Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  She wasn’t really worried at first. Still, where could he have gone at this unearthly hour? Where was there for him to go—around here? And why slip out like that, without saying a word to her? She sat there in the dark for about thirty, forty minutes, sometimes on the edge of the bed, sometimes over by the window, watching the road for him.

  Suddenly a black shape came along, blurring the highway’s tape-like whiteness. But in almost absolute silence, hardly recognizable as a car, lights out. It was gliding along, practically coasting, the downward tilt of the road past the house helping it.

  It was he, though. He took the car around, berthed it in the garage, and then she heard him come in downstairs. A glass clinked once or twice, and then he came up. She’d put the light on, so as not to throw a scare into him. His face was like putty; she’d never seen him look like this before.

  “Matter, couldn’t you sleep, Gil?” she said quietly.

  “I took the car out for a run, and every time I’d stop and think I’d found a place where I was alone, I’d hear some other damn car somewhere in the distance or see its lights, or think I did, anyway. Judas, the whole country seemed awake—twigs snapping, stars peering down—”

  “But why stop? Why should it annoy you if there were other cars in the distance? What were you trying to do, get rid of something, throw something away?”

  “Yeah,” he said, low.

  For a minute she got badly frightened again, like Monday morning, until he, seeming to take fright from her fright in turn, quickly stammered:

  “Uh-huh that other bag of his, that second bag he left behind. He’s coming back, that guy, I know he is; he isn’t through yet. I was on pins and needles the whole time he was here, this afternoon, thinking he was going to go looking around and find it up there.” He let some sulphur matches trickle out of his pocket. “I was going to try to burn it, but I was afraid somebody’d see me, somebody was following me.” He threw himself face down across the bed. Not crying or anything, just exhausted with spent emotion. “The bitter end,” he panted, “the bitter end.”

  A minute later she stepped back into the room, astonishment written all over her face.

  “But, Gil, you didn’t even have it with you, do you realize that? It’s right there in the guest-room closet, where it’s been all along!”

  He didn’t turn his head. His voice came muffledly: “I’m going crazy, I guess. I don’t even know what I’m doing any more. Maybe I took one of our own by mistake.”

  “Why did all this have to happen to us?” she sobbed dryly as she reached out to snap off the light.

  He was right, Ward came back. The next day, that was Wednesday, two days after It. He had a different air about him, a disarming, almost apologetic one, as though he were simply here to ask a favor.

  “What, more questioning?” she greeted him caustically.

  “I’m sorry you resent my interviewing you yesterday. It was just routine, but I tried to be as inoffensive as I could about it. No, so far as we’re concerned, you people no longer figure in it—except of course as his last known jumping-off place into nothingness. We have a new theory we’re working on.”

  “What is it?” she said, forgetting to be aloof.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to divulge it. However, a couple of interviews with Mrs. Burroughs were enough to give it an impetus. She’s a hypochondriac if there ever was one.”

  “I think I know what you’re driving at. You mean his disappearance was voluntary, to get away from the sickroom atmosphere in his home?”

  His knowing expression told her she was right. And for a moment a great big sun came up and shone through the darkness she had been living in ever since Mrs. Burroughs’ phone call Monday noon. How wonderful it would be if that should turn out to be the correct explanation, what a reprieve for herself and Gil! Why, it would automatically cover up the check matter as well. If the old man had been about to drop from sight, he certainly could have been expected to cash a check for that amount, to keep himself in funds; there wouldn’t be any mystery about it, then.

  Meanwhile, as to Ward: You could tell he wasn’t here altogether on business. He was looking into her face a little too personally, she thought. Well, he was only a man after all. What could you do about it?

  “The local chief out here, whom I’m co-operating with, can’t put me up at his house; he’s got three of our guys staying with him already. I was wondering if it would put you out if I . . . er . . . asked permission to make this my headquarters; you know, just sleep here while I’m detailed out here, so I wouldn’t have to keep running back and forth, to the city and out again, every night?”

  She nearly fell over. “But this is a private home, after all.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be in your way much. You can bill the department for it if you like.”

  “That isn’t the point. There’s a perfectly good hotel in the village.”

  “I already tried to get quarters there. They’re all filled up. You’re entitled to refuse if you want to. It’d just be a way of showing your good will and willingness to cooperate. After all, it’s just as much to the interest of you and your husband as anyone else to have this matter cleared up.”

  By the time she got in to Gil, she was already beginning to see the humorous side of it. “It’s Ward again. He wants to be our house guest; can you tie that? He hinted that now they think Burroughs disappeared voluntarily, to get away from that invalid wife of his.”

  His face was a white pucker of frightening suspicion. “He’s lying! He’s trying different tactics, that’s all. He’s trying to plant himself here in the house with us as a spy.”

  “But don’t you think it’ll look worse, if we seem to have anything to hide by not letting him in? Then they’ll simply hang around watching us from the outside. If we let him in, we may be able to get rid of him for good in a day or two.”

  “He’ll watch every move I make, he’ll listen to every word that’s said. It’s been tough up to now; it’ll be hell that way.”

  “Well, you go out and shoo him away then; you’re the boss.”

  He took a quick step toward the door. Then his courage seemed to ooze out of him. She saw him falter, come to a stop, rake his fingers through his hair.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said uncertainly, “maybe it’ll look twice as bad if we turn him away, like we have something to hide. Tell him 0. K.” And he poured himself a drink the size of Lake Erie.

  “He’ll sleep on the davenport in the living room and like it,” she said firmly. “I’m not running a lodging-house for homeless detectives.”

  It was the least she could do, she felt, meeting him along the road like that: ask him if he wanted a lift back to the house with her. After all, she had nothing against the man; he was just doing his job. And Gil’s half-hysterical injunction, over the wire the day before, “Don’t take anyone in the car with you!” was furthest from her thoughts, had no meaning at the moment. For that matter, it had had no meaning even at the time.

  “Sure, don’t mind if I do,” he accepted. He slung himself up on the running board without obliging her to come to a complete stop, and dropped into the seat beside her without opening the door, displacing some parcels she’d had there.

  “Why don’t you put these in the rumble?” he asked, piling them on his lap for want of a better place.

  She took one hand off the wheel, snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, I wanted to stop at a repair shop and have a new key made; we’ve lost the old one.”

  He was sitting sideways, face turned toward her, studying her profile. In one way it was annoying, in another way it was excessively flattering. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.

  “Didn’t the mister object to your coming out like this?”

  She thought it was said kiddingly; it was one of those things should have been said kiddingly. But when she looked at him, his face was dead serious.

  She eyed him in frank surprise. “How did you know? We had a
little set-to about the car, that was all. I wanted it and he didn’t want me to have it; wanted it himself, I guess. So I took it anyway, while he was shaving, and here I am.” Then, afraid she had given him a misleading impression of their domestic relations, she tried to minimize it. “Oh, but that’s nothing new with us, that’s been going on ever since we’ve had a car.” It wasn’t true; it had never happened before—until tonight.

  “Oh,” he said. And an alertness that had momentarily come into his expression slowly left it again.

  They came to the belt of woods that crossed and enfolded the roadway, and she slowed to a laggard crawl. She fumbled for a cigarette and he put a match to it. Without their noticing it, the car had come to a full halt. The light wind, no longer in their faces, veered, changed direction. Suddenly she flung the cigarette away from her with a disgusted grimace.

  They both became aware of it at the same time. She crinkled her nose, threw in the clutch.

  “There must be something dead in these woods,” she remarked. “Do you notice that odor? Every once in a while you get a whiff of it.”

  “There’s something dead—somewhere around,” he agreed cryptically.

  As soon as they picked up speed again and came out between the open fields, it disappeared, left behind—apparently—under the dank trees. He didn’t say a word from that time on. That only occurred to her later. He forgot to thank her when they drew up at the house. He forgot even to say good night. He was evidently lost in thought, thinking of something else entirely.

  Gil’s grip, as she entered their bedroom in the dark, fell on her shoulder like the jaws of a steel trap—and was just as merciless. He must have been standing unseen a little inside the doorway. His voice was an unrecognizable strangled sound.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to let anyone get in that car with you!”

  “I just met him now, on my way back.”

  “Where’d you go with it? I’ve died every minute since you left!”

  “I told you I wanted to see the new war picture.”

  The idea seemed to send him floundering back against the bedroom wall in the dark.

  “You went to the movies?” he gasped. “And where was the car? What’d you do with it while you were in there?”

  “What does anyone do with a car while they’re in seeing a show? I left it parked around the corner from the theater.”

  This time he just gave a wordless gasp—the sort of sound that is wrenched from a person when something goes hurtling by and narrowly misses hitting him.

  She was in a half sleep when some sense of impending danger aroused her. It was neither a sound nor a motion, it was just the impalpable presence of some menace in itself. She started up. There was a late moon tonight, and the room was dark-blue and white, not black. Gil was crouched to one side of the window, peering down, his back to her. Not a muscle rippled, he was so still.

  “Gil, what is it?” she breathed softly.

  His silencing hiss came back even softer, no louder than a thread of steam escaping from a radiator valve.

  She put her foot to the floor, crept up behind him. The sibilance came again:

  “Get back, you fool. I don’t want him to see me up here.”

  The sound of a stealthy tinkering came up from below, somewhere. A very small sound it was in the night stillness. She peered over his shoulder. Ward was standing down there at the garage doors, fumbling with them.

  “If he gets them open and goes in there—”

  Suddenly she foreshortened her glance, brought it down perpendicularly over Gil’s shoulder, saw the gun for the first time, blue-black as a bottle fly in the moonlight. Steady, for all Gil’s nerves; held so sure and steady there wasn’t a waver in it. Centered remorselessly on the man outside the garage down there.

  “Gil!” Her inhalation of terror seemed to fill the room with a sound like rushing wind.

  He stiff-armed her behind him, never even turned his head, never even took his eyes off his objective. “Get back, I tell you. If he gets them open, I’m going to shoot.”

  But this would be murder, the very thing she’d dreaded so Monday, and that had missed them the first time by a hairbreadth. He must have the money hidden in there in the garage. She had to do something to stop him, to keep it from happening. She floundered across the room on her bare feet, found the opposite wall, groped along it.

  “Gil, get back. I’m going to put on the lights.”

  She just gave him time enough to swerve aside, snapped the switch, and the room flared into noonday brilliance that cast a big warning yellow patch on the ground outside.

  There was a single retreating footfall on the concrete runway down there, and the next time they looked, the space in front of the garage doors showed empty.

  She crept out to the head of the stairs, listened, came back again.

  “He’s gone to bed,” she said. “I heard the day bed creak.”

  The reaction had set in; the tension Gil had been under must have been terrific. He was shaking all over like someone attached to an electric reducing belt. “He’ll only make another stab at it again tomorrow night. I can’t stand it any more, I can’t stand it any more! I’m getting out of here—now.”

  It was no use reasoning with him, she could see that at a glance. He was in a state bordering on frenzy. For a moment she was half tempted to say: “Oh, let’s go downstairs to him now, the two of us, admit you raised the check, give him back the money, and get it over with! Anything’s better than this nightmare!”

  But she checked herself. How much did they get for doing what he’d done? Ten years? Twenty? Her courage failed her; she had no right to ask him to give up that much of his life.

  Meanwhile he was whipping a necktie around his collar, shrugging on his jacket. She whispered: “Gil, let’s stop and think before we cut ourselves off completely—Where can we go, at this hour?”

  “I rented a furnished room in the city today, under an assumed name.” He whispered an address. “We’ll be safe there for a couple of days at least. As soon as I can get boat tickets—I have to get rid of that car, that’s the main thing.”

  “But, Gil, don’t you see we’re convicting ourselves, by doing this?”

  “Are you coming with me? Or are you doing to let me down just when I need you most, like women usually do? You’re half in love with him already! I’ve seen the looks he’s starting to give you. They all fall for you; why shouldn’t he? All right, stay here with him then.”

  She silenced him by pressing her fingers to his mouth. “To the bitter end,” she whispered, misty-eyed, “to the bitter end. If you want it this way, then this is the way it’ll be.”

  He didn’t even thank her: she didn’t expect him to, anyway. “Go out there again and make sure he’s sleeping.”

  She came back, said: “He’s snoring; I can hear him all the way up here.”

  While she began to dress with frantic haste, Gil started down ahead.

  “I’ll take the brakes off, you take the wheel, and I’ll push it out into the road so he won’t hear us start.”

  Ward’s snoring filled the house as she crept down the dark stairs after Gil moments later. “Why? Why?” she kept thinking distractedly. But she’d made her decision; she went ahead unfalteringly.

  He had the garage doors open by the time she’d joined him. The place smelled terrible; a stray cat must have found its way in and died in there some place. She got in, guided the car out backward as he pushed at the hood. Then he shifted around to the rear. The incline of the concrete path helped carry them down to the road. You could still hear Ward snoring inside the house, from out where they were. Gil pushed it down the road a considerable distance from the house, before he jumped in and took over the wheel.

  “Made it,” he muttered hoarsely.

  She wasn’t a slow driver herself by any means, but she’d never forced the car to such a speed as he got out of it now. The gauge broke in new numbers on their dial. The wheels seemed to churn
air most of the time and just come down for contact at intervals.

  “Gil, take a little of the head off it.” She shuddered. “You’ll kill the two of us!”

  “Look back and see if there’s anything in sight behind us.”

  There was, but far away. It had nothing to do with them. It definitely wasn’t Ward; he couldn’t have gotten another car that quickly. But it spurred Gil on to keep up that death-inviting pace long after they’d lost sight of it. And then suddenly, ahead—

  The other car peered unexpectedly at them over a rise. There was plenty of room for them both, at a normal rate of speed. They wouldn’t even have had to swerve; neither was hogging the road. But Gil was going so fast, and in the attempt to shift over farther, their rear wheels swept out of line with their front, they started a long forward skid, and the other car nicked them in passing. It wasn’t anything; at an ordinary rate of speed it would have just scraped the paint off their fender or something. But it swept them against a tree growing close to the roadway, and that in turn flung them back broadside on the asphalt again. Miraculously they stayed right side up, but with a bad dent toward their rear where they’d hit the tree. The rumble lid had sprung up and that whole side of the chassis was flattened in.

  The other car had stopped farther down the road; it hadn’t been going any too slow itself. She was on the floor, thrown there in a coiled-rope formation, but unhurt. She heard Gil swear icily under his breath, fling open the door, shoot out as though pursued by devils.

  She looked up into the rear-sight mirror and there was a face in it. The sunken, hideously grinning face of Homer Burroughs, peering up above the level of the forcibly opened rumble. She could see it so plain, swimming on the moonlit mirror; even the dark bruises mottling it under the silvery hair, even the heavy auto wrench riding his shoulder like an epaulette, thrown up out of the bottom of the rumble as his body had been thrown up—like a macabre jack-in-the-box. And the odor of the woods that she and Ward had noticed earlier was all around her in the night, though she was far from those particular woods now.