Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol.122, No. 6, October 1, 1938

Four passengers in that ill-fated car! Four with a wildcatter! Four and a deadhead who rode for nothing — and his name was Death!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Almost every city of any size in the Southwest — and many other sections of the country as well — has one or more “Travel Bureaus” or “Travel Exchanges,” although such businesses are against the law. However, as they provide a means of cheap transportation (lower even than bus fares) the police of these various cities choose to disregard the bureaus unless a definite complaint is made. The theory is that such low-cost transportation does away with a certain percentage of hitch-hikers.

The man who drives the car may be a salesman, covering a certain territory regularly, carrying passengers to make his own expenses. He may be a car owner who is temporarily out of work and wants to make enough cash to meet that next car payment. He may be a man who wishes to make a certain trip himself, and who, lacking funds, carries passengers for pay in order to reach his destination. Or he may be a dyed-in-the-wool wildcatter.

A wildcatter is a man who drives regularly for the Travel Bureau, who makes a profession of these trips. It is not at all unusual for a wildcatter to keep his car on the road from sixteen to twenty hours a day. “Keep moving” is his slogan, for he fully understands that he can make no money laying over.

The driver gets the greater amount of the fee paid by the passenger. The passenger pays the Bureau approximately 25 or 30 percent for “registration,” and the remainder of the listed fare to the driver, usually before he leaves the city.

A deadhead, of course, is one who rides for nothing.

I

The black sedan, dappled with the dust of many highways, stopped at the curb. The driver flicked off the motor, peered at the dimly lighted window of the little shack that cowered on the corner of the parking lot. An easel sign before the shack read, PAN-AMERICAN TRAVEL BUREAU. SHARE EXPENSE PLAN. CARS TO ALL POINTS DAILY. The windows were lettered with whiting, announcing that a ride could be had to Dallas for $3.50, to Houston $2.75, El Paso $7.00 or Los Angeles $12.00.

“Why Pay More?” demanded the stumbling letters. And as a last word of advice. “Share Expenses!”

The man behind the wheel glanced cautiously at his wife’s face, winced at the thinness of her lips, the stern set of her jaw. Twenty times in the last two months it had happened like this, just as it was happening now. He couldn’t explain it to her; he didn’t have the words. She’s sore again, he told himself angrily, sore because I’m taking out another load, sore because I keep on wildcatting!

Sometimes, as he pushed his car along the highways, carrying passengers here or there or somewhere else, Lucia’s accusing face danced on the windshield before him. Maybe, he often thought, maybe I could get a steady job some place. People aren’t so hard on ex-cons as they used to be. And then he’d think of four walls shutting him in and a cement floor beneath his feet and a bare ceiling over his head, the whir of machinery, the hum of belts, the monotonous rhythm of punches and stamping machines. The sameness of it! Just like... well, just like a man was back in the Big House. The same thing, day after day, week after week! That’s what a job was.

But how could he explain it to her? How could he tell her, with his faltering speech, what it meant to him to go on and on, over broad highways, to see green fields flowing by, and things growing, and birds flying, and trees, and culverts and — and everything? A man has to be locked away for two or three years to really appreciate those things. He has to listen to bolts falling in place and locking him in every night for endless months to know what it means to be able to get up and go whenever he pleases. To get into a town and stay there a couple of hours, maybe, and pick up a couple of passengers and go on to the next town, and the next, and the next!

Lucia said, “Hugh, if you’ve made up your mind to go, why not wait until in the morning? You just got in from Houston a few hours ago. You must be tired.”

He was tired, he admitted to himself, but he answered her doggedly. “Aw, hon, maybe I can get a short haul. Dallas, or back to Houston. Somebody waiting to go some place now.”

She leaned forward, the better to peer past him at the dumpy little building. A man stood looking out the door. A woman was at the battered desk arguing with Schultz, owner of the travel bureau. On a converted bus seat in a corner, a brown-faced Mexican dozed, his head on his chest. Passengers to somewhere!

Hugh Mackey opened the car door, mumbled apologetically, “I’ll just see what Schultz has got lined up, honey.” “Some of these days,” she shot back at him bitterly, “you’re going to get in trouble with this wildcatting. You know it’s against the law! You know what the cops would say if they caught you doing it!” He closed the door. From outside the car he answered, “Aw, nobody bothers the wildcatters. They do it in every town. I’ll just see where they’re going.”

He took his hand off the door handle, turned toward the bureau. Off in the distance he heard a flat crack, like a tire popping suddenly, like an engine backfiring. Maybe like a gun. From out of the shadows next to the little building, a man’s hat came sailing, rolling over and over on the sidewalk. The man followed the hat, in one convulsive leap, crouched in front of the door, his face intent, twisted, his right hand out of sight beneath his coat. Across the street, lead struck brick and ricocheted into the night in crescendo, screaming defiance.

Dumbly Mackey looked at the man who had leaped from the shadows. He said, stupidly, “Hey, that was a bullet! Was somebody shooting at you?”

In the dimness of the reflected window light Mackey could hardly make the little man out. Hatless, his head seemed out of proportion, too large for his body. He wore a yellow slicker, the collar turned high about his cheeks and chin. Mackey repeated his question as the little man reached down for his hat, examined two neat holes in the battered felt, snarled, “Shooting? Hell, no! Why should anyone shoot at me? Must be some darned kid popping wild at a cat or something.”

Mackey said, “Yeah,” started to push past into the bureau. The little man in the slicker stopped him.

“You wildcatting? You driving this heap willy-nilly?”

“Why?” Mackey wasn’t quite sure about that willy-nilly. He was a little belligerent.

“Because I want to go to Dallas and I want to go right now,” snapped back the little man. He slapped the ruined hat on his too-large head, tugged it well down over his eyes. He moved three steps to his left, peered around the corner of the building, back into the darkness — where the bullet had come from.

Hugh Mackey said, “You can ride with me if I get a load. Let me find out where the rest of these people are going.”

The little man in the slicker grasped his arm. “Look, mister, I got to get to Dallas and get there in a hurry, see? Maybe some of these folks in there won’t like driving fast. How about me paying you for a full car and a bonus for burning up the road?”

He kept glancing over his shoulders, both to right and left, as if expecting more bullets at any minute. He was so close to Mackey their bodies almost touched. Mackey’s brain wasn’t noted for fast working. Yet the proposition was so strange, the man’s fear so evident, that he was immediately suspicious. He started to ask a question, but the door of the bureau opened abruptly, Schultz’s thick voice boomed, “Hey, Mackey, come in here. Good thing you showed up. Jordan broke an axle and these folks are waiting to go to Dallas. Come on in.”

The little man in the slicker gibbered something about money in Hugh Mackey’s ear. Mackey shook his head sternly. He said, “I got to take them all, mister, or Schultz won’t load me out no more.”

The three people inside, the fat man with the dark glasses who had been peering out the door, the lady with the sloppy, badly fitting clothes who had argued with Schultz, the dark-faced Mexican who dozed in the corner, all were waiting for a ride to Dallas. Four for Dallas, and his share of the fare would amount to ten dollars! Yeah, he told himself, it was a smart hunch that sent him down tonight. He could make it in six hours, with luck, and clear better than six bucks on the trip. A buck an hour. That beat working in a shop!

Schultz’s hoarse instructions broke him from his figures. He handed Mackey a card with a written address, his thick thumb pointing out the blank-faced Mexican. “This pelado don’t speak no English, Mackey. You got his money, though, and you’re to deliver him to this address.” Mackey nodded, thrust the card in his shirt pocket and led the way outside.

A hand gripped his arm. The little man in the yellow slicker whined, “Listen, pal, I got to get to Dallas, fast, see? I’ll pay, I’ll pay for the whole car and a bonus. Take me by myself?”

Mackey answered, “I ain’t at all sure I’ll even take you. Who you running from? What’s your hurry? How come somebody takes a shot at you?”

He looked as if he were on the verge of apoplexy. “Shot at me, hell! Don’t you know if I had more time I’d stick around and make a complaint to the cops about that shot? I got to get to Dallas quick because I got a sick wife, that’s it, a sick wife. No plane leaving till morning, train leaving at eleven and taking eight or nine hours to make the trip. Now listen, pal—”

Mackey pulled away. “Get in,” he said shortly. “I’ll take you, but I’m taking the whole load.” He turned to the trio that was coming from the office. “Baggage?” he queried.

The only baggage in the group was the paper suitbox the Mexican carried. He made no protest as Mackey took it from him, put it in the trunk on the rear. Mackey loaded the colorless lady in the far corner of the back seat. The fat man with the dark glasses came next, the Mexican with the liquid brown eyes in the near corner. To the man in the yellow slicker he said, “Slid in up front, mister. I’m dropping my wife off at home. She ain’t going.”

Lucia Mackey sniffed audibly, shoved over, holding her skirts primly.

Hugh knew she was angry, both by sniff and gesture, and wisely, doggedly, held his peace. How could he tell her his heart was already filling with peace and contentment at the very thought of six hours on an unwinding strip of macadam, six hours, during whose passing, nobody could put four steel walls and a concrete floor and a cold ceiling about his fast moving car!

Four jor Dallas! Four jor ten bucks! Four and a deadhead, one who rode for nothing, all unbeknownst to Hugh Mackey! A deadheading passenger who rode the trunk at the rear and waited his time, whose face and frame were fleshless, whose head was a death’s head with gaping eyesockets, whose hands were fleshless talons, reaching, reaching! Death! Death, deadheading for Dallas, and his bony finger stretched forward to tap an unwilling shoulder!

Maybe Lucia sensed that passenger, maybe woman’s intuition told her. They stopped before the shabby apartment house, and she and Hugh slid out and walked together up the cracked concrete that was the walk. “Look, hon,” he said guiltily, “ten bucks is ten bucks and—”

She stopped him by throwing her arms about his neck. Her voice was strained. “Oh, Hugh, I’m not angry! You know I’m not! Haven’t I always stood by you, and... look, Hugh, I’m just afraid for you, that’s all. You mustn’t get in any trouble of any kind, any kind whatever! Why, if they’d take you away from me again I’d die!”

He kissed her, was a little startled at the vehemence of her caress.

“Hey,” called a voice from the car, “the lady left a package.”

Lucia said, “My toothpaste, Hugh.” He went back to the car and got it from the little man in the slicker.

Presently he was back in the car sliding beneath the wheel, sticking his little kitbag beneath his calves. No one spoke. He threw the car in gear, pulled away from the curb, said, to no one in particular, “Tank’s full and we’re Dallas bound. First stop, Waco.”

The little man in the yellow slicker growled, “Stop by a package house, I want to buy a bottle.”

Mackey’s face clouded. He hadn’t had a drink for years. In way of admonishment, he said, primly, “Were hauling a lady, mister.”

“Okay,” snarled the little man, “I’ll buy her a bottle, too.”

Mackey glared, turned to the woman in the back seat. “Lady, I’m just the driver, that’s all. Do you mind if—?”

“Let him drink his empty head off,” she snapped, “but don’t stop too long!”

II

Much to Mackey’s disgust, the little man sucked at his bottle every ten or fifteen minutes. New Braunfels, San Marcus, Kyle, Austin. The highway was traffic-crowded, but Mackey, holding the big car at a religious fifty, passed most of them, their headlights dropping behind. He slowed for Austin, rolled through without stopping, and on the far side, took note of the little man’s actions. The little man’s eyes were wide and staring in the yellow oval of his face, his lips were twisted back from his prominent teeth in a snarl. He peered into the rear view mirror, turned to growl at the fat man.

“Move over, you dope, I want to see behind us.”

“Listen, mister,” said Mackey indignantly, “you can’t—”

The little man interrupted: “There’s a monkey following us. How fast will this hack go? I got ten bucks for you if you lose him.”

Mackey looked in the rear-view mirror himself. They passed a highway junction with an overhead light, well illuminated filling stations on either side as well. He slowed up, rode through easily. The lights of the car behind stayed back. When it finally slid through the illumination, Mackey saw it was a coupe. He breathed a sigh of relief. Cops didn’t ride in coupes very often. Still—

He speeded up; the pursuing lights kept the same distance. He slowed. They slowed. He began to worry. Wildcatting is against the law. Still, nobody pays much attention to Travel Bureaus.

“You going to lose him?” snarled Yellow Slicker. “Or are you playing tag?”

“Maybe it’s the cops,” said Mackey doubtfully.

“The cops!” This from the fat man in the back seat. He turned to peer through the glass. He grunted. The dowdy woman was silent. The Mexican said nothing.

Mackey hurried on. “Hey, if they stop us, all of you be good sports, will you? Don’t say you paid me, just say you’re friends of mine. If they can’t prove anything it’ll be all right.” Already he was wondering what he’d tell the cops about the Mexican.

Yellow Slicker half rose, unbuttoned his slicker, unbuttoned his coat. “It ain’t cops,” he said grimly. “Step on it, bub — I’ll take care of everything.” He tipped the whiskey bottle to his lips and Mackey, staring at him, was fascinated by the little black hole in his crushed gray hat. He remembered that shot, back there at the bureau, remembered the little man’s anxiety to get out of San Antonio. Were the one or ones in that coupe after Yellow Slicker? They wouldn’t get him in Mackey’s car! Not while the gas held out. He’d stop at Waco, give things time to happen. What did he care about Yellow Slicker? If somebody wanted him they could have him — at Waco. But not out here on the highway, when Mackey was carrying three other passengers.

His lights cut a silver swath in the darkness, the road was a fishline from a gigantic reel, and a ten dollar bill, well earned, was the sounding fish on the other end of the line, Dallas.

He heard the fat man with the dark glasses and the dowdily dressed woman exchanging a few remarks in the rear seat.

The coupé behind kept its distance. Mackey settled down to the grind. Mile after mile paid off the reel that was his speedometer. Weariness began to overtake him. He forgot about the coupe. The ball of his right foot on the accelerator burned and throbbed; even his left foot felt hot. He blinked, glanced at the dial, saw that, including his Houston run, he had made well over eight hundred miles since early morning. He hunched his shoulders doggedly. Hell, a man had to make a living when he was married, didn’t he? This was better than nothing. Better than a shop or factory with four bleak walls and a door that locked! Almost he dozed. The right front wheel sheering off the pavement and sinking in the soft shoulder aroused him.

At Waco, he decided to have coffee, coupe or no coupe, hurry or no hurry. He pulled to a stop at a suburban filling station and restaurant, told his load what he intended doing, told the attendant to fill the tank. He stepped out of the car, headed for the door marked Eats. From the corner of his eye he saw the fat man and the dowdily dressed woman crawl over the Mexican and leave the car. One went one way, one another, to either side of the filling station. The man in the yellow slicker was motionless. A second later the Mexican got out, went in the same direction the fat man had taken.

The coffee wakened him, and the miles flew beneath the wheels. The pursuing coupe seemed to have disappeared completely. The man in the seat beside him had his head well down on his chest. Mackey, teetotaler, glancing at him occasionally, observed the sagging lips, the yellow, stained weakness of his face, and Mackey grew more disgusted minute by minute. Damned drunk! Passing out, and a lady in the car! Something bounced against his ankle. He reached down, picked up the half-filled bottle of whiskey, and as they passed over a small concrete culvert, tossed the bottle from the car. Feeling virtuous, he drove on into the night.

Wildcatters deliver their passengers at destinations. The badly dressed woman got out at a second-rate hotel. Strangely enough, the fat man with the dark glasses also left at a downtown street corner. Mackey pulled out the card Schultz had given him. Not knowing the address he turned to the man by his side. This one, Yellow Slicker, slept on, dead to the world.

Mackey pulled off the main drag, stopped in front of a drug store. “Back in a minute,” he grumbled, to no one. Inside, a sleepy clerk told him where to find the address on the card, where he was to deliver the Mexican. Fatigued, worn out by too much driving, he went back beneath the wheel, wound the car through deserted streets.

Ten minutes later, puzzled, parked before a vacant lot, he began to curse. The address written on the card was a mistake. There was no such number! And his passenger couldn’t speak English.

“Damn,” he breathed, and turned around to glare at the back seat.

It was empty. So was the street, as devoid of life as when he had driven in to it.

“Now what do you think of that?” he snorted to the man beside him. “Did you see where that pelado went?”

The man in the slicker didn’t answer. Mackey nudged him, hard, nudged him again. “Aw, to hell with him. Where do you want to go? You sober enough to tell me?”

The man in the yellow slicker rocked over against the closed door, began to slump down, an inch at a time, toward the floorboards. Mackey grabbed at his shoulder, missed. Stupidly he held his palm to the dashlight. It was crimson and sticky with blood!

“Naw, naw,” he breathed, shaking his head, peering closer.

The man in the yellow slicker was dead. The upturned collar of his coat had hidden the gaping wound on the right of his throat.

III

Mackey knew a moment of utter, unreasoning panic. He stepped on the starter, whirled the car with a scream of protesting rubber, was halfway to the corner before shock drove panic from his brain. The shock was caused by the body of the dead man. The turn had thrown him against the door, the jerk straightening out had tipped him the other way. Now he settled, an inch at a time. Mackey, blinded by fright, didn’t see him at first. The car hit a rut, jolted. Something touched Mackey’s shoulder, came to rest there. Horrified he looked at the head of the dead man, resting on his shoulder, and automatically put on the brakes. The dead man grinned at him, his lips seeming to draw back sneeringly from his yellow teeth. His glazed eyes stared directly into Mackey’s. And Mackey knew he couldn’t ride around with a dead man in his car.

His fingers tingled as he pushed the corpse back into its own corner, pulled the hat down over its eyes, turned the slicker collar up again. He sat there staring at it for split seconds, coated with perspiration, yet trembling as if it were sub-zero weather. There’d been something phony about this guy right from the start. That shot back there at the bureau. Wanting the whole car to himself. Getting high as a kite. Knowing they was being followed. And now — there he was dead! Dead! Sitting in the seat beside Hugh Mackey, ex-con, who’d already done time for manslaughter.

The police? Sure, he knew he ought to roll right down to the police station. And say what? Say, “Hello, coppers, I’m Hugh Mackey, ex-con, ex-killer. I been breaking the law by wildcatting out of San Antonio. Started to deliver this punk and found out somebody had stuck a shiv in his neck.” Wouldn’t that sound like something! Why he’d be in the clink the rest of his life. What if nobody could find the fat guy with glasses, the dowdy woman with the lousy clothes. And the Mexican!

The Mexican! There it was, find the Mexican, knife artist! The Mexican must have stabbed him while Mackey was out trying to find that address. In the all night drug store! But wait a minute. Look how the blood had already dried. Maybe he stabbed him at — hell! The little man in the slicker could have been stabbed as far back as Waco! He’d slumped there in the seat with his head down on his chest from Waco all the way in. The collar would had hidden the wound.

Find that Mexican! How? Find one Mexican in twenty thousand? One Mexican whose blank, expressionless face Mackey couldn’t even remember? Why, Mackey didn’t even know where he’d left the car. Maybe at the downtown street corner with the fat man; maybe before that, at the second-rate hotel. Even when they stopped somewhere in late traffic he could have slipped out. But Mackey had to find that Mexican.

A ring of white was about his mouth, his eyes were wide, as he stared at the corpse. How could he find the Mexican, how could he drive around town well after midnight with a dead man in the seat beside him? Panic, utter and complete, returned, swept over his big body like a surge of enveloping fever. A voice within him shouted, “Get rid of the body, get rid of it quick, before you get caught! They’ll burn you for it in spite of hell and high water! They’ll never believe the Mexican story! The fat man and the dowdy woman will keep out of it — they won’t help you. They’ll hang you! Get rid of this guy, dump him, quick!”

Fascinated, he sat there gazing at the dead man, all lights out. The man’s face was a dull gray blurb in the bleak blackness. Mackey shuddered. He began to reason. It wouldn’t do for the police to find the guy’s receipt from Schultz for his fare to Dallas. He must search the stiff.

He pulled back the raincoat. A wilted red rose dropped from the dead man’s lapel. Gingerly he slid a hand into the coat. It touched something cold and hard. A gun, in a shoulder holster. It took long moments before Mackey could force himself to try again. This time, the breast pocket. A wallet. He drew it out. It was of pigskin, well filled with currency and papers. It bulged peculiarly in the center, near the first fold.

With fumbling fingers he leafed through the papers, found the receipt he wanted and thrust it into his breast pocket. That bulge bothered him. It was something pinned to the lining of the wallet. Wallet empty, he turned it wrong side out, looked at the badge that made the bulge and dropped the whole thing to the floor with a groan.

His trembling hands gripped the wheel until his knuckles gleamed white. He laid his head on his hands and groaned again. It wasn’t enough that a guy would get himself killed in his car. No! The guy had to turn out to be a private detective working for a big office right here in Dallas, a national agency. Why, handling that corpse was like handling so much TNT.

He started the car, turned on the lights, lost his nerve. Frantically he flung the door wide on his side of the car, stumbled like a drunken man into the glow of the headlights. He caught himself, re-circled the car and flipped off the blinding glare. This time, like a murderer, he crept behind the car, eased the door open on the right hand side. The body of the dead man in the yellow slicker tottered out into his arms.

Behind him, he saw the vee made by two touching billboards. Sweating and stumbling, he carried the body through the weeds and bushes, dropped it behind the boards, ran back to the car as if the Devil himself were in pursuit. He made the corner, still without lights, whirled around it for the northeast section of the city.

The window was down, the wind was cool and sweet and reviving in his face. Consequently, five minutes of fast driving brought back a touch of reason. This wouldn’t do at all! The body would be found, there’d be a picture in the paper. The fat man with the dark glasses, or the lady with the dowdy clothes would see that picture. Probably the detective agency would offer a reward. One of his two orthodox passengers would step forward and tell the whole story. Police would trace him, Mackey! And how could they be expected to believe the story of the disappearing Mexican? It sounded silly! Suddenly he remembered something. The cardboard box.

Brakes screamed, the car rocked to a halt. He was out the door, fumbling at the trunk. His heart bounded as he withdrew the suitbox, hurried back into the car, flipped on the dome light. He broke the string, tore off the lid.

The box was crammed full of newspapers.

The Mex was a fake! He’d been after the detective! Why? Only the Mex and God knew, and the Mex had disappeared and God was pretty far away.

He drove until the dashclock read three o’clock, still wondering dumbly what to do. Subconsciously he rolled through the near deserted streets, and somehow, in those early hours of the morning, when his brain was a dull, unreasoning thing in the cup of his skull, he found himself back before the two billboards, on the deserted street where he had left the dead man.

Afterward he cursed himself for that returning, wondered why he had come back. Had he had some screwy hope of going through the guy again in search of a clue? Had he meant to put the dead man back in the car? Had he some vague idea about carrying the corpse to the police and making a clean breast of the whole thing?

He found himself stumbling through the same bushes and weeds, found himself behind the billboard, peering vacantly at the ground, unwilling to believe his own eyes. The morning moon was cold and serene, dropping gently at the edge of the sky-bowl, lighting the trampled grass with lemon-silver.

Hey, this was the wrong billboard! There was no one here! No body! No dead man! He’d made a mistake!

Something gleamed on the ground. He stooped. It was the pigskin wallet. Still full of bills, papers, the badge. Then he had left the corpse here! But where in the name of—

A woman stepped around the corner of the billboard. Lemon-silver gleamed on the gun in her hand. Slowly she advanced, slowly he retreated. The only sound was the wild tomtom of his own heart, the roar of blood surging at his temples. She came on — he went backward.

He heard the swish, half turned his head, glimpsed a black figure swinging something that flickered and gleamed, toward his skull. It crashed against bone, and all the colors of the spectrum seemed to riot in one mad flash before Mackey’s eyes as his knees let him down.

IV

Hugh Mackey groaned, and his big body twitched, twitched again echoing the pain that swept along his sore muscles. His breath was a rumbling hoarseness, burning its way out through cracked lips. When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing, nothing at all. He tried to raise his hand and arm. Something held it, allowed him to move it but scant inches.

“I’m dead,” he thought. He groaned aloud. He lived over all the mad happenings of the night before. The Mexican, the dead man! The hiding of the body, the return to find it gone. The woman who stepped from the shadows, the moon gleaming on the lemon-silver gun, the dark shape behind him that had hit him so viciously.

Just for a split second he had glimpsed the man that swung the blackjack. The man was big and fat and he wore dark glasses. Exactly like the fat man that rode with him from San Antonio! Again he groaned aloud.

Voices. Someone said, “Yessah, I tell’e he’s a man! He ain’t no old clothes, brothah!”

The darkness started to work its way from his eyes, and light filtered in to take its place. Suddenly he realized that he was lying deep in the thorn bushes, that his own coat had been tossed over his face. The coat lifted, an inch at a time. He looked up into the eyes of two very frightened little Negro boys. He tried to grin, but his grin was a grimace and his two discoverers dropped the coat and fled, shrieking. Hugh lay there and thanked God he was alive.

Something within him persisted, “You’ve got to get out of here! Those kids will tell a cop or their mothers or their fathers! Get up, you fool, get under way!”

Groaning at the effort, he struggled to his feet, fought the thorns that tore his shirt, the tender skin of his forearms. He staggered out into the trampled clearing, gazed about bewildered. Something yellow caught his eye over on the opposite side, next to a stone. It was the pigskin wallet that once had belonged to the dead man. Stooping quickly, he retrieved it. Its contents were intact.

Take it? Another quick glance showed him that his own few dollars were still in his pocket, but the way the rest of the contents had been stuffed back in proved that he had been thoroughly searched. The wallet was the only thing that he could see that proved the presence of the dead detective. Better take it, better—

He heard the wail of a siren off in the distance, knew then, for certain, it was time to go. The Negro boys had reported finding him, the police were on their way. The thing to do was hop in his car and get away from there — fast! He fumbled in his pocket as he ran, found his car keys. He hit the sidewalk running, stopped in dumb surprise.

His car was gone.

The siren wailed its way nearer. He turned, scuttled up the hill. At the next corner he plunged into a weed-grown vacant lot, and crouching low, made his way to the next street. He kept hurrying away from the vicinity for the next ten minutes, found a Mexican restaurant on McKinney and went in for coffee. He was dead on his feet. The advertising clock in the front window read eight-fifteen. The Mexican waiter looked at him curiously, but served his coffee and rolls without comment.

The coffee revived him, though his head still raged and throbbed. “Look,” he told himself, “you’ve got to think. You’ve got to report your car stolen, you’ve got to get it back.” His face went white beneath the beginning beard stubble as he thought of something else. Blood! He’d been so excited the night before he hadn’t thought of blood! The little man in the yellow slicker had bled profusely. There was sure to be some blood on the seat, on the floor! If he reported loss of his car to the police, what would they say about that blood? On the other hand, if he didn’t report it, and it was recovered, they’d pick him up through his San Antonio address, find out he was an ex-con, and hang the book on him. An ex-con with a bloodstained car! They’d even stick him for the assassination of Lincoln!

Aimlessly he wandered down the hill, trying to make up his mind what to do. A sign across the street read, Carta Blanca Hotel. He went across, paid for his room in advance, went back downstairs to buy papers and returned to flop on the bed. With trembling fingers he turned the pages of the morning paper. There was no mention made of the finding of the body.

Back and forth he paced through the room, back and forth, running nervous fingers through his hair. He saw his reflection in the glass, got a grip on himself and paused at the lavatory long enough to wash up. “Look,” he spoke aloud, “this is screwy. You’ve got to hold yourself, tight, and try and put it together. To keep out of trouble yourself you’ve got to find out what it’s all about.”

He found the stub of a pencil in his coat pocket, tore open an envelope. Slowly and laboriously, he wrote:

Wallet? Wallet? He went to his coat, drew the pigskin wallet from the pocket and brought it back to the bed. There was something about the very feel of the thing that chilled him. That dark spot near the outer edge? Dried blood, black and gruesome! He shuddered. The man that owned this wallet was dead! Never again would he open it and take out a bill. Never again would his fingers extract a letter, exhibit that badge. Death had deadheaded through from San Antonio. Death had ridden the trunk, and at an opportune moment, reached out a bony arm and laid a glistening forefinger on the little man’s shoulder!

Slowly he counted the money. It totaled $126.00. Five twenties, two tens, six ones. Belonging to a dead man. The badge was cold and dank in his hand. It was small, gold inlaid. Even Hugh Mackey knew it for what it was, a presentation badge. The back was engraved.

So his name was Fuqua, Preston Fuqua, and he was a hero. He wasn’t a hero now, he was a dead man. A missing dead man.

Mackey fumbled through the letters. Three of them he read before he found one mailed from San Antonio, Texas. It was typewritten, bore no signature. It was addressed to the International Assurance Company.

“Not long ago you paid off on the theft of the Criswell necklace in this town. My brother and I stole this necklace. For reasons which will surprise you, we can’t dispose of the damned thing. Also we recently found that you have a standing reward for the conviction of anyone who defrauds your company. We are pretty interested, my brother and I. Send a man to the Houston Hotel and have him sit in the lobby wearing a red rose in his lapel until someone speaks to him. When someone asks him for a light, he’s to say, ‘Is this your home?’ If the guy says, ‘Nope, I’m from Criswell,’ it’s me or my brother. Not only can you have the necklace at a figure that will surprise you, but you’ll get deadwood on Criswell.”

Hugh Mackey scratched his head. His brain, none too active to begin with, couldn’t grasp the thing. Stolen pearls? Yeah, he remembered reading something about that a few weeks ago. This Criswell, now? A retired army man who had come into a fortune just before retiring. A guy, if Mackey remembered right, whose marriage to a woman thirty years younger than he had caused quite a furor.

But what did these crooks, these fellows who wrote the letter, mean by getting in touch with the insurance company that paid off on the theft? Mackey in spite of his inexperience didn’t know that many jewel recoveries are made direct from the criminal by the insurance company — and that no prosecution follows. And what did they mean by getting the deadwood on Criswell? None of it made sense to Mackey. Until he closed his eyes and envisoned the dead man again, and remembered that withered red rose in the little man’s lapel.

This guy, Fuqua, was a dick sent to recover those pearls. And somebody else wanted them, too. Somebody took a shot at him at the travel bureau, somebody killed him in his, Mackey’s car. Who? The Mexican? What would a Mexican pelado know about the Criswell pearls? What about that coupe that followed them from Austin to Waco then disappeared? Could somebody in that coupe have killed Fuqua while Mackey was getting coffee at Waco? Mackey groaned aloud; it was too much for him.

“Nuts to all that,” he muttered. “My car’s gone and I got to get it back.” He figured up a likely story to tell the police, went downstairs and to a telephone, dialed headquarters.

“Look,” he said anxiously, “my name is Mackey, Hugh Mackey, from San Antonio, Texas.” He launched into his story, the story he had decided to tell, how he had come to Dallas on business, gone in a bar the night before for a nightcap and got to talking to two affable strangers. How they’d gone for a ride, how he had been held up, hit in the head and dumped in a vacant lot, regaining consciousness this morning to find his car gone. He gave the license number, the engine number and a general description. He even promised to come to headquarters a little later and look through the gallery in order to try and identify the mythical two men. Satisfied, a little pleased with his glibness, he hung up.

Now what? Fuqua, what had happened to Fuqua? He could just about figure now why the body had disappeared. Somebody wanted to search that body completely, at their leisure, and just as they had stowed it away, he, Mackey had popped up. He rubbed his head ruefully. “Well,” he asked himself, “what about Fuqua?” The wisest thing to do was wait until the police got a line on his car, go to headquarters and pretend to search through Rogue’s Gallery for his two mythical men, then get on out of town, quick! Before the body popped up, before the picture was published and the dowdy lady or the fat man with the glasses came forward to identify it.

The fat man with the glasses. Perhaps it was a hunch, perhaps that split second view had been sufficient for identification, but Mackey was positive it was the same fat man who had ridden with him from San Antonio that had hit him in the head behind the billboards. Where did that jig-sawed section fit? He thrust the thought from him. Looking out the window into the squalid street the face of Fuqua danced before him. He was sorry now that he hadn’t taken the little man’s money for a load and driven him to Dallas alone. It might have saved his life. Hell, maybe the guy was married, maybe he had a nice wife like Lucia.

The thought of Lucia made him wince, inwardly. What had she said? That she didn’t feel right about this trip, that something was sure to happen. Only woman’s intuition, hanh? Intuition hell! Lucia knew! She knew about the guy with the bony finger, deadheading to Dallas. She knew, damn it, she knew! Maybe she couldn’t say it in so many words, but she had felt it. She had known something was going to happen to the man she loved.

Yeah, maybe the guy Fuqua had a wife. Mackey picked up the letters and the money and the billfold, leafed through them again. Sure enough, tucked deep in a pocket beneath the identification card was a little snapshot. It was Fuqua, all right! Mackey would have known that overlarge head on those narrow shoulders anywhere. And there was a little blonde dame looking up at him admiringly. Laughing and happy, and in between them was a kid, maybe two, maybe three years old.

“Look, Mackey,” he spoke aloud, pacing the floor. The palm of his left hand was a cup to catch the balled fist of his right hand, smack, smack, smack. “Look, Mackey, suppose it was you. Lucia would want to know.” But how, he asked himself, could he tell police or Fuqua’s wife or anyone else that the man was dead, without involving himself in a labyrinth of difficulties? He eased his bulk into a chair, stared out the window with unseeing eyes. He gnawed the nail of his left forefinger, gazed at it abstractedly, considered his thumb. Slowly he got up, donned his hat and his coat, emptied the billfold completely on the table. After a moment he put the papers and the badge back in. He considered the little stack of bills, picked up a ten and two ones, tucked them back with the papers. He pursed his lips, gnawed at his thumbnail. The letter from the jewel thieves, he withdrew again. He found the Travel Bureau receipt and the card bearing the Mexican’s fake address in his short pocket. These, he slid far back beneath the cheap carpet. He folded the $112.00 he had decided to keep, put it in his pocket, dropped the wallet in his coat pocket and went out.

The International Assurance Company looked more like a law office than a detective headquarters. Mackey, dogged and ill at ease, sat in an anteroom half an hour before being admitted into the august presence of Sam Dillon, head of the agency. Dillon was tall and lank, with cold, appraising eyes and a buttonhole for a mouth. His skin was muddy, discolored by a liver ailment, and his characteristic attitude was that of a jacknife folded into a swivel chair. He eyed Mackey with disapproval, put his elbows on the corner of his chair, formed a steeple with his fingers and gazed over it at the nervous wildcatter.

“Yes, we have a Fuqua with this organization.” His voice sounded as if he were sorry he had ever heard the name. “What about him?”

Mackey flushed, shifted, fumbled for words. Eventually he leaned forward and said earnestly, “Look, Captain, maybe nothing about him. But take a look at this.” He tossed the billfold upon the desk. Dillon kept his position, glanced sharply at the wallet, back at the man before him. His voice grew soft and suave, his eyes flickered a little with interest.

“That’s Fuqua’s wallet. I’d know it anywhere. Where did you get it?”

Stumbling, fumbling, flushing and stuttering, Mackey went into the same song and dance he had handed the police. A strange bar, two strange men, a stickup, a bust in the head. Coming to in a vacant lot, and there beside him on the ground, this billfold! Fuqua’s billfold.

Dillon’s voice was brittle. “You mean you think Fuqua was one of the guys that knocked you over? Brother, you’re crazy. Pres Fuqua is one of the best men I have. He never took a drink in his life! He works for six grand a year! His rewards usually double that. Why would he knock you over for chicken feed?”

“Naw,” said Mackey, troubled, “I didn’t say he knocked me over! Hell, I just brought his stuff to you. I saw that picture of his wife and kid and thought they ought to know I found the wallet.” He considered his thumbnail again, bit at it tentatively, tried to look unconcerned as he rose. “Maybe something happened to the guy, like happened to me.” Dillon said nothing. At the door Mackey shot back lamely, “I just thought you ought to know.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dillon coldly. “Did you tell the police this story?”

Mackey was uneasy beneath the stare in those eyes. “I told them about my car, yes. About this here Fuqua, no. Me, I don’t think much of coppers.” He almost added, “Or private dicks,” bitterly, but he held the words back. Going out, he thought, the fool! I try to help, try my best and he ain’t even interested.

He didn’t see the little man in the blue serge suit that got in the elevator with him, that rode down in the elevator, cupping his hands over his face while he lit a cigarette. There was nothing unusual to draw attention to the man in the blue serge suit — which was the reason he was so successful as a shadow. Hugh Mackey didn’t even notice him in the café where he stopped for coffee, didn’t even look at him as he lingered fifty yards behind all the way to the Carta Blanca Hotel.

He went up the stairs wearily, without looking behind. The man in the blue serge suit lingered below, looking in a window, but keeping his eye on the steps where Mackey had ascended. Mackey went through the hall, inserted his old-fashioned key and twisted. The key didn’t twist. The door was unlocked.

Two men were awaiting his arrival. One wore a hard-rimmed straw, the other a misshapen panama. The man in the sailor sat on the small of his back by the window, twisting a dead cigar around and around in his mouth. The other turned from the empty dresser, slammed a drawer shut. He was tall, thin, with a bony face and cold, blue eyes.

He said, “Damn if you don’t travel light, mister. You Hugh Mackey?”

Mackey nodded dumbly, leaned against the door. The thin man said, “Me, I’m Grimm.” He pointed a thumb at the morose man in the chair. “That’s Bailey. Police. We found your car.”

Mackey gulped in relief. “That’s swell. When can I get it? Where is it?”

The sad detective arose. “Come on, we’ll show it to you. We got it in the pound.”

The three of them went out, got in a squad car parked around the corner and drove away.

The man in the blue serge suit hailed a taxi and followed.

At the city pound they were joined by another detective, introduced as Jones, a sergeant. Together they viewed Mackey’s car. Mackey’s heart sank.

The interior of the hack was a wreck. The front cushion was missing. All upholstering had been ripped to shreds, both front and rear. Even the top lining had been cut into strips, hung down in discouraged ribbons. Mackey, wide-eyed, began to curse beneath his breath.

Jones said, “Wonder what the thieves were looking for, Mackey?” Three pair of eyes were in Mackey’s red face, none of which he dared to meet. He knew what the thieves were looking for! The Criswell pearls! But tell the police? Get himself mixed up in that murder? He shook his head.

“Looking for?” he repeated dumbly. “Wonder what they did with my front cushion?”

“We got it inside,” said Jones, and turned heavily away. Grimm prodded Mackey along behind the sergeant, and Mackey’s heart began pounding as they went into headquarters. Pounding ceased. It began to roar as he recognized the room into which they were taking him. A straight-backed chair sat in the middle of the floor. Over it hung a solitary light with a cone-shaped shade. A small desk sat in the corner. A man in uniform was sitting there sharpening a pencil. He didn’t look up. Jones said heavily, “Sit down over there, sweetheart.”

Mackey said, “Like hell! What you want from me?”

Mackey sat down, bit his lips. Bailey went to the desk, opened a drawer, took out two lengths of rubber hose. They fascinated Mackey. He couldn’t keep his eyes away from them. Jones said, “What’s your real name, fellow?”

“Hugh Mackey.”

“Okay. You’re Hugh Mackey. You live on University in San Antonio, Texas. You’re a wildcat driver for the travel bureaus. Right?”

Mackey gulped. They’d checked him. Police keep an eye on ex-cons. No use to deny it. He said, “Yeah.”

Jones continued, “You brought four passengers from S.A. last night. And you left them where?”

Mackey haltingly lied, said that all four had gotten off at downtown street corners. At Jones’ prompting he repeated the story he had told the police before. How he had met two affable strangers in a bar, how they had taken him out, hit him in the head and stolen his car.

Jones interrupted, “How much time did you do in Huntsville, Mackey?”

No use to lie now, he said to himself dully. “Three years and nine months.” And as an afterthought, “For manslaughter, but it was a frameup!”

He was in it now. But what had made the police suspicious? Had they found Fuqua’s body? Had they located the dowdy woman or the fat man with the dark glasses? He bit his lips and waited.

Jones said, “Sure, it was a frameup. I never see a con yet that was guilty.” He took out a handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, glared, put the handkerchief away. “We found your car, Mackey, abandoned in Oak Cliff. There were plenty of bloodstains in the front seat. What would you know about them?”

Mackey shook his head stubbornly. Bailey advanced, his mouth twisted down, a sad look in his eyes. He slapped the hose against the palm of his hand, looked inquiringly at Sergeant Jones. Jones shook his head, almost imperceptibly. Bailey looked even sadder.

Mackey swallowed in relief. “Honest, Sergeant,” he gulped, “I don’t know a thing about any bloodstains. I don’t even know why they cut my car up, what they were looking for.”

Jones went to the steno’s desk, opened another drawer. He came back to Mackey, unwrapped the towel, held something out in his hand. “You ever see this before?” he asked. Three pairs of eyes were once again on Mackey. His own eyes bulged slightly, he breathed heavily through his open mouth. The towel disclosed a clasp-knife with a five inch blade, a long slim, narrow blade, covered with something that had dried black. He gulped, closed his eyes tightly. Blood! The murder weapon!

“I never saw it before, Sergeant, honest! Where did you find it?”

“Behind the rear seat of your car, Mackey. All right, boys, get a print man. Mackey, you’re an ex-con, a killer. I never believe ex-cons, just as a matter of principle. It’ll be tough if your prints match up with the ones on the knife. Or if we turn up a stiff with knife holes!”

Mackey’s heart bounded. They had nothing on him! What if the car was bloody, what if they did find a knife behind the back seat? His story wasn’t so hot, but they could prove nothing against him. He knew well enough his prints wouldn’t be on that knife. And the corpse was missing.

They took his prints, Jones busying himself in the outer office, Bailey watching him glumly, Grimm swishing the hose against his leg. Finished, Grimm said, “You’re lying, Mackey. Something is screwy, but don’t worry, we’ll find out.”

Mackey said, “There’s nothing to find out. Can I go now?”

“You can go to a nice, cool, quiet private room, fellow, until we do a little more checking up. Until we turn up a corpus delicti. Come on.”

Forty minutes later the jailer unlocked the door of the cell, said, “Come out, dearie, there’s a guy here with a writ for you.”

A pudgy little man whom Mackey had never seen before was waiting for him. He grinned all over his face. “You’re a free man, Mr. Mackey. These cossacks can’t hold you any longer. And your car’s waiting for you.”

Things had moved to fast for Mackey. The bewilderment on his face was ludicrous. The pudgy little man laughed, clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about anything. You don’t owe me a dime. I’m all taken care of. Your car’s half a block down the street. In case you’d want new upholstering, here’s the address of a friend of mine. He can get it for you wholesale.”

V

Outside the station Mackey blinked in the sunlight, looked up and down the street. The door opened behind him, Grimm and Bailey came out. Bailey looked at him sadly, Grimm tapped his shoulder. Instinctively Mackey’s hand flew to the knot behind his ear, his face went bleak with anger.

Grimm sneered, “You got a break, buddie, but you’re still a liar in my book. Don’t leave town or I’ll come down to S.A. and drag you back by your heels.”

Rage welled up in Mackey. He clinched his fists, stepped forward. Grimm met him, chest to chest, his eyes cold and venemous. His right hand was on his hip pocket. “Go on,” he urged, “take a poke at me. I hate ex-cons. The only thing I like about you is the idea that one of these days I’ll get a chance to take you apart.”

Mackey turned around and walked down the street to his car. There was a man in a blue serge suit sitting in the driver’s seat, cleaning his nails. Mackey opened the door, said coldly, “Bud, you made a mistake. This is my heap.”

“No mistake,” the little man in the blue serge grinned. He had two gold teeth in front. “My boss sprung you, pal. He wants you should come down and talk to him.”

Mackey grew darkly suspicious. “And who’s your boss?”

“Sam Dillon. International Assurance. Get in, I’ll drive.”

“You will like hell. Get out. I’m leaving this town before I get in any more jams. What if he did spring me? I didn’t ask him to do it. I’d have been out in a few hours anyway. The cops had nothing on me.”

“Cops in this town don’t need anything on you, Bud. They make something. Sam says in case you don’t want to come up and talk I’m to walk back to the station and file a charge against you for lifting Pres Fuqua’s wallet.”

Again Mackey’s fists clinched. He gulped, swallowed a couple of times and got in the car.

Ten minutes later he was facing Sam Dillon across the desk again. Dillon was as liverish, as complaining as ever. Mackey said sullenly, “Thanks, for getting me out. How’d you know they had me?”

“We know everything,” complained Dillon. “I had a man on you ever since you left here. Your story is screwy.” He leaned forward, put an elbow on the desk, laid his long chin in his cupped hand. “Look, Mackey. I did you a favor. I expect the boys were getting ready to wrap a hose around your neck.” Mackey felt the knot behind his ear, frowned. “Now you can pay me back. That story of yours about Fugua is phony. I been in this racket a long time. Tell me the truth, will you? Where is Fuqua? He’s overdue reporting.”

Mackey said, stubbornly, “I don’t even know him. I never saw him. I just found his wallet, that’s all.”

Dillon said, “Tsk, tsk! Then why did you take this letter out of the wallet and hide it under your carpet at the hotel before you returned the wallet? Why’d you hide a card with an address and a receipt for one ride from S.A. to Dallas? What happened to the rest of Fuqua’s expense money? A thief wouldn’t take part of it and leave the rest. You sure Fuqua didn’t ride into town with you? We can check in San Antonio, you know.”

He tossed the letter on the table, the letter addressed to the International offering to deal for the Criswell pearls. The card followed. The ride receipt was next. Mackey’s forehead became covered with sweat. He shifted uneasily in his seat. He shook his head.

Dillon’s voice was implacable, even. “We’re pretty well wired in at headquarters, Mackey. I know who you are, I know you’re an ex-con, I know you’re a wildcatter. You said you brought four passengers from San Antonio. Your car was taken from you, ripped to pieces, there was blood on the front cushion, human blood, and a shiv with a five-inch blade was found tucked behind the back seat. Look, Mackey, whose blood was it? Whose knife was it?”

Mackey shook his head. “Not mine,” he managed. “My prints didn’t match!”

Dillon shook his own head sadly. “I hate to do this, Mackey. You got a record. It’ll be tough with you.” He punched a buzzer. The man in the blue serge suit came in, leaned against the door, his hat on the back of his head. Dillon said, “Take this guy back to headquarters, file a charge of robbery against him. Tell the sergeant he rolled Preston Fuqua, probably killed him, and that I’ll be down in a few hours to see it sticks.”

Mackey jumped to his feet so fast he overturned his chair. His face whitened. A gun appeared miraculously in Dillon’s hand. His liverish face was cold and hard. Slowly Mackey turned his head toward the door. Blue serge had stowed away his nail file. He, too, held a gun in his hand. He motioned with his head. Mackey sat down weakly. He said, “I’ll tell you all about it.”

Dillon put the gun away. “Start at the first. And don’t skip a thing.”

He started at the first, did Mackey. He told of the bullet that blasted the darkness and tore the hat from Fuqua’s head. Dillon was properly impressed. He told of Fuqua’s demand to be the only passenger, told of the fat man with the dark glasses, the dowdy woman, the Mexican who supposedly spoke no English. He told of Fuqua’s stopping for a bottle, of his drunkenness, of the pursuing car, of the stop for coffee at Waco, how he had let the fat man and the dowdy woman out in downtown Dallas, how he had stopped at a drug store to ask directions, arrived at a vacant lot to find the Mexican gone, Fuqua dead and the suit-box stuffed with paper.

“Look,” he said desperately, “I’m an ex-con. I been wildcatting, and that’s against the law. I lost my head. Suppose I’d a driven up to the police station and said, ‘Gents, here’s a stiff I found in my car.’ What would happen? You don’t think for a minute they’d believe that story of mine, about the disappearing Mexican?”

Dillon said, “It’s so screwy I believe it. You’re too dumb to think up one like that, Mackey. Go on.”

He told of dumping the body — after having gone through it. He told of his panic, his later return to find the body gone from behind the billboard. How a woman had stepped out and held a gun on him, while a man had slugged him from behind. And he told Dillon he thought the man was the same fat man he had hauled from San Antonio.

Dillon snapped, “Describe him!”

“He was fat,” said Mackey slowly, “like any other fat man, and he wore dark glasses. I never even looked at him more than once.” Silence. Dillon glared at him. Mackey said, “That’s the story. You got it all now. Where Fuqua is I don’t know, only he’s dead wherever he is. Where the Mexican went I don’t know, or who followed us in a coupe or who the woman was that held a gun on me. Can’t you see I don’t know anything? It’s just one of those things that happen. What are you going to do with me?”

Dillon shrugged. “Strangely enough, I believe you. You’ve read that letter, you know what happened, so you’ve probably figured a little of it out. I don’t know myself how it all fits. This Criswell is a retired army major with a young wife. A year ago we paid him $38,000 insurance on the theft of a bunch of jewelry. He buys pearls at a bargain with the insurance money, gets them insured for $35,000. Then they get stolen. We pay off again. You saw the letter from the thieves. Evidently Fuqua contacted the thieves, the brothers, and started back with the pearls. Somebody didn’t want him to get here with them. Who? Did thieves fall out? Was it another set of thieves? Hell, I don’t know.”

Mackey thought Dillon was going to cry. Again he said, “What about me?”

Dillon said, “Go out and eat or get shaved or go to a show or something. Come back this evening. In the meantime I’m putting out a missing bulletin on Fuqua.”

Mackey went out. He got in his car, drove away. Ponderously his brain was functioning. He didn’t trust Dillon. Why had he told him everything? The police would find Fuqua. Some way, somehow they’d tie him, Mackey, up with the body. Maybe Dillon would tell. It was high time Hugh Mackey eased out of the picture. It wasn’t too late. Why not beat it? Where? Home! Snatch Lucia, tell her he was in a murder jam, head for the border. Anywhere! They couldn’t get him and send him to prison again. He couldn’t sit hopelessly within a cell, with bare walls and ceiling and a cold floor. Not that. Anything but that.

Mackey was beginning to grow wise. He didn’t think for a minute that Dillon was letting him out of sight. He knew that cab, four cars back, was trailing him, knew somebody that worked for Dillon was in that cab. He pulled on out of town to a community center, parked his car, got out and began sauntering along the street, looking in windows. At first he saw no one. Then, in a window, he saw the reflection of the little man in the blue serge suit. He had kept his cab, made a hairpin turn at the corner and was parked across the street, headed back toward town.

Mackey sauntered into a barber shop, relaxed in a chair, squirmed beneath a hot towel, felt better. Lighting a cigarette he hit the sidewalk, saw that Blue Serge was still watching, pretending to read a paper in the rear seat of the cab.

Down the street, half a block farther on, loomed an apartment house. Mackey, brow corrugated, walked toward it. From the sidewalk he could see directly through the lower hall and out the open back door. Made to order! He played his role well. He looked hurriedly up and down the street, tugged at his hat, flipped his cigarette into the gutter and almost ran into the house. Straight through the hall he hurried, and out the back door.

The courtyard in the rear was deserted. He turned left, went to the corner of the house and waited. Blue Serge, he knew, was an old head. He would figure immediately that Mackey was trying to lose him, that he had been discovered. A less experienced tail would sit and watch the front door of the apartment house. A man like Blue Serge would take no chances. Mackey waited, his hot breath filling his lungs painfully.

It would be hard to tell who was the more surprised, for Mackey did not hear Blue Serge’s soft-footed approach. There was the courtyard, empty save for Mackey, flattened with his back to the wall, his arms outspread, his head cocked to one side listening for sounds he failed to hear. Then suddenly there was Blue Serge, crouched, coming swiftly around the corner. Both faces were ludicrous as they regarded each other in amazement. Blue Serge started to grin, read the threat on the larger man’s face and reached for a gun. He didn’t make it. Mackey’s big fist lashed forward, crashed against Blue Serge’s chin. Blue Serge bounded back against the wall of the house, his eyes glazed. His hat rolled off his head as he slid slowly down.

Mackey stared at him dumbly, flexed his fist, sucked at a knuckle. He heard a door slam upstairs, waited with bated breath for discovery. A Negro maid flipped a rug over the second floor porch. Mackey could hear her singing, hear the rug cracking in rhythm. Then she was gone. Mackey stooped, picked up Blue Serge and trotted across the courtyard. A garage door stood open a foot. Mackey pushed it wider, stepped into the cool darkness, lay Blue Serge on the floor and went out. He snapped the open padlock that hung in the clasp.

Six hours later he was in San Antonio.

VI

Mackey congratulated himself on his smartness. True, he didn’t have much money for flight, but a man could always get by some way. Maybe Mexico wouldn’t be so good. Too much red tape about it, too many questions asked and all that. California, then. Maybe Florida. A man could get by if he set his mind to it. Hadn’t he outsmarted Dillon in Dallas? And wasn’t he too smart to go right to his house? Sure, he’d get by.

He parked and went into a drug store phone booth. Mrs. Scott, the landlady, answered the phone. He disguised his voice, asked for Lucia. He heard Mrs. Scott’s sloppy shoes going down the hall to the housekeeping apartment, waited for Lucia’s voice. Lucia wasn’t going to like this — not any. But she’d stick. Hadn’t she always stuck?

The voice that came over the phone wasn’t that of his wife. It was Mrs. Scott again. She said, “Mrs. Mackey ain’t in. Don’t appear to me like she’s been in all day. The milk is outside the door and the morning paper and the evening paper is stuck behind the screen. Will you leave your number?”

He hung up instead, stood there in the phone booth and gnawed his nails. Lucia wasn’t home. Now, he reasoned, she might have stepped out to a movie. But a movie wouldn’t take all day. Why hadn’t she picked up the milk, the papers? Premonition clung to his shoulders, fear haunted his eyes. He was positive that something had happened to Lucia. Were the police looking for him? Had they come out to the house to question her? Had they taken her down to headquarters?

He drove slowly, trying to think, but his head was filled with one thing alone, black fear. Lucia’s face danced on the windshield before him; his heart was like lead in his breast. Something had happened to Lucia!

But he kept his head. He took a roundabout route to University, parked at the end of the alley that led behind the converted mansion where he and Lucia rented two housekeeping rooms. He skulked down the alley in the deepening shadows, stood at the back gate for five full minutes, watching, watching. He saw no movement in the back yard, no one came out of the back door. A second later he opened that same back door, went noiselessly up the rear steps, tiptoed down the hall to the front apartment, his and Lucia’s. The milk was there. The two newspapers were there. His heart throbbed, and although he sweated, he shivered. Cautiously he tried the door. Locked. From his pocket he fumbled a key, inserted it, twisted. The door swung open an inch. He stood there trembling, afraid of what he might see once he entered. Swallowing deeply, he stepped through, switched on the lights.

The room was a shambles. The rug had been pulled from the floor, lay in a crumpled heap in the corner. Pictures were askew. The shades were down, all the way, the drapes were ripped. Cushions from the overstuffed set were slashed apart, debris covered the bare floor. Three legs were broken from the overturned table.

Dumbly he walked through the litter to the kitchenette. There he found the same mad scene of desolation. The sugar container had been upended on the sink. Flour covered the floor. The empty sack was wadded in a corner. Cereal boxes were emptied. Pots and pans were everywhere. Somehow he got out of there, walked to the tiny bathroom. Lucia’s bath powder covered everything. A flattened toothpaste tube lay in the bathtub, the paste curled about like a long white worm. He went back into the shattered living room, sat a chair on its legs, sat down stiffly. He lit a cigarette, tried to think, and all that came was, Lucia’s gone, Lucia’s gone! They’ve got Lucia.

Who had Lucia? Who were they? Why would anyone take Lucia? Maybe — and the thought was terrible — maybe she’d been sore with him for this last trip — maybe she’d packed up and left him. Maybe after she left some prowler broke in. He got up, went to the closet where Lucia kept her clothes. If her clothes were gone now! He opened the door of the shallow closet.

He was so frightened he couldn’t move. A man stood there, a Mexican, dressed in a gray suit. His lips were purple in his coffee face, twisted away from snow-white teeth. His eyes were bulging, rolled upward, so only the whites were visible. A jagged white scar streaked his left cheek. As Mackey stood there, frozen, the man swayed. He swayed forward, fell against Mackey, who, galvanized into action, leaped back.

The corpse thudded to the floor and lay still.

Somehow Mackey forced himself to lean over the dead man. There were two gruesome stab wounds in his back, matted and clotted with dried blackness, grisly and horrible.

He had to do it, had to find out something! His fingers were numb, as if they were freezing, but he went through the man’s pockets. They were absolutely empty. So, he stood there staring down at the dead man, and it came to him that that contorted face was vaguely familiar, yet rack his brain as he might, he could not place the man. Had he ever seen him before? How did he happen to be in Mackey’s closet? Who had stabbed him?

Where was Lucia? Had she come upon this man rifling the apartment for some unknown reason, had she fought with him, killed him, become panic-stricken and fled? That wasn’t very sensible. And it suddenly came to him that he, too, would be in a fine predicament were he found here with this corpse, after all that had happened in Dallas! But Lucia, where was Lucia?

He turned out the light, closed the door and stepped into the hall. He started back the way he came, when suddenly the door of the last apartment opened, a woman came out. She paused there for a moment, locking the door with a key, and Mackey knew he could hardly tiptoe by her. He turned, put on a bold front, walked to the end of the hall, down the steps and out the front door.

A woman was leaning over the open hood of a car at the curb. She glanced up as he came out of the house, her eyes grew purposeful. As Mackey turned, started away from her, she called in a low voice, “I wonder if you’d tighten this for me, please, sir?”

He started to go on, as if he had not heard her, and she called again. The other woman was now coming out of the house. His befuddled brain worked quickly for once. He mustn’t act suspicious, nervous about anything! Later on, if anything came up, he wouldn’t want the woman of the rear apartment to identify him. So he walked over to the machine parked at the curb, where the woman waited. Her voice was low when she said, “Here’s a wrench — Mackey.” His eyes grew large. He looked at the thing in her hand and saw that it was not a wrench.

It was a gun.

“Put the hood down and crawl beneath the wheel,” she said. “I’ll tell you where to drive.”

It was the second time he had seen this woman, and on both occasions she had held him up with a gun! The first time was in Dallas when she had stepped out of the shadows of a billboard and marched him back, a step at a time, until the fat man with the dark glasses had knocked him unconscious with a blackjack. He knew better than to disobey. He crawled behind the wheel without speaking, and he drove without speaking, knowing that the gun in her lap, covered by the big purse, was pointed in his direction.

She kept him on the side streets until they reached the city limits, made him turn off the highway onto a graveled road that led to a grove of trees. He slid from beneath the wheel at her command, took two steps forward, his hands raised, conscious of the fact that she, too, was sliding from beneath the wheel. He heard the sound of her shoes in the gravel, heard the swish of the gun slicing the air, let loose an involuntary cry as it crashed on his head.

How long he was out he never knew. He regained consciousness to find his hands taped behind him, his lids taped shut and a pair of glasses over his eyes to hide the tape. He could feel the glasses on his nose, over his ears. He heard the engine, sensed movement, knew he was still in the car. He groaned, moved his legs, which were unbound. The woman’s voice, cold, harsh, said, “Sit still, it won’t be long now. I’ve got the gun in my lap. I’ve waited for you since noon, mister. I don’t intend to lose you now.”

He heard the passing of cars, trucks, busses, knew they were back in the city again. And presently they turned a corner, another. A few moments more and they ran up an incline, stopped. He felt her lean across him, felt the wind as she opened the door. “Get out,” she said. “Step easy and don’t try to raise a fuss. No one will hear you.”

He got out like a blind man, feeling cautiously, uncertainly with his feet. His whole body was tense, he expected another blow. Instead a hand took his arm, the woman said, “Step up. We’re here.” He stepped up, felt concrete beneath his feet, knew they were walking across a porch. They paused, he heard a bell ring four short rings, heard a door squeak open, a man’s thick voice saying: “Well, it took you long enough.”

“I did the best I could,” she answered, and to Mackey: “Up again.”

Up a flight of stairs, still wondering what they were going to do with him, why they wanted him, what this woman was doing in San Antonio when he had last seen her in Dallas. He heard a key in a lock, a hand pushed him, he stumbled forward, heard the door close, the lock click. Footsteps diminished from the opposite side of the door.

Dumbly he stood there, whipped, beaten, worn out, wondering what was going to happen next. He heard a gasp across the room. Someone cried, “Hugh!” Feet flew toward him, the glasses were jerked off, the tape was torn from his eyes. He blinked, the sudden light blinding him, felt hands on his shoulders, a body pressed against his. Hands tore at the tape that bound his lips, and suddenly vision returned to his eyes.

“Lucia!” he took her in his arms, held her shivering body tightly as if he were afraid someone would break through the door and take her away from him.

It was long moments before they could talk coherently, and Lucia told her story first, gathering speed as she went.

The doorbell had gotten her out of bed that morning. A blonde woman had been there. She had asked for Mrs. Mackey, and then assured that she was in the right place, pushed in, followed by a fat man who wore dark glasses.

“That guy,” interrupted Hugh bitterly, “certainly gets around!”

The blonde woman accused Lucia of having a pearl necklace that had been stolen from some people named Criswell. She said that a little thief who rode to Dallas with Hugh Mackey, had cunningly put it into a package, had given the package to Lucia before the very house the night before.

Mackey got it! Lucia’s toothpaste! The blonde woman and the fat man had searched everywhere else, had decided that Lucia’s toothpaste had been the pearls! He almost laughed aloud, but remembered the dead Mexican in the closet and did not. He listened intently. Lucia did not mention the dead man. When she convinced them that the package had in reality been an innocent tube of toothpaste, the woman had taken her to the car, where she had been blindfolded and driven to this house.

Mackey heaved a sigh of relief. Lucia didn’t even know the apartment was torn up, she didn’t know the Mexican was dead.

“Look,” he asked her, “just who is the dame and the fat man?”

Lucia shook her head, her eyes puzzled. “I don’t know, honey! They’ve kept me here all day.”

In ten brief moments he told her all that had happened since he saw her last. Her face whitened as he told of the dead Fuqua, how he had lost his head, how the body had disappeared. From beginning to end he tried to explain it all.

“And the man in the dark glasses, the fat man,” he ended, “is the one I hauled to Dallas. The woman that brought me here is the same one that hit me over the head behind the billboard.”

“Don’t you see then,” said Lucia, “those pearls are still missing! Look, this Fuqua, this little detective, got those pearls from the thieves. Someone else, this fat man, knew he had them and wanted them. Maybe before he could get them this Mexican killed him for some reason. So now the point is, where are those pearls? These people must think you and I were in cahoots with this Fuqua, the detective! That’s why they have us here!”

Mackey’s cigarettes were still in his pocket. He drew one out, rolled it between his palms and lit it carefully. “Damned funny,” he said, gazing around suspiciously, “they’d put us in here together like this to talk it over. How come they let you untape me and everything? Of course the windows are shuttered and we can’t see a thing from in here, but—”

His brows knit. Constant danger had made his wits more subtle, had sharpened them. He began looking around the room, beneath the table, about the baseboards, under the edges of the rug. He found the wire. His heart leaped as he traced it. A shaded lamp stood on the table, and cunningly concealed in the ornate base was the dictaphone which he had suspected.

He put his finger to his lips, showed it to Lucia, put his lips close to her ear and whispered what it was. For seconds they gazed at each other, wide-eyed. So the fat man and the blonde woman still suspected him of having the Criswell pearls! This had been a scheme to get them together in supposed privacy. Somewhere, perhaps in the next room, one of them sat with a pair of earphones, listening to every word the Mackeys uttered. Lucia’s face was white. Hugh’s was red with anger. He was beginning to get a little sick and tired of the whole thing, of being pushed around, abused, juggled about by the Fates and a bunch of dumb crooks. Deliberately he went to the lamp, deliberately he raised his voice.

“I’m glad about one thing, honey,” he said, winking at her. “I’m glad you weren’t in the apartment when the Mexican was killed.”

Her eyes were mirrors of horror. “Killed? The Mexican?”

“I opened the closet door,” he went on solemnly, “and the poor guy’s dead body nearly knocked me down. Someone had killed him and stuck him in the closet. I called the police right away, and didn’t want to stay in the apartment with the stiff, so I went on out front. Then that blonde picked me up.”

“And the police are... are at our house?”

“You bet. And the police are plenty smart. They’ll get that fellow identified, they’ll find some clue or other. There never was a killer smart enough to pull a perfect murder. And they’ll find out about that fat man with the glasses, believe me, honey. Just wait and see. We’re not so bad off.”

His voice went on and on. He exulted, threatened, schemed, planned, plotted. And nothing happened.

After twenty minutes he was hoarse. He sat down beside Lucia, put his arm around her shoulders and waited. They talked in whispers, with only an occasional sentence aloud, for the benefit of whoever might be listening. But now Mackey’s heart wasn’t in it. The very childishness of his scheme struck him. How could a lot of bombast frighten hardened criminals like this? Once he went to the door and tried it. It was locked. A few moments afterward he unlocked a window, raised it noiselessly. The shutter was of sheet steel, bolted on the outside. It was hopeless. His shoulders sagged, he ran his great lingers through his hair, his eyes were burning with disappointment. Only Lucia’s comforting hand on his shoulder kept him from mad anger, prevented him from breaking up the furniture, roaring at the top of his mighty voice.

A key clicked in the door. Mackey froze, tensed to spring at whoever entered. Again Lucia’s hand on his arm clawed him back. The door swung slowly open. The blonde woman entered, closed the door and leaned against it. Her face was drained of color, the spots of rouge on her face stood out like red on clownwhite. Her eyes were wide, bright, desperate, and (he right hand that dangled at her side held a gleaming gun. She looked into Mackey’s face, and the words she uttered were a question rather than an accusation.

“You lie, damn you,” she said. “He isn’t dead! He couldn’t be!”

Mackey didn’t answer, though his mouth dropped open. He turned his head, saw the questioning, frightened eyes of Lucia, shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally mumbled.

“The man in your apartment, the Mexican! You say you found him dead.” Now the voice was challenging, the gun came up, pointed directly at Mackey. He was very near death himself, and knew it.

“I’m not lying.” Was that his voice? “The man was dead. I opened the closet door and he fell out into my arms. He had been stabbed twice — in the back.”

The blonde lowered the gun, leaned back against the door and caught her breath convulsively. Her eyes grew feverish, her breasts rose and fell. Her voice was only a whisper. “And his face? He had a white scar on the left cheek?”

Mackey nodded. He was conscious of Lucia trembling against him, knew part of the blonde’s excitement had somehow leaped through space and entered his wife’s body.

The blonde whispered, “Dead! He did that! Jose, dead! Stabbed in the back!” She whirled and was gone before they knew it. They heard her clattering feet in the hallway — then silence.

Side by side they sat there, gripping hands. Mackey pulled his handkerchief, wiped perspiration from his brow. Lucia whispered, “She must have loved him, that Jose! God pity the man that killed him. Did you see her eyes?”

Minutes were eternities for the Mackeys, hopeless, fraught with terror. The first few passed tensely. The strained, waiting for the sound of a shot, the noise of struggle. Nothing happened. There was no clock in the room. They marked time by the rapid beating of their hearts.

Mackey realized one thing, only one thing he was sure of in this whole gruesome mixup. He was knee-deep in murder, and nothing could help him. A man with his record had no chance. No matter which way the pendulum swung, Hugh Mackey was due to go back behind the bars. He pictured the jute mill, the laundry, the machine shop; saw the blank ceiling above his head, heard the mutter of the caged beasts as the lights went out each night. Lucia too must have realized that no matter what happened his days of freedom were numbered. She sat silently beside him, her fingers clutching his as if she could hold him there beside her forever. What chance to explain to police? Even if they got away, who would believe a crazy story like this? Surely not police.

Again that key in the door, the click of the lock, the sudden flood of breathlessness sweeping them both, leaving them tense. Slowly the door swung open. The blonde? With gun in her hand, a tale of murder in her eyes?

It was a man who stepped into the room, the blonde woman behind him.

The man was Mexican. He was young, he was well dressed, his eyes were glowing coals of fire, the lips that pulled away from his white teeth were thin and cruel. Hugh Mackey half rose, in spite of Lucia’s restraining hand.

“You!” That was all he could say.

“You know me, señor, you remember me?”

Mackey gulped, his face white. “Remember you! How can I ever forget you? You’re the one started all this trouble. You’re the guy I hauled to Dallas, the guy that knifed the little detective and got out of the car somewhere. You’re—”

He started to hurl himself forward. The gun in the Mexican’s hand stopped him. The Mexican said, “I am the man that rode to Dallas with you, señor, it is true. I did not kill Fuqua, but I saw Fuqua killed. This game grows bitter. You told my friend” — he nodded his head at the white faced blonde — “a story about a dead man, in the closet of your apartment. A dead man with a scarred left cheek. You will tell me, no?”

Again Mackey repeated the story. And as he told of the knife wounds in the man’s back, the blonde drew close to the Mexican. His left arm went about her shaking shoulders. Tears came from her feverish eyes, trickled unheeded down her cheeks. Mackey finished with a shrug. “That’s all.”

“You were heard to tell your wife that you called the police before you left.”

“I lied. The last thing I’d want would be to be around when the police found a dead man in my apartment. After all that happened in Dallas—” His voice was hopeless.

The Mexican studied him intently for long seconds. Thoughtfully he pushed the blonde away from him, flashed her that thin-lipped, cruel smile. “If he lied once, he will lie again, querida.” He whirled again to Mackey. “You and I are going to your apartment. Your wife is to stay here. If you have lied about this, if we walk into a trap, or if there has been no killing as you claim, Nan will know what to do with your wife.” There was death in his voice, death in the brilliant hard eyes of the woman.

They taped his eyes, they put the glasses on him, but they did not tape his wrists this time. As they left the room, the Mexican said softly, “Forty minutes. Nan. If we are not back in forty minutes, you know what to do.”

Mackey went cold. Should he swing at the man once they got in the car? What chance did he have, blinded like this? They entered the car and Mackey’s tired brain worked feverishly. Perhaps the body hadn’t been discovered. Perhaps it was still there where he had left it. But forty minutes! Why, they couldn’t even drive very far in forty minutes, let alone return! Once he started to protest. The Mexican’s venemous voice cut him short, and he subsided.

Afterward he knew they could hardly have driven ten blocks. The glasses were jerked from his eyes, he winced as the tape took part of his brows. And with a start of surprise he saw they were on University, scarcely two blocks from his own apartment.

Twice they circled the block. There was no sign of police activities, no parked squad cars, no obviously planted spies about. They stopped at the alley, exactly where Hugh Mackey had parked earlier. His car was still there, standing dejectedly against the curb. The Mexican’s left hand grasped his wrist with fingers of steel, his right hand was deep in his coat pocket. Mackey said, “There’s my car.” Subconsciously he took a quick step toward it, but the Mexican snarled something and jerked him back.

But not before Mackey had seen the face that dodged down from the back window. It was a long face, liverish, with a buttonhole mouth. It was the face of Sam Dillon. Dillon had followed him from Dallas.

Mackey’s heart pounded as they went in through the alley. Dillon had the place staked out! Did Dillon know about the corpse, had he searched the apartment, had he told the city police? Perhaps there was a trap laid, even now, in the apartment, coppers with guns to start blasting the moment they stepped in the door. Should he tell the Mexican, warn him? Before he could make up his mind they were through the back door and tiptoeing up the steps. Seconds later they paused before the door to the Mackey apartment. A gun dug into his back.

He inserted his key. If there were cops inside they had him now. There was nothing he could do about it. The door swung open. “Shoot the works, Mackey,” he told himself. “Play it across the board.” He reached around the door and turned on the lights.

The body was sprawled face downward, exactly as he had left it.

With a cry of grief the Mexican brushed past him, dropped on one knee beside the dead man. “Now! Now!” a voice shouted within Mackey. He knew he could go through that door, escape before the Mexican could pick up the gun he had dropped. The Mexican crouched there beside the corpse, his face contorted, Spanish flowing in a torrent from his lips. He reached, turned the dead man, slid his arms beneath him, pulled the stiffened body to his chest.

“Madre de Dios! Mi hermano! Pobrecito!” He kissed the cold cheeks, the cold, blue lips. Tears ran down his face.

“Now! Now!” screamed that voice inside Mackey again. Run away? Into the arms of San Dillon? Where was Dillon, why didn’t he come on, why didn’t he make his pinch? Hell, Mackey couldn’t run away! Not when the blonde with the feverish eyes was holding Lucia. The minutes passed on leaden feet, and still the Mexican gave vent to his grief over the corpse.

Mackey touched his shoulder. “Listen, fellow,” he said, “we got to be back in forty minutes or that blonde will do something to my wife.”

The Mexican rose, his shoulders drooped. He picked up the gun and thrust it in his pocket. “There has been enough killing,” he said. “We must get back.” And it suddenly came to Mackey that at least half of their time was up, that if they were delayed by Sam Dillon the blonde would kill Lucia, do something terrible to her at least.

They went down the way they had come. What should he do? Tell the Mexican that Dillon was hiding in that car? Would there be gunplay? What if the Mex were killed? How would they ever find the house where Lucia was, where they both had been held prisoner?

Out through the back way, into the narrow alley. He had to risk it. He said, “Mister, when we came in I could swear there was a man hiding in the back seat of my car.”

The Mexican stiffened. “A man?”

“A detective from Dallas. Looking for me.”

They trudged on softly. “We cannot be stopped by detectives now, amigo. Walk slowly past your parked car. I will do the rest.”

Mackey’s heart beat a tattoo against his ribs as they neared the mouth of the alley. “Please God,” he prayed, “don’t let the Mex get gunned. I’ve got to get to Lucia. Please God, I’m not so much, maybe I don’t set so well up there, but it ain’t for me I’m asking. This mess is all my fault. She had nothing to do with it. Please God, take care of the Mex, even if he is a killer.”

Then it happened.

They were almost past the sedan when the Mexican leaped. Mackey stopped, paralyzed, heard the tinkle of glass as the Mexican knocked out the window, heard the quick roar of the gun as he fired into the tonneau of the car, once — twice — three times.

The Mexican came running, seized Mackey’s arm, pulled him into their own coupe and stepped on the starter. They whirled down the dark street and turned the corner before the wisp of blue smoke died away entirely from the muzzle of the hot gun in the Mexican’s lap.

“Look,” said Mackey desperately, “look! Did you kill him?”

“There was no one there,” snapped the Mexican, and Mackey’s sigh of relief was ecstatic. He had pictured tall Sam Dillon, sprawled there in the back seat of his car, with three bullet holes letting the life drain from his skinny body. Which, he told himself, would have been something. One corpse in his car, another in his apartment, half a murder rap waiting for him in Dallas and — a thousand years in the pen! No more highways to unroll beneath his wheels, no more fields flashing by, no more blue sky above him, and birds and dogs and cats! Just — the pen.

VII

“Were are going to see Criswell,” said the Mexican. Criswell! The man that owned the pearls in the first place! But what about Lucia, and the hard-eyed, feverish blonde! The Mexican paid no attention to his protests. Should he seize the gun, make the Mex take him back to where Lucia was held captive? The forty minutes were nearly up, he knew.

Before he could make up his wavering, fear-filled mind, the Mexican wheeled the car from the street, ran up a cement drive and stopped. “Out,” he said. “We are arrived.”

Mackey got out. He stepped up from the drive, went across the porch. The Mexican rang the bell, four short rings, and Mackey knew where they were. If this was the Criswell house, it was the same spot where he had been brought, where Lucia was held prisoner! Then, Criswell was—?

The door opened. In the dim hall light Mackey made out the blonde. She whispered, “It was—?”

“It was Jose!” The Mexican’s voice was hard and cruel. “Stabbed — in the back.”

A gasp from the blonde. She stiffened as a voice called, “Nan, if that is Garza and that driver, bring them in. We will settle this now.”

Mackey stepped in, prodded from behind by the gun. He walked straight ahead, through velvet hangings into a library. He, too, gasped, for a fat man was sitting at the table, smiling ponderously, his left hand on the table, his right toying with something in his vest pocket. He smiled at Mackey.

“Know me?”

Mackey nodded. It wasn’t necessary for the fat man to wear the dark glasses. Mackey would know him anywhere in the world. It was the fat man who had sat in the back seat on that madcap trip to Dallas, when Death itself deadheaded, clinging to the trunk behind, his bony finger outstretched to tap the shoulders of the little detective, Preston Fuqua.

“If you’ll sit over there beside your wife,” smiled the fat man, and for the first time Mackey saw Lucia cowering on a leather divan. His legs were stiff as he walked toward her, dropped down beside her.

So, the fat man was Criswell!

Criswell said, “Come in, my dear helpmate, and you, Garza, also. We must settle this thing. And you might as well put your gun away, Garza.”

Garza didn’t put his gun away. He fell into a half crouch, his eyes blazed, his feet made no sound on the thick rug. “You killer,” he spat venomously, “you knifed Jose, my brother! You knifed him in the back. You didn’t give him a chance! Why should I listen to your oily talk? I’m going to shoot you like the dog you are.”

“Wait. Garza. Watch carefully unless you wish to die yourself. Keep your trigger finger steady.”

Fat fingers came out of a vest pocket. Every eye in the room was on that hand. Those fingers bore a small vial, filled with an amber liquid. Slowly, slowly he stretched out his fat arm. He cupped his hand, rolled the small vial back and forth, his eyes on those of the Mexican.

“You know what that is?” he boomed, almost jovially. “Garza, I am a desperate man. I have killed, twice, in the last twenty-four hours. I am willing to kill again, ready to kill. The innocent amber fluid you see in that bottle, my dear Garza, is nitroglycerine. You may shoot me, most certainly. And the bottle will drop!”

The silence that filled the room was thick and heavy. Mackey heard most of all the pounding of his own heart. He heard the quick deep breathing of Lucia. Somewhere a clock ticked off the pregnant seconds. Then Criswell’s laugh broke the tension.

He said, jovially, “So let us talk, Garza, let us go over everything and see just where we stand. Will you lay the gun on the table and sit down — like a gentleman?”

Garza moved like an automaton. The gun made a tiny thump on the table. His eyes protruded, his face was ash-gray. He could not jerk his fascinated gaze from the bottle of nitroglycerine, rolling in the fat man’s palm.

“And you, my dear wife,” purred the voice, “will sit beside friend Garza. Now, that is better.”

Again silence. Tick-tock — tick-tock, went the clock. Mackey felt, in his heart, that none of them would leave that room alive. He knew nitroglycerine, knew there was enough in that small bottle to wreck the house, to blow them all to smithereens.

“Nan, you haven’t fooled me in the past three months, I knew you were having an affair with Jose Garza, this man’s brother.” Nan Criswell looked at her husband sullenly, said nothing. The deep voice purred on, “When I saw how easy it was to get money from the insurance company, it was you who suggested having the Garzas steal your necklace. You even brought your lover in on that, didn’t you?”

“You killed him, you killed him,” she said dully.

He nodded. “I killed him. It was too good an opportunity to overlook. While I was searching this gentleman’s apartment” — he nodded at Mackey — “Jose Garza evidently had the same idea. I heard him picking at the lock. So I simply stepped behind the door and waited. He entered. Ah, said I to myself, it is Lothario, the man who has made a cuckold of me, my wife’s lover! So I stabbed him. Very simple, was it not? And it will be very hard to prove, won’t it?”

Garza snarled, “Just as you killed the detective, Fuqua, the man who had the pearls that would send you to prison!”

“Can you prove that, Garza?”

“I saw you! I’d gotten out of the car and headed for the washroom there at Waco, damn you! You didn’t go to the washroom! You circled the filling station. You came up to the car from the back, and you held a gun on Fuqua. You stabbed him with a knife in your other hand, and you started to go through his clothes. You didn’t know me, you only knew my brother. So I came back to your car and you saw me coming, straightened him up and sat down in the back seat to await your opportunity. In Dallas I saw that it was your wife who had been trailing us in the coupe. I was frightened. I’d come along to keep an eye on Fuqua until he could deliver those stones, and I’d failed. When you got out and your wife picked you up in that coupe, I decided it was no place for me, riding with a dead man, disguised as a pelado, pretending that I couldn’t speak English. The driver stopped at a drug store, and I got out. But you killed Fuqua! They’ll pin that one on you all right, with my testimony!”

“Your testimony,” jeered Criswell. “The testimony of an admitted thief!” He was enjoying himself! He purred, “They may never find this Fuqua!”

The words sprang out before Mackey could prevent them. “The police in Dallas have got the knife,” he cried jubilantly. “It’s covered with prints, and they’ll check with yours, Criswell. And they’ll find the body!”

Criswell laughed again. “How will they ever connect me with it, if there’s no one to tip them off?” Mackey’s heart sank as he grasped the fat man’s meaning. “I think,” went on Criswell, “it is time we brought this farce to an end. The necklace, as you probably know, contained but twenty-four pearls. I have here, sixteen of them, which I found on the detective, Fuqua, loose in his coat pocket.”

He took them from his own pocket, laid them on the table before him. He sighed. “Garza, we made a bargain. If you had kept the bargain all of this would not have happened. The agreement was that you and your brother were to have the pearls and no questions asked. I was to get the insurance. Instead, you got the pearls, tried to blackmail me, and failing to do that, contacted the insurance company.”

Garza swore, half coming to his feet. “You know why we did that! You didn’t play fair! After we took them you thought we wouldn’t have nerve enough to squawk, to— What are you doing?”

Criswell’s jowls quivered with merriment. He held his right hand outstretched, the bottle of nitro clutched but lightly. His left hand grasped Garza’s automatic by the barrel. It flashed upward, the butt descending on one of the sixteen pearls before him. He repeated the blow and the pearl crumpled to dust there on the desk. The next — the next — the next. Thump — thumpety — thump — thump!

Mackey’s eyes bulged. Pearls that crushed to powder! What the hell?

And presently Criswell said, “There lies all that remains of sixteen pearls. No one — not even the insurance company — can prove a thing against Major R. R. Criswell, late of the U.S. Army!” He laughed until his entire body was a quivering mass of flesh, until the bottle of nitro shook and trembled. Every eye in the room watched with horror. Suddenly the laughter died away. His face hardened.

“The farce is over. I am willing to take a chance on the other eight never being found. You, Nan, played your part well! You even took a shot a Fuqua at the Travel Bureau, just as I instructed you to do. You were willing to play along with me to keep the insurance company from finding out. But when I exacted just retribution from your lover, you changed sides. For that, Nan, you are going to die. And you, Garza, because you know too much. Likewise, you, driver, and your very charming wife. It is sad, but it is necessary. It is the only thing left for me to do.”

Over the fat man’s shoulder Mackey saw him. First the curtain moved. Then, an inch at a time it swayed completely aside. He saw Sam Dillon standing there, gun in hand, his liver-mottled face screwed grotesquely with the intensity of his emotions. Behind Dillon he saw the little man in the blue serge suit, the little man he had knocked unconscious and left in a garage in Dallas! Good old Dillon! God bless Blue Serge!

“Do something!” shrieked Mackey inside himself. “Keep Criswell’s attention.”

Step by step Dillon came into the room. His shoes were off, he was in his sock feet.

“Listen to me,” screamed Mackey, leaping to his feet. “I don’t want to die! I’m afraid to die, I tell you! Let me go, Criswell, let me go! I won’t talk! I’ll leave the country! I’ll go any place you say, do anything you say. Only don’t kill me! I’m afraid to die!”

He was blubbering, he was on his knees, and Lucia was watching with horrified eyes. He tried not to look at Dillon, tried to look only at Criswell, to hold his attention with his own frantic gaze. But Nan Criswell saw the man, Garza saw the man. Garza kept his head, he looked away. But the eyes of Nan Criswell followed Dillon’s movements like filings follow a lodestone.

The little bottle of nitro rolled malignantly in Criswell’s hand. He beamed at the cringing Mackey, actually beamed. He beamed around the circle of tense faces, as if inviting them to enjoy the show, and he saw his wife’s white face and protruding eyes, her twisted mouth. He turned his head quickly just as Dillon leaped.

The detective’s long fingers closed on Criswell’s wrist, gripped the fingers shut, closed them over the bottle.

Criswell bellowed, snatched the gun from the table, lashed out at Dillon’s head. Dillon rolled away from it, screamed, “Shoot him, Roberts, shoot him!”

Roberts, the little man in the blue serge suit, raised his gun and shot Major Criswell, retired, through the shoulder.

Thirty minutes later, Major Criswell, still beaming as if entertaining guests, said, “Tsk! Tsk! So they found poor Fuqua. Can you prove I killed him?”

Dillon looked glum. Criswell went on, “Who saw me kill Fuqua? A jewel thief. What good is his testimony? What good are the notes you took down as you hid behind the curtain there? My wife can’t testify against me! I have a good record. I can swear in court that I was egging these people on, to obtain information. As for the knife in Dallas, what if my prints are on it? Certainly, it was my knife. I lost it. It worked its way out of my pocket there in the car. Someone else found it, killed Fuqua with it, Perhaps Garza, the thief! The driver, an ex-convict! What are you going to prove? Crimes are not committed without motive! Those two had motives! But why should I run around murdering Mexicans and cheap private detectives, pray tell?”

Dillon glowered.

“Because you swindled the insurance company, because once we got hold of that necklace we could prove you swindled us!”

Mackey said nothing. There was nothing to say. None of it made sense — to him. He was thinking of Grimm, and Grimm’s blackjack! Fuqua was found!

Garza started to speak. Criswell held up a fat hand. “Garza, if I go down, you go with me, do not forget that. Keep your mouth shut and I will beat these silly accusations. The driver killed Fuqua undoubtedly!”

So Garza subsided. Mackey couldn’t speak for the chattering of his teeth.

Near dawn, from his hotel room, Hugh Mackey called Sam Dillon. “Look,” he complained, “I can’t sleep. I been thinking about this, like you said to do. If you could find those other eight pearls you mean you could pin all this on Criswell? And that lousy cop Grimm couldn’t touch me?”

Dillon said, “I’d have a motive then.”

“What motive? Gee, Mr. Dillon, I don’t understand what all this is about.”

“Don’t try to understand,” sighed Dillon. “But I’ll tell you this, I’d pay five thousand dollars for those eight pearls. Now I got to get some sleep.”

“Look, Mr. Dillon,” said Mackey, “did you say this here Fuqua never drank?”

“He’s worked for us seven years, and he’s always rode the wagon.”

“Then I know where those eight pearls are.”

Outside Waco, three hours later, Mackey made Dillon stop the car. He spoke slowly: “I may be wrong, Mr. Dillon, but I think I’m right. You said something about a reward, but I don’t want no reward. But if I get those pearls for you, will you see I get in no trouble?”

“Absolutely. You’re clean as a whistle anyway if I can prove all this on Criswell. The pearls will establish his motive.”

“Well, I hate to ask you, but you know how coppers are. I’m going to ask you to do two things for me and you got to promise before I make a move. First, I got to have a job. The cops won’t ever let me wildcat any more. And you got to keep that Grimm off me. Gee, I hate cops!”

Dillon nodded. “I’ll give you a job myself, Mackey. What’s the second stipulation?”

Mackey’s eyes grew desperate. He said, “You got to tell me what the hell this is all about!”

Dillon grinned. “You get them pearls, buddie. I promise.”

Mackey got out of the car. Dillon, following him, heard him muttering to himself, saw him eying the cement culvert. He followed him across the ditch, over the barbed wire fence into the cotton field.

“By damn,” said Mackey a moment later, “it didn’t even break.” He stooped and picked up a whiskey bottle. He unscrewed the cap, formed a strainer of his fingers, let the amber liquid trickle through. He shook his hand, flipping the whiskey from it, extended it to Dillon. It held eight pearls. Mackey grinned.

“You kept claiming Fuqua didn’t drink,” he explained, “so I got to wondering. Mr. Criswell found sixteen loose in Fuqua’s pocket, so I figured Mr. Fuqua must have been putting a pearl at a time into his mouth and spitting them into the whiskey. He wasn’t quite finished when he was killed.”

High noon. Hugh Mackey pacing the floor of the hotel room talking to Lucia, whose eyes were big and bright. “And you found the other eight,” she said, awe in her voice. “Ten thousand dollars worth of pearls in a whiskey bottle.”

“Naw,” said Mackey, disgust in his voice, “they was worth about two bucks apiece. They was imitations.”

Lucia looked her bewilderment. “It was like this,” explained Mackey. “Criswell was short of cash. His wife suggested getting the pearls stolen so they could collect the insurance. Criswell made the agreement with the Garza brothers, them to get the pearls, him to get the money. Only he had a string of phonies made and let the Garzas steal them! When he laughed at their squawking they got in touch with the insurance company. The insurance company sent Fuqua down to contact them, and he started back with the fake pearls to see Dillon. Criswell was watching the Garzas, see, and knew Fuqua was an insurance dick. Heck, he couldn’t let those fake pearls get back to Dillon! So he rode in the same car with him, my car, and had his wife trail him in the coupe. It was his wife that took a shot at Fuqua at the travel bureau, too. She was playing both ends against the middle.”

He lit a cigarette. “So we got the whole gang, and they’re all talking against each other now. Dillon only needed the fake pearls to establish a motive for Criswell’s murders.”

Her eyes were filled with admiration. “I don’t see how you figured it all out, honey.”

“Oh” — he thrust out his chest, pointed his face at the ceiling and shot a stream of smoke high into the room — “oh, us detectives get around, babe.”

Silence. “Us detectives?”

“Sure, didn’t I tell you? Dillon gave me a job with International. No more wild-catting, honey. Think of it! Me, copper!”