by A. A. Glynn
I staggered around a little with a pair of legs that only half belonged to me, and almost fell off them when I caught sight of the fly swatter and who had done the swatting.
Joanne Kilvert was standing back against one of the parked cars. In one hand, she held a police baton, taken from Tonks, who was now sitting on the grass, feeling the jaw I had slugged; in the other she had an Army Colt, held to cover Tonks, the semi-conscious chauffeur, Richards, and the sergeant, both out cold, and Athelstan Shelmerdine.
Shelmerdine was a picture. He was up against the bole of a tree, dithering visibly. His complexion was as yellow as a snake’s belly, and he had suddenly become an old, old man. He held one hand up to his face and a thin thread of blood was creeping down towards his chin.
Joanne stood her ground, holding the big Colt firmly, looking like Calamity Jane in modern dress.
“When you hit the policeman first, I managed to get his gun while he was unconscious,” she explained. “Shelmerdine tried to stop me, but I scratched him across the face, then I took the policeman’s club and hit the sergeant and Cortines, the chauffeur.”
I think I managed a grin. I know I quoted Kipling.
“‘The female of the species.’ Shelmerdine, don’t think this girl won’t have nerve enough to shoot if anyone gets smart; she will. She has plenty of cause to trigger your torpedoes, too. Your Miss Jones is the sister of Arthur Kilvert, the man who stood up to your lousy trade union grafting.”
Athelstan Shelmerdine, the mogul of the rackets, looked something akin to a deflated balloon. I got a great kick out of seeing him so.
Joanne kept the mobsters covered while I made a quick round of the wounded. I took the Army Colt from the belt of the unconscious sergeant, another from Richards’ shoulder holster, and the chauffeur proved to have a wicked little derringer in the pocket of his tunic.
I shoved the derringer into my pants pocket, handed one of the Colts to Joanne and kept the other rammed into Shelmerdine’s paunch while I frisked him.
He didn’t have a weapon.
“Got so respectable you don’t carry a heater any more, eh, Athelstan?” I sneered. “But why should you when you can get stupid lugs like these to do your gunning for you?”
Shelmerdine said nothing, he simply stood there and quivered.
“Keep your eye on ’em a little while longer, Two-Gun Katie,” I told Joanne. I crossed to the car belonging to the Rollinsville Police Department, lifted the hood and snapped every connection I could break with my bare hands. Then, for good measure, I pulled the valves out of both rear tyres and watched the car flop down on to the rims. Then I pitched the valves into the long grass.
Tonks was still sitting on the grass, rubbing his jaw; the chauffeur was easing himself painfully into a sitting position. The sergeant was still out cold, but Richards was beginning to twitch. Shelmerdine was still standing against the tree, looking like a pricked balloon the colour of last month’s cheese.
I hoisted Cortines, the chauffeur, to his feet, none too gently, stripped him of his black, high-collared tunic, and buttoned it on my own coatless torso. It was a pretty good fit and it covered the shirt that the hoodlums had reduced almost to ribbons. I jammed the cap on my head.
“I hope I don’t catch any of your body-population,” I told him and I dropped him. He hit the ground limply like a sack of wet sand.
I faced Shelmerdine and offered him a word of advice.
“Shelmerdine, you’re through. The package of papers will be in the hands of the Crime Commission in a matter of days now, and I’m not bluffing this time. Your day as the big string-puller is over. Go home and shoot yourself—save the taxpayers the expense of feeding you in jail.”
Joanne and I, keeping the Colts levelled, backed towards the big car belonging to Shelmerdine.
It was quite a car, further proof that crime pays in material things, if not in peace of mind. Inside, it was just a shade smaller than Carnegie Hall. Joanne seated herself in the off-side seat and placed her two Colts in the glove compartment.
I sank into the driver’s seat and hit the starter.
We left the battlefield.
I took a backward glance at Shelmerdine as I gunned the big car along the rutted track.
He was standing against the tree, surveying his injured strong-arms.
He looked very weary, very flabby, and very old.
I almost felt sorry for him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Out of the gate, along the dirt road to the highway and then northward, I drove the powerful car.
“Still going to give yourself up to the police?” Joanne asked, as we streaked up the ribbon of highway in the direction of Peru.
“I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it. I want to clear up that killing for the sake of Jack and Beth Kay, but I want to see you safe in Chicago first. When the Crime Commission gets round to investigating those papers, we’ll be key witnesses. I’m half inclined to make a run for it, through South Bend and clear up to Chicago and risk being picked up. This chauffeur’s get-up will help to cover my identity, and the cops will have quit searching for me now, under the impression I’m in the custody of those so-called policemen at Rollinsville.”
I weighed the situation in silence for a while. Most of all, I wanted to get Joanne clear away from any danger from the Shelmerdine combine. I didn’t figure on Athelstan Shelmerdine staying a pricked balloon for long. He may or may not have believed my story about the papers being on the way to the Crime Commission but, either way, as his man Richards pointed out earlier, we both knew far too much.
In Shelmerdine’s book, we were marked for the rub-out treatment.
“Yes,” I said, “we’ll make a run for it, and risk the consequences. Little Miss Two-Gun Katie has had a busy time riding the range. I guess it’s about time she headed home and spent a peaceful night tucked up in little old Chicago.”
She smiled.
“You’re okay, Lantry, did anyone ever tell you that?”
That made me feel uncomfortable. I blushed. Me—Mike Lantry!
“Lay off, Joanne. I bet you tell that to all the private eyes who run around with holes in their heads.”
“No, I mean it, Mike. At first I thought you were extra-hard, extra-tough, and extra-cynical. I thought you were efficient, but the kind of life a man like you would lead would make you not very nice to know. I was wrong—you’re okay.”
“Lay off, you’re getting under the chinks in my armour.”
I turned my head away and concentrated on the road in order to avoid her elfin face. A face like that, cute as a chocolate cake, could grow on a man if he let it get a good grip on him.
There was a packet of cigarettes in the driver’s glove compartment. They must have been the chauffeur’s, but they were a good brand. I took them and gave one to the girl.
“Let’s smoke, by way of changing the subject,” I suggested.
“Okay. The subject’s changed. Give me a light.”
There was a dashboard lighter from which we lit our cigarettes.
We smoked in silence for some time while the big car zoomed up the highway. Shortly before reaching Peru, we passed a lone motorcycle patrolman sitting his machine at the side of the highway. He gave us the merest of passing glances.
On the outskirts of Peru there was a diner where we stopped for a meal of french-fried potatoes, fish, and coffee. It was rough grub, prepared for a clientele of truckers, but it tasted like ambrosia to me. The diner had a washroom where I cleaned up my battered face. I needed a shave badly, and when I looked into the mirror, I realised I didn’t quite fill the part of a chauffeur. Nobody in the diner seemed to care about that, they didn’t even appear to notice that my coat and pants weren’t made for each other.
I had Walt Toland and the boys from the Chicago branch of World Wide on my mind. The only way I could contact them was by calling the Chicago office, which was in touch with them by radio transmitter. By this time I guessed they would be somewhere aro
und the Stokestown area. The diner didn’t have a telephone, which annoyed me, so I couldn’t contact Chicago.
I stalked out and met Joanne at the car. She had done some smartening up in the ladies’ washroom. She looked cuter than two chocolate cakes now.
We hummed into Peru.
In that single-street town, I found the post office, and called Chicago.
O’Toole answered.
“O’Toole, this is Lantry. Are you still in radio contact with Walt and his boys?”
“Yes.”
“Well, where are they?”
“Somewhere in the region of Stokestown. They say they drew a blank at the Shelmerdine home, chief. They busted in, looking for you and the girl, but the whole place was empty but for a woman and a kid.”
“Then what?”
“Then they headed for Stokestown after they got your earlier message. They did some snooping around and found a trucker, Chuck somebody-or-other, who told them you’d been there and got in a fight on the street. He showed them a place on the road where he dropped you and the girl.”
“And where are they now?”
“Still combing around that section of Indiana, I guess.”
“Well, get in touch with them again and tell them to quit combing. They would have been useful while the girl and I were battling the whole Shelmerdine combine with our bare hands, but now they’re merely wasting gasoline, for which World Wide is paying. Tell ’em we’re in Peru, heading home. I’ve got news for you and them, O’Toole. There’s a package in the mail addressed to you, and that means the Shelmerdine bunch is on its way out for keeps.”
O’Toole made a noise of appreciation.
“Are you safe?” he asked. “Are you out of danger?”
“Reasonably so, I guess. A country sheriff has clawed in some of the smaller fry of the Shelmerdine shock troops, while the big boss and some others are stranded in rural America with a jimmied car. Tell Walt and the others to head for home.”
“Okay,” agreed O’Toole.
I thought of Walt and his boys running around the Indiana countryside half-cocked. They were good guys, all of them, and couldn’t really be blamed for failing to pick up the erratic trail the girl and I had left during the previous few hours.
“Private dicks!” I said to myself, imitating the scornful tones of Chief Richards.
Back in the car with Joanne, I started up and headed out of Peru. We made good going, it was pleasant travelling that stretch of highway over the flat land between Peru and Plymouth.
Evening came sifting down slowly as we approached Plymouth. I began to get a little less edgy. Cops we passed on the way did not pay any attention to me. I began to forget I was a hunted man.
I would take the girl to Chicago tonight, make sure she was safe and done with all this hectic rushing around the country, then I would contact the police at South Bend and clear up the business of my shooting Speedy Kornes.
We passed the spot where I first found Joanne walking in the rain, on past the dirt road where I turned to avoid the pursuing Shelmerdine hoods. It all seemed so long ago in the past, now.
Night shrouded the land as we passed the boarding into which the hoodlum’s car had crashed. The grinning woman on the billboard still advertised somebody’s toothpaste, but the wreck of the gangsters’ sedan had gone.
We reached Plymouth, threaded our way through the lighted streets, emerged and headed north for South Bend, with its bitter associations.
We smoked the remainder of the chauffeur’s cigarettes, chatted some, then Joanne fell asleep.
I had seen her asleep before. Each time she had reminded me of an unprotected little kid. She reminded me of a little kid that first night, a few miles back there, in the trees around the dirt road where we hid from the gunmen close behind. Right now, she was like a child, curled up on the soft seat of the car that Athelstan Shelmerdine could afford out of the dirty money he had amassed over the years of full-time thievery. She was a far cry from the spirited young woman who went into action earlier that day with a cop’s club and an Army Colt, but she didn’t look scared any more.
She seemed contented, resting peacefully.
She thought I was okay.
And that was a compliment.
The lights of South Bend came over the horizon, distant, glittering stars, multi-coloured.
I steered towards them, remembering the first night I drove towards them in the company of Joanne Kilvert. I remembered how I reflected on the way a spangled cloak of lights can hide the filth of a city. I remembered what I left behind me the last time I saw South Bend, a dead man, bullet-pounded on the lawn of one of my best friends.
That was ugly.
A rotten business. I had gone into the home of two fine people, and something from the dirty world I moved in followed in my wake.
I would never be able to apologise enough to Beth and Jack for what happened that Sunday morning.
I brightened with the thought that my shooting the pockmarked little hood was better than his putting a bullet through Jack, which was what he was fixing to do when I fired on him.
Joanne still slept.
Past the city limit signs and on towards the heart of South Bend I gunned the car.
The lights of the city flashed past. I began to wonder if Codfish the Cop would be anywhere around to recognise me, and I was grateful for the visored chauffeur’s cap that served to shade my face.
I was on the centre of Michigan Street when I first suspected I was being tailed. A small car, open, with three or four dark blobs of humanity in it, was sticking close to my tail. Maybe I was too jittery, I thought. It’s not notably unusual to have a car at your back for a considerable length of time on a busy thoroughfare of a city.
A second car slithered out of a side-turning and fell in behind the one on my tail. It was a large sedan.
I didn’t care for the pattern of all this.
I decided to try them.
At the junction of Monroe Street I made a right turn. The two cars, keeping the same measured distance behind me, followed. I kept on along Monroe until I reached the crossing of Main Street, turned into Main Street, with one eye on the mirror.
They came after me, keeping the same distance, unhurried.
I gunned the car. So did the drivers at my back.
I tried desperately to recollect my South Bend geography, hit the gas even harder and did a quick round-trip of several blocks: Colfax Avenue, Taylor Street, Western Avenue, across the intersection of Lafayette Street, and on towards Michigan again.
The speed of the car woke Joanne.
“What’s happening?” she asked, sleepily.
“I think we’re being tailed, but I’m not sure. Two cars. I’ve lost them, now.”
Her face blanched.
“I thought we were free of trouble,” she said.
“So did I. I was getting too complacent. It might have been pure coincidence that those cars went everywhere I did, on the other hand, it might not.”
I turned left off Western and on to Michigan.
The road behind was clear, but I was still uneasy. I might have given them the slip, but maybe they were playing a crafty game of hide-and-seek.
I kept hitting a fair lick clear through South Bend. Just before hitting the north-bound highway out of the city, Joanne nudged me.
“There are two cars staying close behind us,” she said. “Can you see them?”
“I’ve seen them for a long time,” I told her. “They picked us up on Michigan again. If you look closely, you’ll see a third car some distance behind the first two; I think he’s one of the pack, too.”
“But how have they done it?” the girl wanted to know. “Shelmerdine and the others couldn’t possibly have caught up with us—or are they police who recognised you?”
“Not police—another bundle of Shelmerdine’s cat’s-paws. He pulls strings in the underworld of the whole of this section of the map. I suppose he’s contacted some of his puppets among th
e less respectable citizens of South Bend and told them to watch out for and tail us. I don’t like it, Joanne. If Shelmerdine’s convinced I told him the truth about getting rid of those papers, he has nothing to lose, and he won’t hesitate to give his hoods the high sign to finish us off—Chicago style.”
She clutched my arm and glanced with fear-fraught eyes at the dark shapes of the pursuing cars.
“What can we do, Mike? We’re in open country now; they can catch up with us and start shooting.”
I eyed the pursuing cars in the mirror. Three of them, keeping an even distance each behind the other and the first of them about two hundred yards behind our car.
“Catching up with a high-powered bus like this is a man-sized job,” I replied, “when I pull the throttle out, like this!”
I gave Shelmerdine’s plutocrat’s wagon everything under the hood and it went rocketing up the darkened highway with dizzying speed.
“I think we can shake those leeches off with a series of quick bursts like this, they can’t match this speed. We’ll make a dead run for Chicago and let’s hope we don’t meet up with any police patrols, because I intend to break the limit considerably tonight.”
I kept on gunning the car and the three cars at our back dwindled. I slackened speed again for a time, then jerked the big vehicle into another spurt.
There was no sign of the three following cars now.
Joanne pointed to a distant glitter of lights, reflected in far-off water sheened by the fitful moon.
“The lake,” she said, “we got this near to Chicago without trouble, at least.”
“Yeah,” I answered, watching the distant shine of Lake Michigan, “but we still have a lot of ground to travel; Gary, East Chicago, and Hammond. If Shelmerdine has any dogs in those towns, he might have called them up, which means we’ll have a sizeable pack to dodge.”
I drove in silence for a long time, keeping a watch on the mirror for indications of the pursuing vehicles. Only the dark sweep of the highway was visible at our backs.
