Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 68, July 1949

The trail of the brown sedan by MacKinlay Kantor[1]

MacKinlay Kantor chose “The Trail of the Brown Sedan” for inclusion in his fascinating AUTHOR’S CHOICE, and here is what Mr. Kantor himself wrote about the story:

“This was one of the last stories I did for Howard Bloomfield of Detective Fiction Weekly, and it was written in July, 1933, while I was working on long remember. My cops-and-robbers tales sprang out of the old Chicago days. Every young writer who has ever been a newspaper reporter, or who has lived for a time on the fringe of the underworld, can contrive countless stories of this sort. I think ‘The Trail of the Brown Sedan’ has a kind of sharpness and pungency not always found in pulp magazine material; it is the best of a series of stories which I wrote about the fictitious Glennan brothers.”

We do not mean to take issue with MacKinlay Kantor, but we can’t help wondering. Is it really true that every young writer, with the experience and background which Mr. Kantor specifies, can contrive countless stories life “The Trail of the Brown Sedan”? In all honesty, we doubt it. The word “countless” implies mass production, and mass production is admittedly not the safest or surest pathway to quality. True, many of our most prolific writers have often produced gems of the finest cut and clarity, but these were the coalescences of infrequent though inspired moments. Mass production generally means a sloppy and slovenly style, and plots patched together from outworn formulas. And note too the verb which Mr. Kantor instinctively used: “can contrive countless stories”; if these numberless yarns, so easy to produce, clearly show evidence of having been “contrived,” then they will not rise above an inferior grade of “pulp magazine material” and will not achieve future reprint.

No, the simple truth is that MacKinlay Kantor’s best stories, out of his salad days, are at least a little better than he thinks, and that stories which, fifteen years later, are a little better than one thinks are not hacked out by the ream or plucked off an assembly line. It just isn’t that easy!

The last recorded words of Sergeant Paul Van Wert, spoken about a minute and a half before he died, were directed at First-class Patrolman Nicholas Glennan, who opened the door for the three detectives and their manacled prisoner.

“Looks like more Indian summer,” said Sergeant Van Wert.

“Another good day,” nodded Nick Glennan, and pushed on the bronze cross-bar which served as handle for the narrow panel. When you’re convoying a tough guy like Rainy Moper out of a railroad station you don’t use the revolving door. No, you use the regular door — Detective Johnson goes ahead, and the tough guy follows along, locked tight to Detective Cohen’s wrist. You, Sergeant Van Wert, bring up the rear. You nod to the cop on station duty and say something about the weather. He opens the door for you, and you all go outside and get killed.

Said the News-Detail, in its second extra published about an hour and fifteen minutes later: “The three detectives were jubilant, for Rainy Moper, murderer, mail bandit, and extortionist, had fought a hard battle against extradition. Their arrival at the Union Terminal was unheralded. They stepped from the Pullman, brushed through the first crowds of office-bound commuters, and hustled their prisoner out of the station.”

Said the News-Detail, in its special copyrighted story which went ticking over twenty wires: “Officer Nicholas Glennan, hero of the raid which wiped out the American Packing Company payroll bandits last March, was on station duty. He spoke to his fellow officers and opened the door for them, then started back toward the lower station level.”

Said Antonio Bambasino, proprietor of the Union Terminal Smoke Shop: “I was just looking out the window when those men come out with him. They is a blue touring car parked close, with another man he sit at the wheel. One detective he get in front. Those two more start to get in back with the Rainy Moper fellow. Nobody say a word. Then the guns to shoot they start, like this—”

Sister Mary Louis, Superior of St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital, was only twenty feet away, walking toward the station door. Accompanied by Sister Clementina, and having just emerged from a taxicab, Sister Mary Louis was not expecting to see the very quintessence of murder... She had level gray eyes, a firm chin, and her calm voice had only a slight tremble in it as she talked to the police.

“I noticed,” she declared, “that a brown sedan was parked beside the blue touring car. Just as the group of officers got into the touring car, a man opened the door of the sedan. No, he had no mask. He held something in his hands; it must have been a machine gun. A man was shooting from the front seat, too. We heard the shots... we stood there, petrified. Looking at those men. No one screamed. It happened too suddenly. Then the brown car went forward across the low curb, turned past the lamp-post, and raced up the street—”

Taxicab Operator Fred Cepak, license No. 1786, got a good look at the men in the brown car. “There was three. One driving, one in the front seat beside him, and one in the back. Two of them was big, fleshy guys, and the one driving was a little dark runt. Naw, they weren’t masked or nothing. And well dressed, kind of. The guy in back pulls up with a machine gun, but the fellow in front had an automatic in each hand. The shots go bang, bang, plunk — faster than I can say it — then the little guy says, ‘Hell. You got him! And with that they shag-tail outa there. The cops in the touring car are sliding down, dead as anything, all blood and— The sedan door came open, just as the gunmen bounced offa the curb. Then this cop comes out the station door and starts to shoot—”

They were good witnesses, for the most part. Somehow they seemed unusually methodical in telling what they saw. It was as if the blast of gunfire had robbed them of all hysteria. Eight o’clock, on a bright Indian summer morning... there in front of the sober railroad station. They were mainly accurate in their statements.

Nick Glennan, with only thirty minutes left before he would be relieved by Officer Canaday, thought he’d see whether he had gained or lost any weight during the hours since he came on duty. He found a penny in his breeches pocket and dropped it into the maw of the slot-machine scales, there in the south corridor of the station.

Then the shooting began... He had his gun out, before he reached the street. As he opened the glass panel he could see Detective Johnson’s wet, red face sliding lower and lower in the front seat of the police car. That was enough; it told a long story to Nick Glennan in just two-fifths of a second.

The brown sedan swished across the wide parking plaza, its left rear door jolted open, swaying, a wide gray arm reaching out and trying to pull the door shut. Glennan’s revolver rang hoarsely, three times. Then, thinking that he had missed, he expended his remaining three bullets in the direction of the gas tank. A huge gray shape tumbled out across the running board of the swaying sedan. Slowly, painfully, it was trying to pull itself back inside as the car swerved around the corner into Comanche Street. Glennan had missed the gas tank, but one of his first three bullets had found a fleshy resting place.

He leaped to the bloody running board of the parked car. People screamed, all around him. Detective Johnson and Sullivan, the driver, had the blank stare of death frozen in their eyes. Out of the red-spattered rear seat came a faint sigh. It was Cohen; he died in the ambulance, five minutes later.

Glennan snapped to the paralyzed taxi driver behind him: “Switch on. Back out I Switch her on, I tell you—” He ran to the lamp-post and wrenched open the big green box. He jerked the receiver from its hook and said rapidly: “Glennan on Number Forty-three. Carload of hoods shot up Bureau car just now, at this point. Ambulances, squads, Union Terminal. Brown sedan went south on Comanche Street — stop all brown sedans at city limits! Medium-sized car — might be an Olds or Chrysler. I’m on my way—”

A traffic cop was sprinting from the Bailey Street intersection, and another from the east plaza. People screamed, screamed.

Glennan fell into Fred Cepak’s green taxicab. “Get going down Comanche,” he gasped. Through the open window he howled down to the nearest traffic cop: “Stay on it, Bert!” and the cab went swaying toward the corner, with Officer Nicholas Glennan reloading his gun in the back seat.

He snapped the cylinder home, and climbed out on the running board. In front of the Alcazar Hotel a newsboy was out in the street. “That sedan—” yelled Glennan.

“Went south — south—”

There wasn’t much traffic. The cab skidded around the left side of a southbound street car, narrowly missed a northbound car, and screeched down the tracks. There were men lining the curb — a few of them. Somebody pointed, waved. Yes, they must have seen that fat gray shape on the sedan’s side, slowly pulling its wounded self back to safety. “Keep the horn going, buddy,” said Glennan to Taxicab Operator Fred Cepak.

“Okay.”

Looooooo, wailed the horn.

A block away from Paxton Boulevard they could see the traffic cop waving his arms. “Slow!” snapped Glennan. He leaned out and waved an answering hand.

The traffic cop’s face was familiar, but to save his life Nick couldn’t recall his name.

“Brown sedan? Think it’s a Chrysler. She just made a left turn, on the yellow. East on Paxton. What’s—”

“They just rubbed out a whole carload from the Bureau,” Glennan snarled. “Get over on the box for orders.” But he was a hundred yards away as he said the last words, and the cop could only stare after him with puffy eyes.

At the top of the hill by the Episcopal Church, Nick could see the long length of the boulevard sluicing away toward the misty smoke of suburbs. Cars, glistening blotches, the wide band of concrete was dotted with their beetle shapes. Between his dry lips Glennan muttered a curse. This would be the same old story. Lost in traffic. Give any car a minute’s start, and the driver had a good chance for a clean getaway. I had to phone, he kept hurling at himself, I had to! Block the highways — get the news on the radio — stop a brown sedan at the city limits — yes, he had to phone — And that extra minute or two, which brought an ambulance: it might mean life for Van Wert or Cohen. There had been that faint sigh from the shambles of the death car. An extra minute — an ambulance... had to phone.

“Keep going; bud,” he said to the chauffeur.

They raced on, at each of the next three corners, Glennan shrieked to pedestrians or grocerymen in front of their shops: “See a brown sedan? Speeding?”

The men gaped at him. Yes, she went that way. No, that was— Did you say a black car? Hey, Pete, wasn’t there a car just went speeding past? Yeh, she went north. Right there. Up that street. Yeh. Going like hell —

With Fred Cepak and the green cab Nick Glennan went hurtling up the cross street. North. A car — going like— He overtook it; a small roadster with three high school girls in it.

“Swing her back,” he groaned wearily. “It’s the same old story, sure as life. The damn sedan’s gone...”

They came back into Paxton Boulevard. Sirens moving toward them from the east and from the west. Glennan jumped off the running board and held up his hand. A big, black limousine let its brakes crunch; the tires burned in brown ribbons on the concrete. Hard faces, hard eyes staring at him. “Brown Chrysler. Out this way. That’s all we know... Make for Five Mile Corners, Al.” They whistled away; someone was opening the rifle box and dealing out ammunition.

And so it went. There was a cordon around the whole town in less than ten minutes. The telephones jangled and squawled; teletype ribbons took up the story, and state police began to whine up and down the long, open highway on their motorcycles. Brown sedan after brown sedan — farmers, schoolteachers, radio repairmen, dentists, Fuller Brush men — car after car, they were overhauled and lined up, their hands above their heads. What’s your name? Where you been? Let’s see your license. Keep ’em covered, Jack. Car after car...

Detective Abraham Cohen died while the ambulance was still seven blocks away from General Hospital. As for Johnson and Van Wert and the driver, they were past any need for hospitalization. And Mr. Rainy Moper, extortionist and five times a murderer, had gone to his own private brimstone pool with all speed. The women who had fainted were being revived in drug stores beside the station. Newspaper reporters, policemen, gabbling witnesses — a herd of men festered around the blue touring car with its shattered windshield and wet leather cushions.

Nobody was sure what mob had done it. It was hard to believe that any hoodlums, however hopped and demoniac they might be, would cheerfully kill four officers in their eagerness to effect the demise of Rainy Moper.

Nick Glennan got back to the Union Terminal plaza in time to find his brother, Detective Sergeant Dave Glennan, on the job. Fourteen other officers of various kinds were with him.

Before Nick went away to report, he took a walk across the street. He found something lying on the asphalt, near the corner of Comanche Street. It was at this point that the big man in the gray suit had sprawled out of the open door when Nick fired. Glennan picked up the object, looked at it dazedly, made as if to throw it away, and then thrust it into his pocket. Slowly he made his way through the packed crowd and into the wide, guarded circle.

“Four of the best guys who ever lived,” his dry-eyed brother muttered to him.

Nick Glennan nodded dully. “Yes,” he whispered.

They checked up: block by block and man by man. As the brown sedan passed the Alcazar Hotel, the big man who sprawled through the open door had managed to pull himself inside; a man in the front seat had reached back and slammed the door. The cop at Paxton and Comanche was positive in his identification; it must have been the same sedan, he declared — a shiny one with three men in it — which made a left turn into Paxton Boulevard. He blew his whistle at them. If they’d made the turn on the red light, he would have grabbed a car and gone after them, but it was getting on toward the rush hour for city-bound traffic, and any driver is apt to make a mistake and turn on the yellow light instead of the green. Just a split second’s difference.

But Paxton Boulevard is mainly a residential street, and in the shuttling stream of cars — in the absence of more cops — the runaway car had vanished. School kids: some said one thing and some said another. You couldn’t be sure. It seemed fairly certain that the gunmen had gone north into the new additions between Paxton Boulevard and the railroad; at least they hadn’t passed Five Mile Corner.

Eight police cars went cruising through the new prairies, the flat subdivisions. Marble-eyed men examined every alley and driveway and private garage. The human manacles around the main highways were drawn tighter and tighter... the teletype clicked and buzzed, phones were a screaming chorus.

First-class Patrolman Nick Glennan came slowly down the steps from police headquarters. “No,” he told the clustering reporters, “they’ve got my story, inside. Go in and talk to the Inspector. You don’t want to talk to a damn fool who missed because he was a poor shot.”

“Listen, Glennan,” said McCail of the News-Detail and Luff of the Tribune, “nobody’s blaming you. You did everything you could—”

Nick shrugged. “That’s all right, but I should’ve got them.” He adjusted his peaked cap.

In a gray Packard parked beside the curb were Sergeant Dave Glennan and Detectives Kerry and Horn. “Nick,” called Dave.

Nick went over to the car. His corpulent brother was hunched deep in the rear seat with a feather pillow between his shoulders. Dave Glennan’s back was still sore, after a famous shooting scrape in March. “All washed up?” he asked kindly.

“Yes. I’ve just been talking to Inspector Bourse.”

“You’re off duty now?”

Nick blinked at him. “Yes.”

“Want to take a ride?”

Promptly enough Nick climbed into the Packard beside his brother. “Let’s go,” said Dave. They went, swiftly and silently, up the Avenue.

The young patrolman turned his sad eyes to the huge sergeant. “Where you rolling?”

“I’ve got an At Will assignment, but I keep in touch with the Bureau. If they need me they’ll shoot it to us on the radio.” He shoved the pillow higher between his shoulders. “Did you show the Inspector what you found?”

“Yes. He said it was nothing.”

“That’s what I say, me boy. Nothing.”

Kerry asked: “What did you be finding, Nick?”

The patrolman fished a small object out of his pocket and passed it across to Kerry and Horn. “A bottle opener,” grunted Horn.

“Yes, it is that.”

It was three or four inches long — a flat oval of silvered metal with a sharp tongue at one side, and a long handle. HOFFBRAU LIGHT OR DARK. Drink the best was stamped into the handle.

“You get ’em with a case of Hoffbrau beer,” explained Horn. “Whenever you buy a case, they give you a free bottle opener.”

Dave Glennan nodded. “That’s the trouble; that’s the reason it ain’t no clue. There’s too many of them around.”

“Where’d he find it?”

Nick said: “Out on the plaza. It was about where the car was when the big guy slipped out through the door.”

“You thought he might have dropped it?... Dave, how many cars go by that station in a day.”

“One a minute, perhaps. Lots more in rush hours. I don’t know; your guess is as good as mine... The Inspector said to forget it, eh, Sparrow Cop?”

Nick turned his bitter eyes on him. “I’m a sparrow cop no longer,” he said softly. “Though I was on the park police last March, when I grabbed those hoods who shot you — out there on Acola Street.”

There was silence in the car for a moment. Dave flushed; awkwardly, he patted his kid brother’s knee. “Suppose Inspector Bourse had told you to regard this bottle opener as a clue, Nick. How would you work it?”

Nick took a long breath. “The city flusher,” he said, “cleans off that plaza at the Union Terminal every morning. It was there this morning, a bit late — five o’clock, it was. It shoots a powerful stream of water; it would wash that bottle opener up to the curb, like chaff. So the bottle opener was dropped since five o’clock—”

“We’re listening,” said Dave.

“If a man dropped it from a moving car — or if it got jolted out of the side pocket of a moving car — it wouldn’t roll far. It ain’t the right shape. I picked it up ten feet from the curb, but to the north of the safety island. And the brown sedan crossed there, headed southeast, cutting across the wrong side of the plaza... You see? It was in a kind of no-traffic zone. If it fell from any other car it came from one traveling between the stanchion and the curb, because all traffic is supposed to move outside the stanchion.”

Kerry said: “And those cars are few and far between. Maybe the big guy did drop it, Nick—”

“Shut up,” Dave said. “Would you call up the Hoffbrau Brewing Company by long distance and arrest them all, Nick?”

The radio began to crackle; Nick Glennan didn’t answer. The grating voice said: “Squads Eight, Nine, and Sixteen. Suspicious car reported on Pearl Street south of railroad tracks. Abandoned brown sedan. Signal Twenty-four B. Squads Eight, Nine, and—”

“Here’s Dorchester Avenue,” Dave directed the driver. “Down Dorchester to the Paxton cut-off, then left.” The balloon tires howled as the car swung quickly into Dorchester Avenue... forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five... the speedometer ribbon blurred. The siren sang in an endless alto.

Kerry, not the liveliest-witted man in the squad, was mumbling to himself, “Signal Twenty-four B. Signal—”

“You dope,” said Horn wearily, “that’s ‘As you approach the designated point, watch for criminals fleeing from the scene.’ ”

“As if they hadn’t fled from the scene an hour ago,” grunted Sergeant Glennan. “I always did say that if you didn’t have a license number, you didn’t have much to go on.”

Nick grinned his tired grin. “When the day comes that they make it jail for the man who drives with muddy license plates, we’ll have a better break. There was dirt an inch thick on those plates. Nobody got a smell of them. You can’t put teeth in an ordinance that carries a two-dollar penalty.”

Vacant lots began to flicker past them.

“Pearl Street,” meditated Dave. “That’s a block or two past Washington. It’s nothing but a big mud hole there — no houses or nothing... Turn right at the second corner, Frank.”

Horn asked: “And no rise out of anybody at the Gallery?”

“No,” said Nick. “We all looked and looked. The taxi driver and the nuns and all of us. It wasn’t anybody ever mugged in this town.”

“I say they were trying to spring him,” grunted Dave.

“And him handcuffed to Cohen?”

“I know the Chief and most of the others think it was a push-off. But it wasn’t worth it: if anybody’d wanted to rub out Rainy, they could have managed it easy with stabbing, after he went to the pen. They never needed to risk all this. No, they were primed to spring him. Maybe they didn’t realize he was tied to Cohen. They got rattled, maybe. Remember what the taxi driver said about it? ‘Hell, you got him!’ That was no push-off.”

They shouted and argued back and forth, above the wailing siren. The Packard skidded into the miserable pavement of Pearl Street. No houses here; the wasteland and marshes spread out, block after block. Rubbish piles, tilted signboards... Far ahead near the railroad viaduct, a dark group of men milled around a huddle of cars. Dave leaned out and squinted his narrow eyes. “That’s Rhineheimer’s squad. Eight. They got here ahead of us.”

Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski were the best witnesses who had yet figured in the case. They had been playing games — playing house, mostly — since seven-thirty o’clock in the vacant lot which bordered Pearl Street,

Along about the time they came out to play, said Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski, they peeked through a brake of dry weeds and saw two cars drive into the narrow lane from the direction of the railroad tracks. One of the cars was brown and one was black.

Two men got out of the black car and joined another man in the brown car. The brown car went away... Anna Watelowitz and Irene Krzanowski picked two tomato cans full of burdock burrs. They went over to the lone man who still sat in the black car — he had turned it around until it faced toward the railroad viaduct — and they said, “Hey, mister, buy some fine popcorn, a big bag for a nickel.” But the man didn’t want to buy any burdock-burr popcorn. He had a snarly white face and he said: “You damn kids,” and so they ran away as fast as they could go. They hid in a thicket of marshgrass, where the man couldn’t find them.

Finally (it had been quite a long, long time) the brown car came back. It came from the south, and the men jumped out of it hastily and jumped into the black car beside the other man, and went bouncing away toward the railroad tracks... An hour passed before Irene and Anna mustered enough courage to approach the abandoned brown sedan. When they climbed up on the running board, they saw blood inside. They ran home, and told, and Mrs. Watelowitz went clear down to the phone at Poppashveli’s Handy Grocery, and called the police.

Dave Glennan sat with his feather cushion against his back, jingling a handful of empty .45 caliber shells in his hand. “Yeh, you better do that, Rhineheimer. Take those girls down to headquarters. Maybe they can pick those mugs out. How’d you like a nice fast ride in a great big car, girlies?”

The little radio chanted: “Squad Sixteen, attention. Communicate by telephone at once. Squad Sixteen—”

Sergeant Dave Glennan did his communicating from the phone at Poppashveli’s grocery. When he rejoined his companions, there was a slight smile on his grim lips.

“Let’s go, Frank.” He slid into his seat. “They got the St. Louis paper to cooperate and send some pictures over the telephone to the News-Detail office. They’ve got ’em at the Bureau now: pictures of four hoods who trailed around with Rainy Moper in St. Louis and К. C.

Even a telephoto picture means a lot. There wasn’t any doubt in the minds of the police and detective forces, half an hour later, that they were looking for Benjamin Farnum, Joe Vitale, and Claude Powers. And according to the two little Polish girls, licking their ice cream cones in the squad room, the fourth photograph was the living image of the man who said, “You damn kids.” The fourth photograph was named James Lippert.

“Farnum, Vitale, Powers, and Lip-pert,” chanted Sergeant Dave Glennan as he climbed into the lean Packard. “We’re all ready to put the finger on them, except that we don’t know where they are.”

Kerry swore harshly. “Highway cops! Sure, they’d let the whole army slide through them, if we were after the army—”

“Never mind, Kerry. There’s lots of cars on the highway.”

“They’ll be halfway to Buffalo or El Paso by now.”

Glennan looked over at his kid brother, the slim patrolman with the old-young face. Nick was twirling a shiny bottle opener between his fingers.

“That gadget, Nick—”

“Yes?” queried Nick smoothly.

“If you were wearing plainclothes—”

Nick Glennan said: “If I was wearing plainclothes, I’d sure regret that those kids didn’t notice the license of the black car. The brown car, we have now learned, was stolen late last night from a roadhouse this side of Midvale, and belongs to a dentist named Holder. But — the black car — those little girls did notice that it had suitcases in it. It’s their traveling car, like as not. And when men who like beer go a-traveling, where do they buy their beer?”

“In grocery stores at home, before they start out.”

“Not if they’re in a hurry. No, indeed. It’s only after they reach their destination, mind you, that they feel free to indulge in a bit of a drink. At road-stalls. At hot-dog stands. That’s where they would be buying it.” Everybody grunted.

“I’m cock-eyed, and I never expected to be taking suggestions from a steer in harness,” muttered Dave Glennan, “but we might take a drive in the country. It’s a fine Indian summer day, as poor Van Wert remarked before those gorillas got him...

“Highway Twenty-six is the short line from St. Louis and Midvale. Let’s mosey out to the city limits and invest in a hot-dog and a glass of beer.”

Three out of the first nine road-stalls were all that sold Hoffbrau beer, and none of those three road-stalls had sold a twelve-bottle case in weeks and weeks. No, they didn’t remember any four guys in a black car. Yes, it seemed like those guys might have been here... No. No spikka Engliss. Sella nice hamburg —

“As a plainclothes officer, Nicholas,” said Dave Glennan to his brother, “you’re a stiff pain in the—”

“Don’t say it,” whispered Nick. “You insult me, and I’ll be forgetting that you still got a hunk of lead alongside your chiropractor’s delight! And here’s another hot-dog stand, gas station, or whatever you call it.”

It was a rambling one-story shack at the intersection of Routes Twenty-six and Fifty-five. There were four gas pumps in front and two water-closets in back. The owner was named Basilio Constanopolus, and yes, he carried Hoffbrau beer. Light or dark. How many bot’ you want?

“Not one!” snarled Dave Glennan, and exhibited his badge.

“Listen, police,” wept Mr. Constanopolus, “I ain’t never sold a bootleg since we got a good beer. What the hell? No, police—”

“Talk to him, Nick,” ordered the sergeant.

Patrolman Glennan smiled his sweetest smile. “Now, Mr. Constanopolus, you think hard and try to help us. Did you sell a case of Hoffbrau during the night?”

“There was those man—” Basilio wrinkled his forehead.

“Maybe they drove in with two cars?”

“They have hamburg egg sandwich. Yes, it was so. And they buy a twelve-bot’ case.”

Nick twirled the opener in his hand. Mr. Constanopolus let his eyes become narrow and somber. “Those are free, for no money. They come in a case.”

“They came in two sedans? Four men?”

The Greek shrugged. “Maybe four. It was pretty late they come. They eat somethings; then they go away with beer.”

“Now,” crooned Nick, “you didn’t by any chance be noticing their license plates?”

Mr. Constanopolus said: “Not the one car. I see the license on the one under the light, beside the pump.”

Five pairs of hard eyes were on his face. “Yes?” drawled Dave Glennan.

“Not the number. I see the name of what state. All day I count how many state come to stop here. Some day maybe I see twenty-five. Utah, I see — Col’rado, New Yawk — all those place I see on the cars.”

“What was this one, buddy? What state?”

“Jefferson,” said the Greek.

Nobody spoke for a moment. “Jefferson?” asked Nick slowly.

Mr. Constanopolus shrugged again. “I see,” he said.

“But, listen, friend, there isn’t any such state.”

“On the car. It is a black car, I remember now.”

“What color was the license plate?”

“I don’t know. It was Jefferson. I read. I have a kids what go to school. He tell me about once there was a great man here in this country it is Jefferson. So, maybe he have a state name’ for him, uh?”

Kerry sobbed: “Hell. Lay off, Nick. I got it.”

“What?”

“He must have got it mixed up with Washington. It was a Washington State license.”

Obstinately, Constanopolus shook his head. “I not get the number, see, for why the hell I remember numbers? Just the name, Jefferson. I spell it, uh? Chay-ee-eff-eff-ee—”

“Aw,” growled the sergeant. He opened the car door. “Come on, Nick. Get going. Maybe it was Washington, maybe not. He don’t know what it’s all about.”

“Jefferson!” Basilio Constanopolus howled after them, as the Packard crunched over the gravel and turned back toward the city again.

First-class Patrolman Glennan tried to go home and rest, but it was no go. Ordinarily he would have been sound asleep long before this hour. The hands of the little electric clock in his kitchenette crawled past noon, and he merely played with the scallops which Alice had baked for him. Finally he put on his blouse and belt and cap, snatched a kiss from the prettiest face this side of County Cork, and went down to headquarters.

“Beautiful man,” he said to the mutt-faced Sergeant Beasley, “we did have a colored chart that showed all the auto license plates in the United States. What went with it?”

“You’ll find it tacked beside the Museum in the other room,” said Beasley, “and you ain’t so good-looking yourself, punk. I may be within seven months of my pension, but I bet I could still plug a gas tank in a car if I had a full gun to do it with.”

Nick’s ears were purple. For want of any retort he went into the next room and looked at the chart of auto license plates. He leaned upon a cabinet full of rusty revolvers and dusty blackjacks and perforated stars, and studied the little colored oblongs... Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin... Most certainly there was no State of Jefferson in the United States.

Suddenly he bent closer to the chart. His ears grew pale and purple once more. From the outer room Sergeant Beasley watched him, sniffing.

Glennan came out. His eyes were very bright, and a slight flush still clung around the roots of his hair.

“Get me the Bureau, will you?” he asked of the man at the switchboard.

“Guests will use the house phones around the corner,” mocked the switchboard.

Nick glared. He went around the corner to the single instrument in its dim nook.

“Is Dave Glennan out with his squad?”

The dim voice of the Bureau said: “No. He’s in with the Lieutenant. Who’s calling?”

“This is Officer Glennan, his brother. Can I talk—”

“Sure. I’ll get him for yuh.”

Connections buzzed and stuttered... Dave’s voice. “Yeh.”

Nick said: “Tell me this, Dave. Do they still think those guys left town?”

“Left town? Say, what do—”

“With airplanes and state troopers and all, tailing them all over hell. What do you think?”

Dave gulped once or twice. “Why — what makes you think they’d lie around here? Sure, it’s been done before, but—”

“At night they could make it. We know they went north under that railroad viaduct from the prairies, and there’s two good streets, not much traveled, leading back to town. Take a small hotel — an outlying one, you see. With garages near by, and—”

“For God’s sake,” yapped Sergeant Glennan, “have you gone nuts, or what?”

“I’ll be coming to the Bureau as fast as a cab can get me there,” snarled the ex-sparrow cop, “and you be going in with me to talk to Inspector Bourse. I’m going to tell you upholstered cushion-bellies what kind of a car to look for!”

It was at the end of the fifth-floor-west-corridor of the Hotel De Soto. Two adjoining rooms, 524 and 526. The occupants were listed as the Hot-Cha Orchestra from Louisville. Their names were Morgan, Fry, Adams, and Johnson...

“The nerve, the brazen nerve of them!” gritted Inspector Bourse. “Using the name of a man they just killed—”

He stood beside a bed in room 508, with a throng of officers blocking the open door beyond. The operator connected him with room 524, and a coarse voice yelped nervously at him.

“This is Inspector Bourse,” said the old man with the gold badge. “I want to tell you sniveling hyenas that you’re washed up. No, hold on — I’ll do the talking! Every room around you — on all sides, above and below — has been vacated. There are officers at the top and bottom of the fire escapes, and in opposite windows commanding your rooms. We’ve got machine guns trained on your doors, and tear gas all ready to let go. You can come out, with your hands up, or you can stay there and take it!” There was a long, heart-breaking silence. Then the rasping voice began, to stammer—

“Break?” echoed the old Inspector. “Yeh, you gave our men a break this morning. Pie-eyed, hopped-up bums: you chopped the whole carload down! Only one of you got a shot in the arm for his pains. Auto accident, you told the chambermaid when she saw the bloody bandages! Remember this: you can only get life in this state — so think it over, and think fast—”

Down the hall there was the sudden blam of an automatic. Old Bourse dropped the phone upon the bed. “So that’s the answer, eh?” he whooped. “Let ’em have it, boys! The taxpayers’ll foot the bill for damage—”

Five machine guns began to pound.

They carried them away in four neat, body-length baskets of brown wicker. Two officers had been wounded, neither seriously. Up in his temporary headquarters in room 508, old Inspector Bourse patted Nick Glennan’s arm as that embarrassed young man slid his gun into its holster.

“Smoke up!” he said to the Glennan boys. “Here — twenty-five centers, and never say the old man is a tightwad. Boys, I knew your grandfather — I was just a little kid when he got killed in the anarchists’ riot, but I do remember him — and I want to say that the old fellow must be very, very proud of you tonight.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing, Inspector,” growled Dave. “It was all the doings of my kid brother.”

“And him still with a stiff arm and unsteady shoulder from that affray last March,” nodded the Inspector. “It’s quite like a Glennan not to whine around and alibi because he wasn’t shooting so good, and all of a sudden. Well, Nick — and I hope to see you a sergeant like your brother before you’re many months older — I must say that your deduction on those license plates was a slick piece of work. It was aisy enough for us to run the car down, once you gave us the tip. The boys got it in the thirteenth garage they went to, and the rest was aisy, too.”

Nick’s ears were red again. “I just played a hunch, sir, about them not having run out of town.”

“But what good would the hunch have done if you hadn’t lined up the car? Sure, it isn’t every cop could spot a car on the evidence you had and lead us right to the killers.”

First-class Patrolman Glennan wriggled, but his weary face was grinning. “The Greek had a word for it, sir! Jefferson, he said, and of course we thought he was crazy. But I went down to headquarters and had a look at the chart of license plates. Just by chance I noticed that Kentucky — you see how it was, Inspector. The Kentucky license was number 345–328 — a hot car, no doubt — but it had the letters K-Y, very small in one corner, and the number 33 very small in the other. And all the way across the bottom was the name of the county: Jefferson. It’s an odd way they must have in Kentucky, putting the names of their counties on the license plates.”

“From Kentucky,” said Sergeant Dave Glennan, “come fast horses and beautiful women. From the Glennan family comes cops. If you wouldn’t object, Inspector, I’d like to offer us all a little drink — just for luck. I’m mighty proud of my ugly relative, and

Inspector Bourse thrust out his jaw. “Of course I object, Sergeant! It’s contrary to law and regulations and the best traditions of our department... Ring immediately for ice and ginger ale!”