Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Ann was taking the ladderback on the far side of the ridge. The rain was heavier now and the landscape was swaddled in mist. Ann spoke now.

  “That row of poles—”

  “Highway eight-twenty-three.” Asa told her. “Easy on that last curve. Then let her go.”

  Ann let her go. She tried to put on her brakes at the stop sign, slid out on the highway. Asa opened the car door, landed on the shoulder, rifle at ready. He heard the roar of a motor.

  “Get down,” he cried to his daughter. Asa got in front, crouched behind the hood.

  PRESENTLY a pickup truck came up, and Asa showed himself, waving his hat. The truck stopped.

  “Howdy, Asa,” a bearded man called. “What in thunderation are you hunting this kind of a day?”

  “Holdup. Shot son-in-law. Swing the truck across the road.”

  “Well, I’ll be blasted,” the man exclaimed. All at once he seemed to comprehend. Putting the truck in low, he made a half turn.

  “Who pays, if they wreck me?” he demanded.

  “I will. Get down in the ditch. Hurry.” The farmer obeyed. Before he slid off the shoulder, he turned, listening.

  “Car,” he shouted to Asa.

  “I know it. Ann! Dive for the ditch.”

  She was out of the car, and she held an automatic. Asa backed to her machine. He reached out and shoved his daughter backward. She went down in heap, but she didn’t try to rise again. Coming out of the mist ahead was a car. It was black.

  Watching from behind Ann’s car, Asa saw the black sedan slow up a block distant. Then the driver sent it out to the far shoulder. Asa had expected that too. The farmer hadn’t done an expert job, but the sedan would have to slow down a lot, or risk tumbling into the ditch. With a squeal of tires, the sedan plowed around the truck, driver wrenching at the wheel to regain footing on shoulder and pavement.

  From a rear window a submachine chattered. Glass crashed from Ann’s car. The sedan hung precariously on the shoulder, then skidded back to the pavement.

  Ignoring the machine-gunner, now forced out of range, Asa dropped to a knee. He held the rifle steady. The sights lined on the right rear tire.

  Spong!

  A blob, whitish, like dust, appeared behind the sedan. It went roaring on, but from the farmer came the first whoop.

  “You got his tire, Asa. You busted it—with one shot.”

  “Ought to, at less’n a hundred yards.”

  He ignored sporadic fire as the gunner on the back seat tried to fire from an awkward position, half out the rear window. Ann had crawled up, flushed and muddy. A stocking was down and her skirt was torn.

  “Turn the car around,” Asa said. “They’re still going, but they ain’t going fast. Pete,” he snapped at the farmer,” hightail down the road. When you reach Joy’s tourist camp, tell ’em to take out this way with whatever they got. In other words, call for help.”

  Ann was backing the car. Tight lipped, she whipped the machine around. The sedan was already a mile away. Asa clambered in.

  “How fast can you go?” he asked.

  “Bob’s made seventy-five. I never tried that speed. Till now,” she added.

  Asa glanced at her.

  “Honey, I’m not crazy,” he cried over the roar of the car. “I have to do it.”

  Before she could ask his meaning, Asa lifted his rifle stock, drove forward against the windshield on his side with all his might. The shatterproof glass held, save in the spot of direct contact. There was a hole somewhat larger than a dollar. Asa slid his rifle barrel through the hole.

  “That’s why,” he called. Ann nodded, lips tight.

  Ahead, they could see the black sedan. It was coming back to them rapidly. Orange dots flashed in staccato brilliance from the rear window. Asa chuckled grimly. A submachine gun! Just a pistol on a gun stock, with rapid firing mechanism.

  “He is doing what Chief Sanders likes,” Asa mused. “He’s firing fast.”

  Ann lifted her foot from the throttle when a slug kicked up sparks directly ahead. “Steady,” Asa called.

  He laid the sights on the sedan. Try as he might, the rifle bounced. He risked a shot. It missed. Asa swore. “Open up,” he told Ann. “Run up, then slow down quick.”

  The girl obeyed. Orange sparks stuttered, but this time Ann didn’t lift her foot. They were within considerably less than a block of the sedan. In fact it was, as Asa computed it, under a hundred yards, and twice slugs hit their car. Then Ann lifted her foot.

  THIS time Asa brought the rifle sights up, till they centered momentarily upon the gas tank. Slugs hit back again, but not with force.

  Spong!

  The sedan pulled away again. It weaved across the road. The driver made a desperate effort and won out. But Ann shouted as she identified the wide, slick trail parting the surface water caused by rain.

  “Gasoline!” she called.

  Asa nodded. “Yep. She’s leaking. Just take your time, from now on.”

  “Don’t you want to try again?”

  “Just follow.”

  The sedan shot ahead, went over a sharp crest. Ann opened up, saw the bandits on a second crest. She saw also the ever present trail. It showed much plainer as they began to run out of the rain area. And now the sedan swerved from the road.

  Asa whooped.

  “Get ready to stop. They’re out of gas.” Men were piling out, three of them. The first one ran down from the road bearing machine-gun and a heavy satchel. The other two crouched beside the sedan and opened fire. Ann clamped on the brakes to a sliding stop. And Asa held his rifle through the windshield hole.

  This was easy. Three hundred yards! With the sights Asa had used, afield and on target ranges, this wasn’t a hard shot. He picked the bandit beside the left fender.

  Spong!

  The man rolled off the fender, machine-gun falling to the pavement. The man with the satchel had gone over a stone wall. From there he fired, reloaded and fired again. But Asa was drawing his sights on the man still behind the sedan.

  Asa was working slowly. He had the man now. He squeezed the trigger slowly.

  Spong!

  “Oh,” Ann exclaimed. “Dad, I slipped off the seat.”

  The man behind the sedan evidently had had enough. He made a flying leap, crossed the ditch and rolled over the stone wall. The man with the satchel took off like a scared rabbit, ran toward a wooded ridge.

  “Won’t do for him to reach the woods,” Asa muttered. He swiveled his rifle. The angle was short enough. The man had reached the bottom of a dry creek bed, was clambering up the far side. “Five hundred,” Asa said.

  He aimed carefully. This was the man with the factory payroll—with the money he had taken from Bob.

  Spong!

  For seconds Asa thought he had missed. The bandit was near the top of the bank over the creek bed. Suddenly he let go and rolled in a heap to the bottom. He threshed about. And to Asa’s ears came the distant wail of a siren.

  “They’re coming,” Ann said. She said it calmly, not at all with a trace of excitement. “They’re coming.”

  “Uh-huh.” Asa had reloaded.

  He watched the bandit in the creek bed grow still. Then he saw the man behind the stone wall climb up, hands upraised. Asa grunted. “All right, honey,” he said quietly. “Now you can take that automatic down there and hold one of Bob’s robbers, till they get here.”

  But Ann was shivering, and crying softly now. So Asa got out and waved for the surviving bandit to come forward.

  Roaring up were two cars, loaded with state patrolmen. They bounced out with shotguns and submachine guns. They shouted, circled Asa and others, at the exsheriff’s words, shinnied over the stone wall and headed for the bandit in the creek bed. Others were examining the man Asa had shot beside the sedan. Then they looked at tire and gas tank. They were gathered about Asa, supporting one bandit, guarding the second, and laying out the third, when two more cars came to screeching stops.

  Chief Sanders got out
ahead of his men. He hurried to the sergeant in charge of the state patrolmen. The state partolman talked rapidly, indicating Asa and Ann.

  Sanders looked at the sedan, then shook his head. The chief came up to Asa, and he had a strange look on his face.

  “You got both, and the car?” he asked. “You and your daughter?”

  “Matter of getting ahead of ’em, then stopping ’em,” Asa answered. He felt tired, and not as exalted as he had. “If I hadn’t, maybe somebody else would have. What’s more important now, is how bad off is Bob?”

  “Shoulder,” Sanders said. He looked at Ann, grinned. “You can’t hurt that guy. Bet he’s wondering why you’re not at the hospital, instead of running down three armed men like these.”

  Sanders put Ann in her car.

  “Drive back as fast as you want,” he said. “I’ll take that old rascal of a father back with me, with all the fixings of a war hero. He rates it, the old son of a gun.” Asa didn’t realize, till they were on their way back to Readyville, how it had told on him. But Chief Sanders was talking, and he was mentioning the rifle match.

  “Changed my mind,” he was explaining. “You’re going to captain a team. It’s going to be my best shots. Coached by you, of course,” he added. “And I’ll put up money the Readyville team will be heard from.” Asa thanked him, mumbling the words. He closed his eyes. The tires were singing sweet music as the caravan headed in triumph, back to Readyville.

  THE CAT CAME BACK

  Ken Tillson

  Framed for murder, war veteran Bill Ames uses a feline as his deputy in his quest for the real killers!

  “HATCH” WELTON pulled his taxi up in front of Marlow Manor, the fancy name for the shabby apartment house where I stayed.

  “It’s only ten, Bill,” he said. “How about a hand of gin rummy at my flat? It’s kinda lonesome with the wife out of town.”

  “No soap, Hatch,” I said. “I’m leaving for Seattle tomorrow.”

  Hatch shook his head sadly.

  “You gonna jump from job to job, place to place, all the time? Why don’t you find a nice steady chick and settle down?”

  “Let her find me.” I grinned. “So long.

  His cab rattled off and I went up the steps. In his slow way, Hatch worried a lot about me. He had, ever since I’d come back with a Purple Heart and war nerves.

  The door opened in my face and that good-looking blonde from the apartment above mine came out.

  “Hello,” I said. “Warm evening, isn’t it?”

  Maybe it was, but she provided a chill. She went right past me as if I were one of the potted ferns in front of the door. I watched her trim figure hurry down the street. Too bad all that snobbishness had to be wrapped up in such a nice package.

  She was still on my mind as I entered my apartment. Funny girl. Since the day she and the elderly guy I figured to be her father—the card outside gave their name as Ingles—had moved into Marlow Manor a few weeks back, both of them had deliberately avoided their fellow tenants.

  They looked and dressed like people who could afford better dumps than run-down Marlow Manor. What was behind their stand-offishness? Suspicion? Fear? Suspicion and fear of what—or whom?

  A blast of noise was hitting my eardrums. That canned symphony breaking out again from the top floor, Room 411. The manager, after I’d beefed about it, had told me why. Old lady Mayo, who had moved in just a week ago, was deaf, bedridden, and had insomnia. It took a forty-piece philharmonic to lullaby her to sleep, with her pig-eyed nephew, Hugh Mayo, running the automatic phonograph. The music soothed her nerves, and had to be loud because otherwise she couldn’t hear it.

  Half-undressed, I went into the bathroom and shaved. By the time I came out the music had stopped.

  THEN the cat walked in.

  He came right through the window from the fire-escape and in one jump was on my bed. It was the Ingles’ cat. I’d seen the snooty blonde petting it. A handsome white Persian that had a habit of wandering all over the apartment house.

  “Scat, cat!” I yelled at it. “Get off that bed!”

  The silver bell on the cat’s thick leather collar tinkled clearly as the animal pranced up and down on my clean sheets. It was leaving muddy tracks!

  I yelled at it again, then sat up straight. Mud? When it hadn’t rained all day?

  I grabbed the cat, examining each of its four paws. The pads were dark, moist. Not mud. The smears were reddish-brown. Blood!

  Revolving the squirming feline, I looked for cuts. Not a mark. I dropped the cat and went to the window. On the sill were the animal’s footprints. I got out my flashlight and opened the window all the way. There, on the white framework of the fire-escape, were the cat’s ominous paw-marks, leading from somewhere above.

  No cat could have had the curiosity I had then. I was sans shirt and shoes, but still decent. I climbed out onto the fire-escape and started up. The spotty trail led right to the landing above my apartment.

  A window was partway open and under the half-drawn shade light showed. I used the flashlight. The cat’s trade-mark was darkly outlined on the sill. It had come from this apartment—the Ingles apartment.

  No sound from within. I peered under the shade. And I saw it. An overturned chair. A man lying face down in front of it. Blood spreading out in a pool around him. And from the pool, tracks of blood-stained paws leading to the window.

  Something—maybe it was the thought that the man wasn’t quite dead—pulled me into the room. Except for that still form on the floor the place was quiet and unoccupied. But not undisturbed. It looked as if a truck had gone over it lightly, then backed up and plowed through without brakes.

  The man on the floor was Ingles all right. And dead. With a bullet-hole through his forehead, and another wound in his right shoulder. That’s where the blood had come from. A revolver lay close by. His left hand, with the index finger pointing in an odd way, was limp in a smear of blood.

  A key turned in the lock of the door. I swung around like a guilty man caught in the act. The girl came in. She shut the door before she saw me standing there, covering the body. She dropped a package and her purse, and a scream started in her throat.

  “Hold it,” I said quickly. “And brace yourself.”

  That seemed to scare her into silence. I moved aside so she could see the body. She looked, then tottered. I held on to her to keep her from keeling over. She was as white as a sheet, but her whispered words came out almost unconsciously:

  “I knew it! I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

  I helped her into a chair and she suddenly broke down, covering her face with her hands.

  “It’s too late for a doctor,” I said awkwardly. “Maybe I’d better call the police.”

  “Police?” She pulled out of her daze and nodded jerkily. “Yes. The police. My—my purse please.”

  She had courage, that girl. I picked up the bag she had dropped and handed it to her. Then I went to the phone and called Headquarters. I gave the address, said it looked like murder, and hung up. When I turned around the blonde had a gun on me.

  It was just a little pearl-handled deal she had taken from her purse, but the way she held it and looked at me made my hair stand on end. I sat down.

  “Miss Ingles, I hope you don’t think I did this!”

  “You broke into this room!”

  No denying that. I began to tell her why I was there, but stopped when I saw that her red-rimmed accusing eyes were fixed on my chest. I looked down and saw a dark smear on my upper torso—just a brief sideswipe of that cat’s blood-damp paw when I’d picked it up—but it was enough to make me a murderer in this girl’s eyes.

  INSPECTOR DOYLE and two cops arrived. Doyle was a bulldoggish character who listened carefully while the girl explained how she had gone blocks looking for a drug store, to fill a prescription her father needed, and had come back to find him dead, with me standing over the body.

  Doyle looked at me as if I had been the guy who shot Lincoln.
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  “Search him, boys,” he said.

  “Do I look like I’m hiding anything?” I demanded. “And will you give me a chance to put some more clothes on?”

  The medical examiner arrived and went into a huddle with Doyle over the corpse. Doyle crooked a finger at me.

  “Let’s have your story, Ames.”

  I told him. He walked over to the window and flashed a light on the fire-escape.

  “So you busted into this apartment just because a cat had spots on its paws,” he said. “When’d you hear the shots?”

  “I didn’t hear any shots.”

  He scowled.

  “No shots? This man was plugged with what looks like a thirty-eight. There had to be shots.”

  “The music was too loud, I guess.”

  “Music? What music?”

  “From upstairs,” I said. “Mrs. Mayo. She’s an invalid and her nephew plays the phonograph for her. Loud.”

  “Music. Cats. A trespasser without shirt or shoes. This is some case.” Doyle walked over to the blonde. “I know this has hit you like a ton of bricks,” he said to her, “but we’ve got to know why your father was killed.”

  His blunt kindness seemed to steady her. She had put that deadly pearl-handled toy aside, and now she looked at me, then back at Doyle.

  “You know. He knows. My father was murdered for the Paris Star.”

  “Paris Star!” Doyle stared. “Then your father was—”

  “John Ordway. I’m his daughter, Joan.”

  “But why are you living here under the name of Ingles?”

  “We were being followed. Somebody was after the jewel. Father wouldn’t put it in a deposit vault or let it out of his sight. I persuaded him to move here under another name. He said not to worry, that he’d hide the Paris Star where nobody would find it. Except me. He said he’d tell me. But he was killed before—”

  “Before he could tell you where he hid the diamond?” Doyle prompted.

  “No.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “Before he could hide it.”

  Diamond. Paris Star. It was all something out of Dali to me. Even what I was staring at now—the strangely pointing finger of the murdered man’s left hand. The light shone down on that smear of blood and I could swear there were letters there. A faint crude scrawl, “C-O-L” that trailed off as though Ordway had died before he could finish his message.