The Getaway

7

It was early afternoon when Doc let Carol out at Kansas City's Union Railroad Terminal. Being much the «cooler» of the two of them-much less likely to be identified-she kept the money satchel with her. While Doc drove away to dispose of the car, she entered the station and headed for the coach ticket windows. At one of them she bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. At another, far removed, she bought a second one. Then, hesitantly, with a look at the lobby clock, she again picked up the money bag and her overnight case.

It was almost an hour until train time-Doc had previously checked the schedule by telephone. He wouldn't be showing up until the next to last minute, so she had almost an hour to kill-and to remain in sole custody of approximately two hundred and fifty thousand very hot, very bloody dollars.

She had never faced such nerve-wracking responsibility before. It had had to be hers, but still, with part of her mind, she was resentful that it had been thrust upon her.

She looked around the vaulted lobby, then, lurching a little from the weight of the bag, she started for the women's rest room. After a dozen steps or so, she set the bag down, started to shift it to her other hand. And in a blur of movement-in her fear and nervousness it seemed a blur-she saw it snatched up from the floor.

It was a redcap, one of several who had so far proffered their services. But at the moment he had no identity for Carol. He was just a hand, an arm, a half-turned back-a something that was about to make off with the bag.

Taking in her expression, he said, "Hope I didn't startle you, ma'am. Just thought I'd…"

"_You give that here!_" With a wild grab, she recovered the satchel. "You hear me? You give…"

"Kind of looks like you already got it, ma'am." He grinned at her pleasantly. "Ain't that so? Now, how about letting me check it for you?"

"No!" She backed away from him. "I mean, I don't want it checked. I j-just…"

"Put it on the train for you, then. Mighty heavy bag for a little lady like you to carry."

"No! And you'd better get away from me, or I'll-I'll…"

"Well, yes, ma'am," he said coldly. "Yessiree, ma'am!"

Regaining some control of herself, she mumbled a grimacing word of apology. Very conscious that his eyes were following her, she hurried down the vaulted lobby. Her arm ached. She was panting, sweating from exertion. She had a feeling that everyone in the place was watching her, wondering about her.

At long last-after hours, miles, seemingly-she got out of the waiting room proper and into a wing of the building. She paused there gratefully, setting the bag against the wall and resting the toe of one shoe against it.

Her breath came back; she patted the sweat from her face, became cooler, calmer. In a half-resentful way she felt ashamed of herself. There had been no reason for her panic. The bag looked like any other bag. If the police had been alerted, there wasn't a chance in ten thousand they'd be able to spot her. All she had to do was follow Doc's instructions: stay in the crowd, keep the bag with her at all times, carry it onto the train herself. It was simple enough. It was what she knew she should do, without being told by Doc. But…

No buts. It was what she had to do. Checkroom attendants were always losing things. Handing them out to the wrong people, banging bags around until they flew open. There were similar risks in dealing with redcaps, baggage porters. Nothing ever happened, naturally, to a two-dollar suitcase with a few bucks' worth of clothes in it. But let the bag contain something hot-money or jewelry or narcotics, or part of a dismembered corpse-and sure as shootin' there was a foul-up.

It happened all the time. You needed only to read the newspapers to know that it did.

Doc had been fearful that the bag would be too heavy for her. She had lifted it, assured him that she could manage it. She had also assured him-and pretty shortly at that-that her nerves were equally up to the job. But that had been then, and somehow everything had changed since then. The sureness which she had felt with him had melted away; and suddenly, with a spur of panic, she knew why.

Not only had she never faced any such responsibililty as this before, she had never faced any that remotely approached it. Nothing of do-or-die importance; nothing without Doc to guide her and work with her. She had thought that she had; Doc had tactfully let her think so. But invariably they had been a team. The one thing she had swung on her own was the Beynon deal; and that obviously, and regardless of the consequences, was something that would have been better left unswung.

Actually, she hadn't been around very much. She was virtually untraveled. Until she met Doc she'd never been out of her hometown. Since then, there'd been considerable travel by car, but she'd made only one train trip in her life.

She wasn't used to railroad stations. Even without the money bag she would have felt some unsureness.

Which I'd damn well better get over, she thought grimly. If Doc caught me acting like this, standing off in a corner by myself…!

He wouldn't like it. Far too much had already happened that he didn't like.

Resolutely, she picked up the bag and started back to the waiting room. The resolution lasted for a few steps, and then she began to slow, to hesitate. If only she could get rid of the thing for a few minutes. Long enough to make sure that she hadn't been spotted; to get a drink, to clean up a little. The drink, particularly, she needed. A good stiff jolt to pull her together again and…

She heard a dull clang of metal against metal; jumped a little, her eyes swerving toward it. But it was only someone slamming the door of a baggage locker. She started to move on toward the waiting room, and then her heart did a little skip-jump of relief, and she swung almost gaily toward the row of lockers on the other side of the wing.

She would be taking no chance in leaving the bag in a private locker. Doc couldn't object to it-in fact, he didn't even need to know about it. She could recover the bag before he showed up at the station.

She crossed the marble-paved foyer, set down the satchel and overnight case. She got a quarter out of her purse and stooped in front of an empty locker. Frowning, she sought in vain for the coin slot. Straightening again, she had started to read the metal instruction plate when a young man sauntered by. A young-oldish man with a small brown mustache and prematurely greying hair.

He was neatly dressed, engaging of manner. He would have been handsome except for the slight sharpness of his features.

"Kind of a Chinese puzzle, isn't it?" he said. "Well, here's how you work it."

Before Carol could object to the intrusion, he had taken the quarter from her hand, inserted it in the elusive slot and swung open the door. "Imagine you want to keep the dressing case with you, right?" he smiled. "Well, in we go with the big boy, then. Now-" he slammed and rattled the door, "we'll just test this to make sure that it's locked; maybe you'd better test it, too."

Carol tested it. He handed her a yellow-flanged locker key, courteously brushed aside her thanks, and sauntered off toward the waiting room.

In the station's bar-and-grill ladies' room, Carol touched up her makeup and allowed her suit to be brushed off by the attendant. Then, going out to the bar, she ordered and drank two double martinis. She wanted a third-not the drink itself so much as the excuse it would provide for remaining there. Just to stay there a little longer, where it was cool and shadowed and quiet, and feel the strength and the confidence spread through her. To feel safe.

But the hands of the cloek pointed forbiddingly. It was barely ten minutes until train time.

Draining the last drop from her glass, she hurried out of the bar. She located her locker, inserted the key and turned it. Or tried to. It wouldn't turn. It didn't fit.

Her stomach cramped convulsively and the two drinks rose up in her throat. Swallowing nauseously, she removed the key and examined it; read the number with bewildered disbelief.

That couldn't be right! She knew that the bag had gone into this locker, the one here on the end. But according to this key…

She located the other locker, the one numbered to correspond with the key. Hands shaking, she opened it, and, of course, it was empty.

A voice boomed and echoed over the public address system: "Last call for the California umtumm-the California something-or-other, departing from Gate Three in exacklum fi'min-utts. Passengers will kinely take their seats on the California…"

_Five minutes!_

Feverishly she returned to the first locker, fought again to unlock it. Again, as on the first occasion, the effort was futile. The drinks struggled upward again. The heat, after the air-conditioned bar, beat and pounded through her brain.

She weaved a little. Foolishly, because there was nothing else to do, she started back toward the second locker, the one the key fitted. And then she stopped dead in her tracks. Up near the entrance, hat pulled low over his eyes, Doc was watching her. Watching and then coming toward her.

A few steps away, he faced up to the locker bank, fumbling in his pocket as though seeking a coin. His terse whisper whipped at her from the corner of his mouth. "Simmer down and talk fast. What happened?"

"I–I don't know, Doc! I put the bag in that locker back there, but I've got the key to…"

"To another locker, one that's empty, right? What did he look like?"

"He? What do you…"

"Will you in the name of all hell hurry! Someone helped you. Put the bag in for you, then switched keys on you. It's one of the oldest con gags in the country."

"But-well, how was I to know?" she lashed out. "You leave me to do everything…"

"Easy, babe, easy. I'm not blaming you." His voice became a purring calm, the intense calm above a raging subterranean storm. "How long since you left the bag? When you first came in, maybe an hour?"

"No. Not more that thirty minutes. But…"

"Good. He'd expect you to leave it longer than that. If he operates on form, he'll try to hit several times before he pulls out." He stepped back from the locker, jerked his head. "Move. Go ahead of me. If you spot him, give me the office."

"But, Doc. You shouldn't…"

"There's a lot of things that shouldn't have been done!" His tone was a whip again. "Now, move!"

She started off at a fast walk, then broke into a faster one as his long stride kept him almost on her heels. At what was almost a trot she reached the waiting room, swept it with an anxious glance. Prodded by an urgent cough from Doc, she made a hasty survey of the adjacent areas.

Then-and now she was really trotting-she headed for the train gates. The jarring of her high heels shot fire up her ankles. A button of her blouse became undone, and she ran clutching at the gap with one hand. Frantically she raced down the corridor, a notorious criminal on the trail of a quarter of a million stolen and restolen dollars, and somewhere within her the child she had been, the child that she was in this baffling and fearful moment, wept with sullen self-pity. It-it wasn't fair! She was tired and sick, and she didn't want to play any more. She'd never wanted to play in the first place!

And it was all so useless. The man would be gone now, no matter what Doc said. He had the money, and he'd keep it. And they, they'd have nothing. The whole nation looking for them, and no means of escape. No money but the relatively little that they were carrying.

She tripped and almost fell. She caught herself, half-turned in pain and anger on Doc. And then she saw him, the thief.

He was at a row of lockers near the train gates; no more than twenty feet away from the uniformed station attendant who stood at Gate Three-their gate-consulting his watch. Smiling engagingly, he was opening the locker for a well-dressed elderly woman, placing two expensive cowhide bags inside.

He slammed the door, tested it. He handed her a key and picked up the money satchel. Tipping his hat, he turned away. And suddenly he saw Carol.

His expression never changed. He took a step straight toward her, smiling, apparently on the point ofcallinga hello. And then, with a movement that was at once abrupt and casual, he disappeared behind the lockers.

"Doc-" Carol gestured feebly.

But Doc had already spotted the satchel, identified the thief for what he was. He strode past her, and after a moment's indecision, she followed him.

By the time she had gotten behind the lockers, neither Doc nor the thief was in sight. They had disappeared as quickly and completely as though the floor had opened and swallowed them up. She turned, started to retrace her steps-and if she had, she would have seen the thief hasten through the train gate, with Doc following in brisk pursuit. Instead, however, she continued along the row of lockers, turned into the aisle formed by another row, and thence on to the end of that before coming out into the open again. By which time, of course, Doc and the thief were long since gone from view.

She stood there in the corridor, looking this way and that, seeming to shrink, to grow smaller and smaller in its lofty vastness. She had never felt so bewildered,so lost, so alone. Doc-where had he gone? How could she find him? What would happen if she couldn't?

Reason told her that he must have followed the thief onto the train. But-and here reason questioned its own statement-would a smart thief choose the train as an escape route? And would Doc have followed without a word or sign to her?

He'd have been in a hurry, of course. He would doubtless assume that she was heeling him, even as he was heeling the thief. But-suppose she was wrong. Suppose the pursuit had led back up into the station.

She wouldn't know that he wasn't on the train until she had looked, and by that time…

She shivered at the thought. Herself on the train, and Doc here-the two of them separated in a hostile and watchful world. He wouldn't dare to make inquiries, to look for her; even to wait around the station for her return. For that matter, he could not be sure that she hadn't taken a powder on him. After last night, that drunken hateful talk of Beynon's…

Maybe Doc had run out on her! Maybe he'd recovered the money and abandoned her! He was sore, she thought; more accurately, suspicious. She needed him, but he did not need her. And when Doc no longer needed a person…

The trainman looked at her sharply. Then, with a final glance at his watch, he slipped it into his pocket and started through the gate.

"Mister!" Carol hurried toward him."Did a couple of men go through here just now? A rather tall older man, and a man with a…"

"A couple of men?" The trainman was irritably amused. "Lady, there's probably been a hundred. I can't…"

"But this was just in the last minute or so! The one in front would have had grey hair and a little mustache!"

"Were they catching the train for California?"

"I–I don't know. I mean, I think they were but…"

"Well, if they were, they went through here. If they weren't, they didn't." He fidgeted impatiently with the gate. "What about you? You taking the train?"

"I don't know!" Carol almost wailed. "I mean, I'm not sure whether I should or not. Can't you remember…?"

"No, I can't," he cut her off shortly. "Kind of seems like they did, but I wouldn't say for sure."

"But it's so important! If you'd just…"

"Lady-" his voice rose. "I told you I wasn't sure whether I saw 'em or not, and that's all I can tell you, and if you're taking the train you'll have to do it right now. It's already two minutes late pulling out."

"But…"

"Make up your mind, lady. What's it going to be?"

Carol looked at him helplessly. "I guess," she said. "I guess I really should-shouldn't…"

"Yes?" he snapped. "Well?"

Scowling, he waited a second or two more. Then, as she remained undecided, he slammed the gate and went down the ramp.