel, ugly-nosed automatic!

He pushed him s elf back on his haunches, blinked around. He wasn’t alone, after all!

But the man on the floor behind him wasn’t going to be able to explain what had happened. Three bright scarlet threads flowed from blackened holes in the white triangle of shirt which showed above his vest, down toward his right armpit, out of sight beneath his coat.

Don lurched to his feet.

Maybe the dead man couldn’t talk. But his half-open eyes, showing nothing except the red-veined bloodshot whites... the gaping mouth where slack muscles had let his jaw fall open — they said plenty!

They said “Murder”! And “Frame-up!”

Don bent, whipped out his handkerchief, wiped off the butt of the automatic, dropped it on the carpet again.

He looked around for his kit. There it was, against the wall. He grabbed it, stumbled toward the arched doorway.

Probably the smart thing would be to search the place, see if “Mrs. Garnet” was still there, dead or alive.

But Don didn’t care about being smart. All he wanted was out.

He had his hand on the knob of the hall door, when he remembered his hat. He turned, his eyes searching the lobby, the little corridor leading to the living-room. No hat on the floor anywhere.

He didn’t dare leave that here. He started back.

“That’s it,” a voice behind him commanded harshly. “Don’t turn! Just stick your thumbs in your ears! And stand still! I said — don’t turn around!”

Don froze rigidly, head tipped back, hands tensed at his sides. He held his breath waiting for the shock of the bullet. Sweat trickled down his nose, dropped to his chin.

An ugly, blood-caked face stared at him from the round gilt mirror on the wall directly in front of him. His own face, distorted by reflection in that convex surface! But the blood smear wasn’t any optical illusion; half his face was covered with reddish-brown streaks.

“Give him the pat!” The harsh voice. But it wasn’t addressed to Don.

Thick fingers fumbled at his hips, armpits, belt.

“Clean,” announced another, less aggressive voice close behind him.

In the mirror, Don saw the man’s cold eyes and hard-jawed face.

“Poosh him in,” ordered Harsh Voice.

A gun poked into the small of Don’s back. He stalked stiffly into the living-room.

The hard-jawed man moved the muzzle of his gun up a little, so it prodded Don’s spine between his shoulder-blades.

“Ha. A casket case. Why’d you kill him, bud?”

Don let his breath go out in a long whoosh. “I didn’t. I never saw him before in my life until a few minutes ago. You cops?”

Harsh Voice came around Don to inspect the body. “You think we was brush salesmen?” He was a barrel-chested individual with a face like a prize fighter’s, battered, flattened nose and scarred eyebrows. “Siddown there.” He waggled his revolver at a lowslung chair. “Call in, Eddie.”

Don thought he was going to be sick, soon, as he plumped down into the chair. It wasn’t merely the cobblestones being cracked, up there in the top of his skull, either. It was the realization he was in a very nasty corner indeed.

“Say you never saw this lug before?” The broken-nosed plainclothesman squatted beside the corpse, his gun still aiming carelessly toward Don’s wishbone.

“Not until about five minutes ago. When I came out of it after somebody dropped the boom on me.” Don heard Eddie, out in the hall, asking for Lieutenant Wiley at headquarters. That might be a break. Don and Annalou both knew Wiley; the Lieutenant and his prowl partner sometimes dropped into Outside Inn for a snack, late at night.

Frank stuck out his lower lip. “How you happen to be here, alone with this stiff?”

Don told him.

“Anybody with you when you got this phone call, Rixey?”

“No... I don’t have anyone working for me in the shop.”

Eddie came back. “Lieutenant’ll be over in two shakes, Frank.”

“Sniff around, see if you can get onto that dame who phones in that tip.” Frank dismissed his side-kick. “See anybody on the way over here, Rixey?”

“Nobody I know.”

“Ha. An’ you never did get a peek at this dame you claim phones you this hurry-up call?”

“No.” Don was about to say he’d know her, on account of her voice, if he ran into her again. But then he remembered how affected she’d been on the phone — probably she’d been disguising her voice, anyway.

“Say you didn’t see the party who you figure slugged you?”

“Didn’t see anybody. Until I came out of my fog an’ found him... on the floor beside me.”

“You couldn’t of got that smack on the conk, fightin’ with Slenz, could you?” Frank lifted the muzzle of his pistol speculatively.

“Slenz?” Don was hypnotized by the black, staring eye of the gun. “No. I wasn’t fighting with him. Or with anybody. I tell you 1 never saw him before. Didn’t even know his name.”

Frank rocked back on his heels.

“Don’t recognize him, hah?”

The hair at the back of Don’s neck prickled. He hadn’t really looked at the man’s face until right now. The bullet wounds, the gaping mouth... they’d kept him from noticing the cleft chin; the sharp hawk-beak of a nose — the small, delicate ears.

Don recognized him now, all right — from the descriptions in the papers!

“This is the gun goof who shot that paymaster an’ got away with thirty yards this morning,” Frankie corroborated Don’s guess. “1 don’t suppose you been anywheres near Clark-McGeekin’s fact’ry recently?”

“Not since yest—” Don caught himself. But too late...

Frank was up on his feet. “Keep on pourin’, Rixey. We’ll get all this stuff sooner or later, anyway. Just save yourself a lot of trouble if you spill it now.”

“The office manager called me over yesterday to tune down the amplifiers on the office intercom system,” Don said. “That’s all! 1 don’t know one single thing about the robbery!”

“Lessee.” Frank’s chin dropped to his chest in concentration. He scratched his ear with his free hand. “You case the job. Slenz pulls it. You come here to get your split. He won’t give it to you. You mix it up...”

Don pointed to the Klaravox console against the wall, beyond the dead man. “1 came to fix that radio. For Mrs. Garnet. That’s all. Period. You can’t ring me in on any holdup!”

Frank stepped over the corpse, snapped the ON knob of the big set. “I never hear of a radio man acting as caser for a mob. But they’s a first time for everything.”

The radio began to emit a queer, muffled croaking, as a popular song came over the air.

“I guess a little tunin’ is all it needs,” Frank said.

“No!” Don cried. “That’s—”

The hall door opened abruptly. Frank wheeled around, eyes on the arched doorway.

Don came out of the chair, got to the console. He swung it out from the wall, was peering in the open back of the set before Frank realized it.

The detective’s pistol swung in a sharp arc.

“I tol’ you to siddown. You want to be able to plead, in court tomorrow, you stay set! Hear?”

Don backed over to the low-slung chair, dropped into it. “I—” he began.

“Shuddup,” growled Frank. “Hello, Lieutenant. I think we got this ball a yarn pretty well wound up, already.”

The body’d been removed. The camera crew’d come and gone. Tarpaulin covered the carpet stains. The console had been shoved back against the wall.

Eddie and Frank were combing the building for the mysterious informant who’d phoned headquarters. Only Lieutenant Wiley remained in the living-room with Don and Annalou.

She’d been there long enough for worry to congeal into cold fear. When the patrol car picked her up at Outside Inn, she’d been angry — after waiting an hour for Don to show up.

When they brought her to the apartment she was horrified at the murdered man — at Don’s battered head. Now — watching the skepticism on Wiley’s long, collie-dog face — she was panicky. Plainly, the Lieutenant didn’t believe a word Don was saying:

“This dame is tall, thin, holds herself kind of stuck-up. Maybe twenty years old. Not much color in her face — uses lipstick that makes her look like her mouth’d been cut with a razor. Wearin’ a sort of grayish suit—”

“Powder blue,” Annalou corrected. “Hat to match.”

The Lieutenant ran fingers through silver curls at his temples. “Thought you told Frank you’d never seen her.”

“Didn’t realize I had. Came to me just a minute ago. She was at Annalou’s counter, around seven. When she came in with this boy-friend of hers, I was telling Annalou how I’d been at Clark-McGeekin’s yesterday on a job. Then I said I’d go back to my shop an’ work till nine.”

Annalou nodded. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Because—”

“One at a time.” Wiley was sardonic. “Hard enough to follow him.”

“My truck was parked there,” Don went on, earnestly. With Regal’s phone number on it. All she had to do was come back here to her apartment, ring me up. Why I’m so sure it was her — just when I was leaving the Inn, she says something to this guy with her about a Patsy. She meant me... to be the patsy. Site thought it would be a cinch to frame me.”

Wiley blinked. “A dame says ‘Patsy’ and you decide she’s a killer. You see her out on Route 60 — so you figure she lives here on Chestnut. You never saw her but that once — you don’t know what her name is — she’s gotta be this Mrs. Francine Garnet!”

“I know it sounds wacky,” Don protested, “but—”

“It doesn’t even sound that good!” Wiley turned to nod to Frank, in the doorway.

The plainclothesman held out a briefcase. Battered pigskin with a brass side-lock. Frank held the flap up so Wiley could see the lettering burnt on the under side. PROPERTY CLARK-McGEEKIN CORP. LIBERAL REWARD IF RETURNED TO PAYMASTER’S OFFICE.

“Where’d you find it?” Wiley glanced inside to make sure it was empty.

Frank looked sourly at Don. “In his truck. Under the front seat.”

Annalou cried, “No! Noll”

Don swore beneath his breath.

“There’s a locked compartment, in the back of the truck, Lieutenant,” Frank said. “Maybe they’s something else stashed in that.”

Don took out his keys, tossed the leather case to Wiley.

“If you birds think I’d be dumb enough to hide that briefcase in my own truck—”

Wiley handed the keys to Frank. “Haven’t time to tell you how dumb I think you are, Rixey. Take all night.”

Frank went away.

Annalou jumped up excitedly. “Every single word Don says is absolutely true!” She ran to the Lieutenant, grabbed his arm, put her face down close to his.

Wiley threw a leg over the arm of his chair, shifted his position, pointedly avoiding her gaze.

“I bet those two came to Outside Inn in the first place just to see if they could learn anything about Mister Whalen’s condition, from Marie!”

“Who’s Marie?” Wiley asked patiently, still keeping his eyes away from her. From Don, too.

Don reached for the kit which Annalou had rescued from the lobby. He slid noiselessly out of his chair, backed toward the kitchen.

“Marie Whalen. My night relief at Outside Inn. Mister Whalen’s her uncle. So of course when she heard he’d been shot and might die any minute, she telephoned me she wouldn’t come to work tonight...”

Don was in the passageway, catfooting toward the kitchen. Even that far away he could hear Wiley’s:

“You two are tangled up in this worse’n a couple pups in flypaper — hey! Rixey!”

Don slid up the window by the refrigerator, slipped out on the fire escape, raced down.

His heart pounded faster against his ribs than his feet did on the iron rungs. At any second there might be a shattering blast from above — and the tearing shock of a slug!

Maybe, technically, he wasn’t escaping. They hadn’t actually arrested him. But even if he managed to get away now, he’d only be getting himself in deeper. On the other hand, the cops were pushing his head under, every chance they got, anyway. Wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t believe him when he tried to tell them what he knew.

He dropped the last ten feet to the ground. The weight of the kit sent him to his knees. He scrambled up as a shout from above roused the neighborhood:

“Stop! Or I’ll shoot!”

He didn’t stop. But he slowed, when he got to the end of the alley opening onto Elm. No uniform in sight. No prowl cars.

He walked briskly to the next corner, heard wailing sirens approach. He stepped into a dark doorway until the flashing red eye of the patrol coop had passed.

Blocks away he went into a drugstore, used the classified directory.

In the phone booth he cupped his hand around the mouthpiece: “Mike Brewer there?... Oh, Mike, this’s Don Rixey... fine, how you?... oh, I get a little job here’n there, now’n then... say, you could do me a favor, you want to... well, ‘s like this... I was working on a set tonight... Klaravox console... dame named Garnet... over on Chestnut... an’ I saw your sticker on the back of the set... you remember workin’ on that one?.. yeah, Chestnut... No?.. Wouldn’t you have some record at your shop?.. y’ll? Suh-well! Meet you there, ten minutes.”

While he waited in front of the flasher-display at Brewer’s-for-all-things-Electric, Don worried about Annalou. Maybe Wiley had her in jail by now. It wasn’t a pleasant idea.

Mike Brewer’s round face was ghostly under the greenish glow from the emerald cone over his desk.

“Here y’are, keed.” A fat fist extracted a Customer Card. “Yates. Templeton D. Klaravox Console, Model XT ’47.” He chuckled. “One those 14-tube contraptions, guaranteed to bring in such world-wide reception as Paris, Kentucky, London, Ontario an’ Moscow, Idaho. Condenser replacement, rectifier tube.”

“That’s th’ set. Where’d Yates live?” Don asked. If it was the Chestnut Street address, that would only mean Yates had sold the set to the Garnet dame, when she’d moved in. If it was something else, maybe Yates had lent it to his girl-friend to use in a furnished apartment. Those gilt chairs in the Garnet place had looked like the kind of stuff landlords fixed up to rent.

“Hundred eighty-one Crestview.”

“Happen to recall this Yates?” Don described the man who’d been at the Outside Inn.

“That’s the joe. I remember that Man of Distinction mustache. Wouldn’t have trusted him with a burnt match.”

“You’re a life saver, Mike.” Don shook his hand.

“Yeah? Whose life?”

“Mine, maybe. Tell you later. S’long.” He hurried away.

The apartments at 181 Crestview weren’t as toney as the Chestnut Street setup; there were brass letter boxes in the lobby. But no Yates on any of them.

Don found the janitor, a wizened ancient who said:

“Mister Yates? He moved away three, four months ago. Nope, dunno where he went.” The old man noticed Don’s sharp disappointment. “Y’might ask over to the Apex. Think he still keeps his car there.”

“A big black Caddy?”

“Yes sir, that’s Mister Yates’ car. Fine bus, that is. Fine gentleman, too — you ask me.”

“Where’s this garage?” Don asked.

“Two over, one south.”

It was ten minutes to midnight when he reached the neon sign: APEX GARAGE — TWENTY-FOUR HOUR SERVICE. There was a night light in the office, but he didn’t see anybody around.

He went in swinging his kit, as if he was on a job — spotted the shiny double aerial whips right away. The long, sleek Caddy was over in the corner.

He tried the doors. They were locked. He still had hold of the handle beside the driver’s seat when a voice at his elbow said sharply:

“Whatch doon, bud?”

A car washer, muscular in undershirt and rubber boots.

Don swung his kit bag onto the front bumper carelessly:

“Rush job for Mister Yates. Guess I’ll hafta get the keys from the office.”

“Reckon so.” The washer followed along, suspiciously, as Don strode toward the office.

A scrawny, gaunt-faced man, smelling of whisky, came up out of the chair in which he’d been dozing, beneath the ticket rack.

“You got the keys to Yates’ heap?” Don heard the washer’s boots clumping close behind him. “Sent me here to stick a new amplifier or something in th’ radio.”

The gaunt man hesitated, clearing his throat. “I don’t have no keys to Mister Yates’ car. But,” he gestured vaguely toward the door of the men’s room, “I guess if he sent you over here... why...”

The lavatory door opened slowly. The plump man with the mustache smiled at Don. He was wearing a light topcoat. He had his right hand bunched in the pocket. And it was not a nice smile.

“This boy’s tellin’ the truth,” Yates said affably. He moved close to Don, took his arm. “Come on, fella. I’ll show you what has to be done.”

Don stood stock still, wondering how he could get a call through to Wiley on that phone on the ticket desk.

The washer spoke up, behind him. “I thought he was tryin’ to pull a fast one, Mister Yates.”

Yates pulled gently at Don’s arm. “Aw, now. He’d know he couldn’t get away with that, around here.”

They got you, Don told himself bitterly. You walked right into this one! You sure stuck your chin out this time! If you try to tell this crummy car washer what the score is, you wouldn’t last a minute. And that night man — he’d do anything Yates told him to...

He let Yates lead him back to the Caddy.

The thin girl with the scarlet gash of a mouth was standing by the car, with the door open.

Yates laughed softly. “This fella says there’s something needs fixing in our car, Mimi.”

The girl smiled tightly. “Let’s get it fixed right away, then.” She took something out of her handbag as she got into the rear seat.

“The cops know where I am, Mrs. Garnet,” Don said.

“Thing is,” Yates waited until the girl had her stubby automatic ready for use, “do they know where you’re goin’ to be?”

Don got in the front seat. “Why pick on me? Whyn’t you leave me alone?”

The girl waited until Yates had the big car rolling out to the street. “You’re such a perfect Patsy, pal!” she said. “That’s why.”

The Caddy rolled southward at an easy thirty, past the High School, the ball park — past a lot of places that had been a part of Don’s life. Places he wouldn’t be seeing again...

He was wringing wet with cold sweat. He shivered. If he’d only had sense enough to phone Wiley soon as he learned about Yates! But no! He’d been afraid the Lieutenant would have ignored his information. So now he had something to be really afraid about!

He squirmed around in the front seat.

“Ah, ah!” The girl hit him lightly across the ear with the barrel of the automatic. “Sit up straight. While you can.”

“Don’t see why you want to kill me,” he muttered. “Cops think I shot Slenz. If you kill me, they’ll know I didn’t.”

“Who you kidding, bud?” The girl was scornful. “If they think you’re guilty — why’d they let you loose?”

“They didn’t,” Don said. “I just beat it, when they weren’t looking.”

“How deceitful of you!” Yates braked for a red light. “You should have learned from what happened to Slenz — it never pays to deceive. If that crud hadn’t tried to hold out on us, he’d be sunning himself in Havana now, instead of lying on an iced slab.”

So that was it! Slenz had gotten away with that briefcase full of bills, but before he met his partners he’d lifted part of the loot. When the amount stolen had been reported in the papers Yates and the girl had gotten sore, killed him.

That would be why Yates and the girl were still around, instead of getting out of town right after the robbery. They’d been trying to find the rest of the dough.

It gave Don an idea. “Say! Suppose I could tell you where the rest of that money is. Would you let me go?”

“Why should we let you go?” Yates speeded up to beat a light at the intersection near the gas works. “We’ll find of a way to make you tell us anything you know before we’re — done with you.”

The Caddy zoomed across as the traffic light changed from amber to red.

“Take it easy,” the girl warned Yates. “There were a couple of Little Boy Blues there on the corner.”

The twelve o’clock shift, Don thought. The night patrols coming out to relieve the boys on beat. If he’d only had foresight enough to disconnect the tail lights on this bus, before he’d gone to that garage office for the keys. Maybe some of the officers would have noticed a thing like that and halted the car!

The girl touched the back of Don’s neck with the muzzle — his heart skipped a couple of beats.

“Might be an idea to pump this well before we get too far out of town,” she said. “Case he does know something, we wouldn’t have so far to drive back.”

Yates put on more speed. “I’ll cut off on a side road here in a minute. Right now,” he glanced up at the rear-view mirror, “I think we ought to keep moving.”

Don caught a gleam of red, reflected from the windshield. Somebody with a blinker signal, following them! Of course it could be an ambulance. An ambulance wasn’t going to do him any good! And hearses didn’t use red flashers!

Ahead loomed the stop light at the intersection of Route 60. The light was green. But there was a red light there, too. And it wasn’t any Bar and Grille sign! Another patrol car!

“Boxing us in,” the girl called. “Watch it, Yatsey!”

“No room to turn.” Yates spoke through his teeth. “I’ll crash him, if he don’t get out of the way!”

The police car swung across the road, a quarter-mile beyond. A siren screamed behind them, kept screaming — closer and closer.

There was a ditch at the right. The railroad embankment at their left.

Don chose the ditch! He stamped, across Yates’ legs, at the foot brake. The effort threw him to the right, against the car window.

A deafening blast filled the interior of the Caddy. A hot wire touched his left ear. The windshield shattered.

Then they were swerving, skidding, toppling over into the ditch...

The Caddy lay on its side, in a ditchful of glass and twisted metal. Don lay on his back on a stretcher.

The starchy interne felt of the bump on Don’s head:

“He’s all right to go home. Nothing but a slight concussion, Lieutenant.”

“He didn’t get that in the smashup, anyway,” Annalou cried. “He was slugged, earlier, by... by one of them.”

She looked toward the ambulance where patrolmen with revolvers in their fists watched two stretchers being loaded into a long, white car. The things on the stretchers were very quiet.

“Are they dead?” Don asked.

“Not yet,” Wiley said bleakly. “You know you’re shot with luck to be alive, yourself?”

“Yeah.” He felt the caked blood on his left ear-lobe. “I still don’t figure how you picked up the Caddy.”

Wiley pointed. “Three minutes after you do that Brodie down the fire escape, there’s a three-state alarm going out for you on every police band. Describin’ you... an’ that repair kit you were lugging.”

“How it ever got on the front of the Cadillac!” Annalou wondered. “Some policeman saw the car at an intersection... and there was Regal Radio Repairs painted on the side of your kit, staring ’em smack in the face!”

Don sat up, groggily. “Hey, Lieutenant! You don’t think I was... was with ’em? Tryin’ to make a getaway?”

Wiley pulled down the corners of his lips. “Give us credit for knowing a little about our business, Dick Tracy. That holdup was a professional mob job. You rattle around too much up here,” the Lieutenant touched his forehead, “to be hooked up with a smart set of crooks. Anyway, we knew there was something off-beat about that phone tip — you’d never have parked your truck right in front of the apartment if you’d meant to go in and murder a man there.”

Don put an arm around Annalou, weakly. “They shot Slenz because he gypped ’em on the split. I tried to get ’em to let me go, in exchange for tellin’ ’em where the rest of the dough is — but they wouldn’t.”

Wiley screwed up his face in a knot. “Mean you know where Slenz hid it?”

“Well, I don’t know for positive,” Don admitted. “But when I heard the fuzzy tone from that loudspeaker in the Garnet’s set — I’d be ready to bet somebody shoved a wad of something inside that speaker cone and it muffles th’ tone. I’ve had sets where mice built their nests in the speaker horns — and it sounds the same way.”

“Mice!” said the Lieutenant, wryly. “Bills hid in radios!” He shook his head. “And they claim this is the day of scientific crime detection.” He touched his foot to the wrecked Caddy. “They’ll be glad to get the rest of that dough back. But I don’t think there’s any reward offered.”

“We don’t want any reward!” Annalou’s arm tightened around Don. “This is all the reward we want.”

“Yeah! Only—” Don looked at her fondly, “these Clark-McGeekin people make blankets, hon. We’re goin’ to have a use for blankets, pretty quick. Maybe we could make a deal — for wholesale.”