Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Hugh Pentecost In the Middle of Nowhere

This story opens with the violence of Nature against Man — and closes with the violence of Man against Man... an exciting tale of suspense that might he called a perfect example of “the modern American thriller.”

Rain beat against the windshield of the Imperial so hard it was as if someone were playing a hose on it from the front. The narrow two-lane road was awash, and it sloshed against the bottom of the car in recurring waves. The thin man at the wheel leaned forward, trying to see anything but water in the beam from the headlights.

“Can’t see over ten yards ahead,” he said. “Butt me.”

The plump man sitting beside the driver fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with the dashboard lighter. He passed it on to the driver, who sucked smoke deep down into his lungs.

Police and F.B.I. had records on these two men. The thin driver was Ray Stack, with a long background of larceny and assault. The plump one, with an almost baby face, was Perry McVey, wanted for bank robbery and murder. He was classified as one of the most dangerous wanted criminals in the country.

“I’ve just about had it, Perry,” Ray Stack said. “Couldn’t we pull up for a little bit? The rain’s bound to ease off.”

“Why? It hasn’t eased off for two days, has it? Any rule says it will ease off if we pull up for a few minutes? You been noticing the streams and brooks we’ve been crossing? Water right up to bridge level in most cases. We’re right in the middle of a flood area, kid, and you better pray we get out of it before it closes in on us somewhere. Pull up, my foot!”

“It gets worse as we go along,” Stack said.

“According to the road map we should be crossing the Massachusetts Turnpike in another ten or fifteen miles. After that we’ve got some choices depending on how things look. But we got to stick to this route until we cross the turnpike.”

The car hit a small pond in the middle of the road. The big motor skipped a beat and then purred on.

“Get water in the distributor and we’ve had it, brother!” Stack said. He crushed out his cigarette in the dashboard tray and slid it closed.

Suddenly McVey leaned forward, peering through the swirl of rain on the windshield. “Light up ahead — small, moving light.”

“Looks like someone waving a torch!” Stack said.

The plump man’s lips tightened as he reached for a brief case on the seat beside him. He zipped it open and produced a .45 automatic from its soft leather interior. “Road block!” he said, grimly.

Stack’s hands tightened on the wheel. “We talk our way through?”

“Don’t be a damn fool,” McVey said. “We’re not stopping. Not now. By now we’re probably famous.”

“But, Perry—”

“You sucker!” McVey snarled. “You want to die right here on this stinking country road? Step on it!”

They were almost on top of the waving flashlight. Stack pushed the accelerator to the floor. The big car leaped forward, straight at the frantic torch. For just a moment the headlights picked up the figure of a young man, his mouth opened in a scream. Then the car hit him head on, with all the impact of its three-hundred-odd horsepower.

“Look out!” McVey shouted. “Bridge ahead — covered bridge! Left, Ray! Left!”

There was a screech of rubber as the car swung left and dove into what was a dark tunnel — one of the few remaining covered bridges in New England. For a moment the rain was gone.

“He’s caught under the car!” Stack said in a shaking voice. “We’re dragging him!”

“Keep going!” McVey had swiveled around in the seat and was peering out the back window. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone else.”

The car jounced as though it had hit a bump in the wood floor of the bridge, and then raced on smoothly. Stack wiped sweat from his face with the sleeve of his coat. “We left him there,” he said.

The car burst out of the bridge and into the torrential rain again.

“Pull up!” McVey shouted.

“You crazy?”

“He may not be dead,” McVey said. “Pull up. Give me the flashlight out of the glove compartment.”

“It’s right in front of you.”

Stack had stopped the car. Now he leaned forward, his forehead pressed against the wheel.

McVey, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, climbed out into the rain. Wind tore at him, sent him zigzagging back along the road toward the covered bridge. The car had gone a good fifty yards past it before it had stopped. McVey had retraced about half the distance, flashlight focused on the mouth of the bridge, when it happened. There was a thunderous roar of water, the noise of splintering timbers, and like a child’s toy the covered bridge exploded into a thousand bits and pieces and was swept out of McVey’s sight on a tidal wave of water.

McVey sprinted back along the road toward the car. A tail-flick from the mass of water caught him and sent him somersaulting into the ditch beside the road. He managed to scramble to his feet, spitting out water and mud, and staggered for the car. He literally fell into it.

“Get moving!” he shouted. “It’s a cloudburst, or something!”

The big car jumped forward. “You see him?” Stack asked, his eyes peering straight ahead.

“He’s dead,” McVey panted. “Bridge broke up like matchwood. He’ll be hamburger when they find him. Nobody’ll know what really happened to him. First good break we’ve had in the last twelve hours!”

“You suppose it was a cop trying to stop us?”

McVey wiped muddy water from his face with his handkerchief. “What difference does it make now? We couldn’t take a chance, could we?”

The summer floods of 1955 which turned such Connecticut towns as Winsted, Torrington, and Danbury into national disaster areas, had bypassed the town of Lakeview. On this summer night in 1959 when nightmare floods struck again, Lakeview was prepared for the worst, but again was spared from the heaviest kind of destruction. Power went. Phones went. Cellars filled with water and in some cases cesspools overflowed and carried their filth into the main streets of the town.

But there was no loss of life — or there had been none until the covered bridge at the north-end town line went. When that happened, Lakeview sat dark, water-soaked, and cut off from the outside world. There was no news except that of the flood itself and that news came over the emergency radio channels.

People outside the mainstream of the disaster were being urged to stay put. Travel over state highways was next to impossible. Streams were swollen beyond belief, bridges gone.

“Unless you are in critical danger where you are, stay there! You’ll only add to confusion in harder hit areas by leaving whatever shelter you have! Rain and wind are not expected to subside until sometime late tomorrow. Conditions will grow worse rather than better. Boil your water. I repeat — boil your water. Do not use water for any purpose whatever without first boiling it. Repeat — do not risk highway travel. Streams have altered their courses. The Governor has declared a state of emergency, but intelligent instructions will not be possible until a survey by air can be made in tomorrow’s daylight.”

Lakeview was dark, water-soaked, isolated — but without panic. Household radios were useless, but they got the emergency bulletins over car radios. The small civilian defense unit had acted efficiently. A few sick people had been moved to places of greater safety. Stores of food had been taken from the two local grocery stores to the school, which was on high ground.

The town’s three doctors had set up a headquarters in the school. As long as daylight had lasted most of the able-bodied men had been helping to herd the dairy cattle from outlying farms, where flood conditions would do the most damage, to high pasture lands nearer the center of the community. Dairy farming was the main business of Lakeview — that and a few fancy black Angus beef farms.

Red Egan, the sheriff, and a group of hastily sworn-in deputies, had gone from house to house with emergency instructions, since telephones and regular radios were out. But most country people own cars and had already heard over the car radios what they should do. They were surprisingly good-humored. Anxiety was mostly for friends and relatives in neighboring towns. Lakeview was proud of itself. They had planned four years ago just what to do if floods came again, and now they had carried out those plans without hysteria or confusion. They would wait till daylight to find out just how bad things were.

At close to midnight the only signs of life were in the very center of the business block on Main Street. The sheriff had parked six cars across Main Street, three facing north and three facing south, rear bumpers to rear bumpers, in a sort of road block. The cars had their parking lights on, but a deputy was stationed in each one, ready to switch on full lights if a car came toward them.

Right next to this blockade of cars was Hector Trimble’s drug store. Hector Trimble was a respected and trusted man and a first-rate pharmacist. He kept a modem store and did a good business. But someone had once said that Hector was the kind of pessimist who wore both suspenders and a belt. Suddenly in the flood it had paid off. He had an emergency set for sterilizing and cooking with bottled gas, so that when the power failed he could still make coffee, still sterilize his tubes and retorts, and there were even emergency gas lights in the store.

Things were suddenly wanted and it turned out that Hector had an extra supply — “just in case.” Hectors twelve-year-old boy Joey ran his legs off carrying messages for the sheriff. Hector’s wife, the former Esther Crowder, had — “just in case” — taken a course in practical nursing and was helping the three doctors with patients who would have been removed to the hospital if there had been any way to get them there.

And there was Uncle George Crowder.

George Crowder was a character, even by country standards. He came from one of the oldest and best families in town. He had started out in life like a ball of fire, gone to the State University, graduated with honors from law school, and had quickly become the County Attorney. People said in those days that George Crowder would most likely find himself in the Governor’s mansion some day. It never came about for a special reason. George Crowder had prosecuted a murder case in the county, got his conviction, and sent the victim to the chair. Then a year later a confession and corroborative evidence proved the executed man had been innocent.

The next day George Crowder closed his law office and disappeared from Lakeview. When he came back, twenty years later, he was a changed man. Some said he’d drunk his way through his money and had to come back to be supported by his sister, Hector Trimble’s wife.

At any rate, he built himself a little shade in the woods a couple of miles from town. He lived there alone with his setter dog, Timmy. In his mid-fifties he was tough as rawhide, had a keen, dry wit, was one of the best woodsmen the town had ever known and certainly Lakeview’s best shot with a rifle or shotgun. Uncle George, however, was a sort of cross Hector Trimble had to bear. He was, by Hector’s rules, a shiftless do-nothing and a very bad influence on young Joey, who idolized his uncle, and spent every free hour he had with the old man and his dog in the woods.

On the night of the flood, with midnight closing in, Hector Trimble and Joey and Uncle George were in the drug store with Janet Graves, the eighth-grade schoolteacher who helped out in the store during the busy summer months. They were having coffee — all except Joey, who was sucking a Coke through a double straw. If there was any one person who threatened Joey’s undivided loyalty to Uncle George, it was Janet Graves. This was Joey’s first serious affair of the heart. “And showing mighty good taste very early in the parade,” Uncle George told his sister. “If I was a few years younger—”

Just before midnight, headlights appeared at the north end of Main Street, fuzzy-bright in the rain. No one would be out traveling this time of night unless it was an emergency. Uncle George slid off his stool at the counter and buttoned his oilskin up around his neck. Joey, automatically prepared to follow, glanced at Janet Graves. She smiled at him, a smile as warm as the red color of her hair. Strange lumps bobbed up and down in Joey’s stomach. They made him too weak to go with Uncle George.

As the headlights appeared at the far end of the street, the three care Sheriff Egan had facing north turned on their lights full.

You couldn’t run through or over that kind of block, so the big Imperial slowed down and came to a stop. Sheriff Egan went around to the driver’s side. He looked at the tense, white face of Ray Stack at the wheel and the pudgy smiling face of Perry McVey, who seemed to be reaching into a leather brief case for something.

“You’re strangers!” Red Egan said, as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Yes,” Ray Stack said. “Headed for New York — and in a great hurry, if you don’t mind.”

The sheriff gave him a friendly grin. “I don’t mind, Mister, but it ain’t goin’ to make much difference one way or another. No way for you to get there. Not tonight — not for the next day or two, maybe. What’s itchin’ me is how you got here in the first place. No way to get out, no way to get in.”

“We came along Route 21,” McVey said.

“Across the covered bridge?” Egan asked.

“Yes.”

“I’d of sworn it was gone by now,” Egan said. “And I’ve sworn it wouldn’t have taken that car of yours for the last five-six hours. Didn’t our man stop you?”

“You mean the fellow with the flashlight?” Stack asked.

The light from the car dashboard was too dim for Egan to notice the murderous glint in McVey’s small eyes as his head swiveled toward his partner.

“Yes, he stopped us,” McVey said quickly. “But we decided to risk it. I’m afraid we got bad news about your man, though. Just after we got across the bridge the whole thing went, and your guy was right at the mouth of the bridge. Like a tidal wave — took him and the bridge, and damn near took us, fifty yards away!”

A nerve twitched in Egan’s cheek. “It’s a miracle you got across. But now you’re here, Mister, you’re here to stay. No way in God’s world to get out.” He turned toward the man with the deeply lined face who had come up beside him. “Russ Toomey’s gone, George,” he said. “Washed away with the bridge.”

“I heard,” Uncle George Crowder said, pain in his pale blue eyes. He peered in the car at Stack and McVey. “You’re dead sure he went with the bridge?”

“Saw it with my own eyes,” McVey said. “He’s a goner, all right. Tossed him fifty feet in the air. Tough luck.”

“Somebody’ll have to tell his old lady,” Uncle George said. “It’s gonna cut Joey up pretty bad, too. He and Russ were good friends.”

“You fellows better go in the drug store and have a cup of hot coffee,” Egan said.

“We’ve got to get on,” McVey said.

“I wouldn’t kid you, Mister. You can’t That old covered bridge was the last way in or out, and we wrote that off hours ago. That’s why we sent Russ out there. You’re just dog lucky you got across, Mister. Now you pull up to the curb there and have yourself a cup of coffee. Hec Trimble’s got a radio in there and you can hear the emergency reports yourself. There’s no traveling in this neck of the woods — not till morning when they’ve seen what they’re up against and put some emergency crews to work.”

McVey and Stack stared at each other. “I guess a cup of coffee would taste good,” McVey said.

They pulled the Imperial over to the curb and got out, McVey carrying his brief case, the flap unzipped.

“In here’s the coffee,” Uncle George said, leading the way into the drug store.

Hector was back of the counter with Janet Graves. She was washing some coffee cups. Young Joey, sitting on the stool at the front end of the counter, turned around to see what was what.

“These gentlemen are the last ones in or out,” Uncle George said. “Covered bridge is gone — they saw it go.” He put a strong brown hand gently on Joey’s shoulder. “And they got bad news.”

“Coffee, gentlemen?” Hector asked in his crisp voice.

“Yeah, thanks,” Stack said. He looked at Janet Graves and moistened his lips.

“Bad news, Mr. Crowder?” Janet asked.

The brown hand moved around Joey’s shoulder. “Russ Toomey went with the bridge,” he said. “He warned these gentlemen off and they decided to risk it anyway. Right afterwards the bridge went — and Russ with it.”

Tears welled up into Joey Trimble’s eyes. “Poor Russ,” he said in a small voice. “But... but he was doin’ his job. He’d have liked it that way.” Joey struggled with his tears.

“This Toomey boy was a great friend of Joey’s,” Janet said in a gentle explanation to McVey. “He was maybe twenty years old, but he and Joey were real close.”

“Well, you can be proud of him, son,” McVey said to Joey with an air of kindliness. “Like you say, he did his job. He stopped us. He warned us about the bridge. We said we’d try it. He argued with us and argued with us, but we went ahead anyway. Then, right after that — pow! The whole works went.”

Joey turned quickly to McVey. “He argued with you?”

McVey nodded. “Told us over and over the bridge wouldn’t hold us, but we had to risk it. Had to get to New York. Still do.”

Joey’s eyes were very bright. “Then it couldn’t have been Russ!” he cried.

“Of course it was Russ,” Hector said. “Russ is the one Egan sent to the covered bridge. Everyone else is accounted for.”

“But it couldn’t have been Russ!” Joey protested. “Don’t you see—?”

“Joey!” Uncle George said sharply. His pale eyes were suddenly as cold as two newly minted dimes.

“But it couldn’t have been Russ!” Joey persisted. He smiled happily at McVey. “Russ couldn’t have argued with you, Mister, because he’s deaf and dumb!”

There was a deathly silence in the little store. McVey’s pudgy hand reached for the brief case he’d put down on the stool beside him. Joey, sensing something wrong, still couldn’t stop the flow of his relief.

“So it couldn’t have been Russ!” he explained again.

Uncle George turned slowly away toward the door.

“Hold it a minute, Pop,” McVey said in a new voice, a hard, cold voice. He’d taken the .45 from the brief case. He didn’t point it at Uncle George. The round, chill barrel was pressed against Joey’s head just above the left ear. “Before anyone goes anywhere let’s just get the facts straightened out here, shall we?”

Hector Trimble stared at his young son, McVey’s .45 held against his head; at McVey, whose round chubby face was suddenly a mask of smiling evil; at Ray Stack, who had moved around and taken a second gun out of the open brief case; at Uncle George Crowder, who stood by the door, tall, gray-faced, and motionless as a statue; and at Janet Graves, her pallor accentuated by the dark red halo of her hair.

Hector exploded. “What kind of melodramatic nonsense is this?” he demanded. “Put away those silly guns. We’re all too tired after what’s happened today to—”

“Just stand still, Dad,” McVey said with a smile that made Hector feel queazy, “and have a rag ready to mop up this kid’s brains off the counter in case anybody moves until I say so.”

“You were sore because I just mentioned the guy with a flashlight!” Ray Stack said in a cracked-sounding voice. “Then you have to go invent a whole story about an argument when it turns out the guy can’t even talk!”

“Shut up,” McVey said. He nodded his head toward the radio on the counter. “That thing work?”

Hector moistened his lips. “It’s a battery set I keep — just in case—” he said.

“You can get news about the flood on it?”

“Only thing you c-can get,” Hector said. “Conelrad station. All the network programs are off.”

“Tune it in.” McVey’s piglike eyes darted toward Janet. “Just keep your hands up on top of the counter where I can see ’em, sister. Ray, have a look around back of the counters. Sometimes in a hick store like this they keep a gun in back. Might be a holdup or something.” He gave Hector a wider smile. “And you lock up, Dad. I don’t want anyone coming in here to pass the time of day while we talk.”

“But I promised the sheriff I’d—”

“Un-promise him — and quick!” McVey said.

Uncle George’s voice broke in sharply. “Don’t move, Joey!” He’d seen something on the boy’s face that warned him Joey was thinking in terms of romantic heroism.

“Now there is a guy knows the time of day,” McVey said. “You do like he said, boy. Don’t move! You! I said turn on the radio.”

There was a sputtering noise as the battery set warmed up.

“—Change until late tomorrow morning. High water levels have probably not been reached as yet. Again authorities warn against any attempt at highway travel. It is not simply that it is dangerous, but there is probably not a bridge left in the northwest corner of the state. If you are safe where you are, sit tight. Boil your water. Repeat — boil your water. In the Hartford area—”

McVey reached forward with his left hand and cut off the machine. “Aren’t they reporting any other kind of news?”

“You mean like an account of your particular crime?” Uncle George asked in a flat voice.

“You’re a pretty wise old fossil,” McVey said.

“My Uncle George isn’t an old fossil!” Joey said in a shaky voice. “He’s the best lawyer in the State, and he’ll—”

“Lawyer, eh?” McVey said. “Well, explain to them, Uncle, that you go to the chair for one killing, so it don’t matter how many more you add to it.”

“What did you do, run Russ Toomey down?” Uncle George asked. “Think he was a police road block or something?”

“A real wise old fossil,” McVey said. “So now get practical, Uncle. There has to be some way out of this godforsaken burg and one of you here better know it. If we can’t get out by car there has to be a way to walk out If that’s the way it is Ray and me are going to walk out, see — with the kid! Because we don’t want you two characters or the doll here to be doing any talking. So we take the boy, and maybe, if we get away, we send him back.”

“You can’t take Joey!” Hector said. “That’d be kidnaping.”

“You amaze me,” McVey said. “What about it, Ray?”

“No gun,” Stack said — he had finished his behind-the-counter search.

“Now let’s talk very rapid turkey,” McVey said. “How do we get away from this town?”

“Lakeview is in a valley between two ranges of hills,” Uncle George said. “You came in one end of it. You know there’s no way out there. The other end is worse — river winds in and out across the highway. Right now the whole south end of the valley is a lake. Unless you’re a first-class channel swimmer—”

“Never mind the comedy,” McVey said. “So we can’t go out either end. So we walk out over one of the ranges of hills.”

Uncle George snorted. “In this kind of a rainstorm and in pitch darkness?”

“If someone smart showed us the way,” McVey said.

“I bet even Uncle George couldn’t take you out on a night like this,” Joey said, holding his head quite still, “and he knows the woods better’n anyone in Lakeview!”

A dry smile twisted Uncle George’s face. “Don’t you figure you’ve done just about enough talking for one night, Joey?”

McVey chuckled. “Helpful kid. So Uncle George is the top guy in the woods around here. So you take us out along with the kid, Uncle George. And we start now, quick, before someone gets thirsty for a cup of coffee and we really have to get rough.”

Janet Graves turned to Uncle George. “You can’t let them do this, Mr. Crowder. You can’t help them to do it.”

Uncle George turned his cold blue eyes to the schoolteacher. “I’ve come across a few genuine killers in my time, Janet,” he said. “I’ve seen a rattlesnake coiled to strike. I’ve seen a wildcat crouched to spring off a rock ledge over my head. There’s times when you move against ’em, and times when you don’t. I’m afraid I think our fat friend here means business. Unfortunately, he’s got his gun on Joey and not on me. I wouldn’t mind taking a slug or two to bring Red and the boys in from outside. But not Joey or you or Hector.” He turned back to McVey. “I’m going to tell you the truth,” he said.

“Make it snappy,” McVey said.

“I’m not sure I can take you out. Streams coming down the mountain may have cut off trails. And one thing is certain. We wouldn’t have a chance without showing a light or two. And lights moving in the woods will bring the sheriff and some of his deputies to see what’s wrong.”

“Fix it so they don’t,” McVey said.

“How?”

“Tell them we’ve offered to pay you well to take us out.”

“And how do I explain taking Joey along?” Uncle George asked.

McVey grinned. “For the adventure of it!” he said. “Boys are strong for adventure, aren’t they, Joey?” The smile went out like a blown light bulb. “And right now, Uncle,” he said. “Every minute we wait somebody’s going to come in here and knock things end-wise.”

Uncle George sighed. He was flexing his fingers nervously. “We’ll need some pure water in your camp canteen, Joey. Maybe Miss Graves’ll make a few sandwiches. We won’t get out the other side till tomorrow afternoon, even if we don’t have any trouble.”

“I’ll get my camping kit out of my room,” Joey said.

“You’ll sit right where you are, Joey,” McVey said. “Let the tootsie get the stuff. You, Ray. You go out with Uncle George while he breaks the news to the sheriff.”

“We’ll need extra flashlights,” Uncle George said. “You got some in stock, haven’t you, Hector?”

Hector nodded, dumbly, eyes on his son — and on the .45 held so close to the boy’s head.

“I’m giving you just five minutes, Uncle, to clear things with the sheriff. Then I’ll know you’ve made a wrong move and little Joey gets it. Clear?”

“Clear,” Uncle George said. He looked at the boy and spoke gently, but his hands were still nervous. “You keep your mouth shut, Joey. Don’t say a word — not a word. I’ll be back inside the five minutes.”

“Leave your gun here, Ray,” McVey said. “I’ll hold ’em both. Don’t want anyone bumping into you or suspecting anything. And keep one thing clear in your head, Uncle. I won’t do anything to try to help Ray or myself without first pulling the trigger on this kid. Clear?”

“Clear,” Uncle George said.

He turned and walked out the door, Stack at his elbow. The street was dark except for the parking lights of the cars that Egan had parked across the road. It was noisy outside, wind roaring down the narrow street, and behind it the distant thunder of angry waters.

When Uncle George rapped on the window of the first parked car, Egan rolled down the glass and looked out.

“These two gents are real anxious to be on the move,” Uncle George said casually. “They got a big deal on in New York. They’ve offered me quite a nice hunk of change if I’d guide ’em out over the west ridge into New York State.”

Red stared at Uncle George as though he was crazy. “Over the west ridge—?”

“We might make it,” Uncle George said. His voice was outwardly calm but his hands, still working, seemed to show his inner anxiety. “Over on the other side things might be so they could get to the railway. We can’t do worse than get lost for a while. I figure if we go south down the road a piece till we come to where Hyland Brook has overflowed we could follow the stream up past the Devil’s Slide to its source. That’d bring us pretty near the top of the Ridge. Be daylight by then and we shouldn’t have any trouble getting down into New York State on the other side.”

“Sounds crazy,” Sheriff Egan said.

“Well, Joey and me are going to try it anyway. Didn’t want you worrying if you saw lights moving around up in the woods.”

“Joey!” Egan cried. “You’re taking the kid!”

“Shucks, he’ll get a kick out of it,” Uncle George said. “Chance to use that new camp kit you gave him.”

The sheriff opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. “I think you’re all crazy!” he said. “I expect we’ll see you all trekkin’ back here by daylight for some grub.”

“Like to get the gentlemen’s car out so we can head south toward Hyland Brook,” Uncle George said.

“Yeah,” Egan said. “Sure.”

Uncle George turned and walked back into the store, Stack still a half step behind him.

“All smooth as pie,” Stack told McVey.

“We’ll go south in your car as far as we can,” Uncle George said to McVey. He looked at the counter where Joey’s canteen and a camp roll lay. Janet Graves, her eyes wide as saucers, said there were some sandwiches in the roll.

“I want a piece of rope or clothesline,” McVey said. “The boy’ll walk right alongside me to the car. But once we start climbing — well, we’ll tie an end of rope around him and the other end around me. Like mountain climbers, eh, Joey? And if you try any tricks I’ll just yank you back to me and blow your brains out Clear?”

Hector Trimble, his face the color of ashes, gripped the edge of the counter for support.

“Please! Please don’t hurt the boy!” he whispered.

McVey gave him an almost angelic smile. “Entirely up to Uncle George, Dad. Entirely up to him,” he said.

Hector told Janet Graves to get a roll of clothesline — they sell everything in drug stores nowadays. Uncle George picked up the camp roll and slipped his arms through the straps so that he carried it on his shoulders like a knapsack. He handed the water canteen to Stack.

“You better carry this, Mister,” he said, “and carry it real good. We may need it bad before we’re through.”

McVey took the coil of clothesline Janet brought and slipped it into the brief case. “One last word before we go,” he said. “For you, Dad, and Miss Janet here. You may get the idea of running out and telling the sheriff the whole story once we’re gone. I advise against it. Because I’m telling you, Dad. We see any signs of being followed, or we suddenly walk into anything looks like a trap, and we take care of Junior before we bother to ask any questions. Clear?”

“Clear,” Uncle George said — it was a word he was forced to keep repeating. He stood by the door, his face like stone but his hands moving restlessly as though he were now impatient to be off. Janet Graves stared at him, disbelief in her wide eyes.

McVey took Joey by the shoulder and gave him a little shove toward Ray Stack. “You walk along with Ray, Junior. You and Uncle’ll ride in front with him. I’ll walk right behind you to the car, and I’ll sit in the back seat behind the two of you, and all the time this gun’ll be aimed right at the back of your head. Now — march!”

Joey gave Hector and Janet a confident little smile, and then he went out into the night with the two men and Uncle George. The big Imperial had been moved through the blockade of cars and was headed south. Sheriff Egan stood by the driver’s side, rain lashing against his leathery face. He squinted at Uncle George.

“You still figure on going south to Hyland Brook and over the west ridge into New York State?” he asked.

“You got a better idea?” Uncle George asked.

“Nope,” Egan said laconically. “I still think you’re all nuts. You won’t be able to follow any trail in the dark, George. Trees down, brooks runnin’ out of their courses. You’re just wastin’ time to start before daylight.”

“The gain of an hour or two might mean everything to our business deal,” McVey said pleasantly. He stood close to Joey. “I understand Mr. Crowder knows these woods inside out.”

“He’s the best,” the sheriff said. “But sometimes even the best can’t do the impossible.”

“I think we ought to get started,” McVey said with an apologetic smile.

Stack got in behind the wheel. Joey, Uncle George, and McVey walked around to the other side of the car. The old man and the boy got in front and McVey climbed into the rear seat The doors were closed. The motor hummed.

“Good luck!” Egan called out above the noise of the storm.

“So far so good,” McVey said, looking out the rear window. “You played that nice and casual, Uncle.”

Uncle George sat wedged in a corner of the seat, his gnarled fingers clenching and unclenching in his lap. In the faint light from the instrument panel Joey stared at his uncle, as though hoping for some magic trick to emerge from behind the scowling forehead.

“You may not be able to go more’n a mile or so down this road before we hit pretty deep water,” Uncle George said. “But I figured all the walking we could save—” His voice faded off.

A few moments later the car slowed down. “Looks like a lake up ahead,” Stack said, peering ahead through the space in the windshield cut by the lashing wiper blade.

“I guess this is about it,” Uncle George said. “That’ll be the overflow of Hyland Brook. Better pull up over to the side here, Mister.”

The car stopped. McVey’s orders were precise. He and Joey and Uncle George would move out and stand in front of the car in the headlight glow. Stack would keep them covered while McVey tied the clothesline to Joey and himself.

Presently, each of them equipped with a flashlight, they started off across a muddy field, following the side of the flooded brook. Uncle George led the way, with Joey behind him. The imprisoning rope trailed back to where it was lashed around McVey’s pudgy midsection. Stack brought up the rear.

The violence of Nature against Man in these periodic eruptions is terrifying and costly beyond an accountant’s ability to totalize. But Man, hiding in the securest place he can find, is seldom a witness to the awful damage that Nature inflicts upon herself in these moments of convulsion. Three men and a boy struggled slowly up the first gradual rise of the west ridge, and they saw trees uprooted, boulders laid bare, great jagged ditches dug in the earth by angry waters.

With only the flashlights to see by, they came suddenly to an impasse and had to scout blindly, through the wind and rain-swept darkness, for a way around. They fell, scrambled up, fell again — the drive for escape still strong in McVey and Stack. Uncle George, like a gaunt, bent tree, moved steadily and slowly, always up. Occasionally he would reach back to help Joey.

The noise of the storm seemed to grow louder. McVey yanked on the rope and signaled Joey that he wanted to talk to Uncle George. The four of them huddled together. McVey had Joey by the arm, the gun held firmly against his ribs.

“Sounds like a waterfall!” he shouted at Uncle George.

The older man nodded. “Called the Devil’s Slide. We want to stay as close to the edge of the stream as we can here. Otherwise we’ll have to take a big circle around. Cost us a lot of time. Once we get above the falls the going should be easier. But stay right behind me. You don’t want to lose your footing in this next bit.” He looked down at Joey. “Getting tired, old timer?”

“I’m fine,” Joey said, a little breathless.

They started up again. The stream to their left was an angry torrent, and straight ahead of them the water thundered over the Devil’s Slide. The climb was steep now. McVey kept turning his flashlight from the boy to Uncle George ahead of him.

They were halfway up the side of the foam-lashed falls when Uncle George seemed to lose his footing. Even over the noise of wind and water they could hear him shout. He staggered to the left, arms flung out to save himself, then pitched headfirst into the boiling falls.

McVey, gasping for breath, scrambled up beside Joey, who crouched on the edge of the falls, shining his flashlight down into the murderous water, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Uncle George! Uncle George!”

The two men were silent, shaken by the suddenness of it. Stack turned his flash around. “We better move,” he said, licking his lips. “You can see where the bank’s undermined here in spots. It gave way with the old guy right here.”

“Come on, let’s get away from the edge,” McVey said. He yanked on the rope that was attached to Joey, pulling the dazed boy away from the falls.

“We gotta try to find him!” Joey wailed.

“You crazy?” Stack said. “Nobody could live through that. He’s already pounded to death on the rocks.” He looked at McVey. “So now what?”

McVey shone his flashlight on Joey’s white, fear-struck face. “It looks like it’s up to you, Junior,” he said grimly. “You know these woods, don’t you? Been out here with the old boy before, haven’t you?”

Joey nodded, as though he only half heard.

“Your uncle said there was a way around the falls. Longer, he said, but it’s probably a damn sight safer. You know the way?”

“There’s an old logging road,” Joey said. “I... I think I could find it from here.”

“You better,” McVey growled. “I’m warning you, sonny-boy, you try to pull one on us and I go back after your old man and your old woman, and that pretty teacher—”

“I... I think I can find it,” Joey said in a shaken voice.

“So... get started!”

For half an hour they floundered around in brush and fallen tree limbs. Suddenly Joey turned, pointing with his flashlight. “Old logging road. You can see it,” he said to McVey.

They moved with greater ease now. The road was rough, but there was no obstacle of undergrowth.

“Even if it is longer we can move faster,” McVey said to Stack. He gave a little jerk on the rope and gestured to Joey to speed it up.

And then things happened so suddenly that McVey had no chance to act.

Directly in front of them the headlights of a car sprang into light. At the same instant Joey plunged forward, flat on his face. McVey had only a fleeting glimpse of the figure that stepped into the beam of light ahead of them — the dripping figure of Uncle George. He had raised a rifle to his shoulder and quite methodically he pulled the trigger. McVey’s body jerked upward like a marionette on strings, then pitched sideways into the darkness. There was a round black hole in the center of his forehead.

Uncle George turned the gun slightly to the left.

“No!” Stack screamed. “Don’t shoot!” He swung his arm and threw the .45 he was carrying into the underbrush. “Don’t shoot!”

“Hold it, George!” another voice said. “We need him to do some talking.” Sheriff Egan stepped forward into the light, a shotgun cradled in his arm. “You hold dead still, brother, unless you want a double load in your gut!”

Uncle George took three quick steps to the fallen boy and knelt beside him, cradling him in his arms.

“You did fine, boy,” he said unsteadily. “You did just fine!”

It was all Joey could do to keep awake. His mother had given him two aspirins and a cup of hot tea. He was wrapped in blankets, and the heat from the kitchen range made him so drowsy that he felt his head drooping and he had to fight to listen.

Joey’s mother and father, and Uncle George, and Sheriff Egan and the lovely Miss Graves were all there. They had all made a great fuss over Joey. Miss Graves had actually kissed him. His mother kept telling him he ought to get to bed, but she smiled at him gently and didn’t press the point.

“These guys knocked over a diamont merchant in Montreal,” the sheriff was saying. “Killed him and got away with about a half a million dollars in stones. Had ’em in that brief case all the time! They figured they could drive away at night — and ran right into the flood. When they saw Russ Toomey waving his torch at ’em they thought it was a police road block and they deliberately ran him down.”

“I still don’t understand the rest of it, Mr. Egan,” Esther Trimble said. “How did you know to go to George’s shack in the woods? And how did Joey know what to do?”

“It’s George’s story,” Egan said.

Uncle George chuckled, and his pale blue eyes moved affectionately to Joey, who smiled back sleepily. “Fellow with a gun always figures he’s stronger than the fellow he’s covering,” Uncle George said. “And he usually thinks he knows more than the poor sucker who’s looking into his gun barrel. That was McVey. He fell into a trap when he made that up about arguing with Russ Toomey, but he was still top man — the smartest guy on earth. We didn’t have any choice, it seemed, but to do just what he said — not with that gun pointed at Joey’s head! But we weren’t entirely licked.”

“I’ll say!” Red Egan chuckled. He was sitting next to Janet Graves and Joey guessed she must be too interested in the story to notice that the sheriff’s hand was resting against hers.

“I tipped Red off right away there was trouble,” Uncle George said. “Told him I was heading ‘south to Hyland Brook.’ Hyland Brook is north of here in the next county! I told him I was going to take these fellows over the west ridge into New York State. Red knew as well as I did that if we went over the west ridge we’d wind up in Massachusetts. Told him we were taking a camp kit he’d given Joey — which he never gave him. Mistake after mistake that the two strangers couldn’t suspect — so Red knew there was trouble, and he also knew enough to let me play in my way!”

“Always let you play it your way, George.”

“Then I told Miss Graves here to tell Red to meet me at my shack in the woods and stay under cover till he heard from me.”

“How could you tell her?” Hector interrupted. “You were never out of McVey’s sight — or the other fellow’s.”

“There were three people in this town who made friends with Russ Toomey,” Uncle George said. “There was Joey, first and best, and me, and Miss Graves, who tried to teach the poor deaf and dumb boy a little on the side. So we learned to talk his way — with our hands! I stood at the door with McVey staring right at me and told Miss Graves with my hands what to tell Red. And then in the car I told Joey what was up — the same way. You remember the Devil’s Slide, Esther — when we were kids? Water comes over the falls — overhang up top. At the bottom there’s a pool hid right behind the water coming over the falls. I told Joey I was going to dive in there. They wouldn’t be able to see me through the overflow — not in the dark with only flashlights. Then Joey was to stall a while and finally lead ’em along the logging road to my shack.”

“You were taking a pretty big gamble with Joey’s life,” Hector Trimble sputtered.

Uncle George’s face was grave. “Yes, I was, Hector. But don’t think for a minute McVey was going to let us go after we’d served his purpose. He’d have left us both in the woods — dead. Had to take a chance. So while Joey was leading ’em around in the woods I lit out for the shack. Red was there, and we parked his Jeep heading straight up the road. I’d told Joey the minute the headlights came on he was to dive flat on his face.”

“You told him that — with your hands?” Esther Trimble said.

“Right in the car — right in front of Stack. You might say Russ Toomey brought his own killers to justice,” Uncle George said.

“But weren’t you scared, Joey?” Esther asked. “Weren’t you scared maybe George hadn’t made it back from the falls? Joey?”

Uncle George looked tenderly at the boy. “I guess we could all do with a little sleep,” he said.