A Gunman Close Behind

by A. A. Glynn

  The dark figures were still running down the slope.

  High over the stripped rafters, the helicopter came on its spinning vanes. The machine-gun artist up there started his weapon to stuttering, raking the end of the ruin furthermost from where I crouched. He was a long way off target, and I realised it was still too dark for me to be seen from the air.

  It was no Sunday school picnic, though, lying there while the airborne gunner triggered at random.

  Sooner or later, it would be bright enough for them to spot me down there in the old ruin; on the other hand, the remainder of the hoods were coming down the slope in the direction of the old house. Once I fired on them, I would give my position away to Shelmerdine and his pilot.

  That couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t going to just lie there and let those mugs finish me without offering something like a fight.

  I took careful aim through the door-space with one of the Colts, triggered it and dropped the leading hood; I fired a second time and saw another dark figure stumble.

  The copter swooped lower, swinging into a change of course, guided by the position of my barking gun.

  On my knees and elbows, holding both revolvers, I scooted out from behind the tumbled debris, the way I had done often enough in war-time combat, and took up a fresh position, lying flat against the wall at the side of the door-space furthest from my first position.

  The submachine gun in the sky chattered a burst, the bullets slamming close to where I had fired from.

  Outside, the hoodlums who had been coming down the slope slackened their speed, but were still advancing cautiously upon the old house. They were temptingly near now, but I had to remember that every shot I fired gave my position away to the gunner in the aircraft. Also, I had to conserve ammunition. One shot fired at the car on the highway, another wild one thrown at the helicopter, and two just fired at the running mobsters meant I had only two shots left in one Colt, while the other still had a fully charged cylinder.

  I waited until the hoodlums outside drew even nearer to the gutted building. Above the crippled rafters, the flying machine buzzed in a circle. I guessed the machine-gun artist was uncertain as to whether or not that last burst had found me.

  Outside, the hoods were almost on what was left of the porch.

  But I waited, lying flat and peeking from the doorway.

  Then I used the two shots. One of the hoodlums pitched forward like a wooden figure while another scooted backwards, howling on a high pitched note.

  Somebody bellowed: ‘Look out! He’s damned accurate!’

  I saw three or four figures running back from the ruins, looking for cover. A spatter of wild shots hit the timbering close to the doorway and the bloated fish in the sky came over towards my position, almost nuzzling the ruined rafters with its rounded nose.

  So I crawled out of there on my belly, dumping the useless Colt on the way.

  As I expected, the machine-gun started to rattle from the aircraft, the slugs streaking for the spot I had just vacated. I was up against a weed-grown and mould-eaten wall now. The dawn was widening. Soon, I would be as obvious as a bedbug at the Waldorf.

  Outside the doorway, shots were being fired at the burnt-out old structure and the gunner in the sky continued to rake the gloomy interior.

  Pretty soon, I’d be a goner if I stayed in there. I was feeling about as comfortable as a long corn in a short shoe.

  There was a square of glassless window a little way along the wall against which I crouched, opening to one side of the old building. I edged along towards it, keeping to the musty shadows and moving through the cluster of high-grown weed.

  The wound in my leg was throbbing furiously.

  Up above, the copter nosed around the rafters again, its gun silent for the time being. Some sporadic shots were still being fired at the front of the ruin. The hoods outside must have been shooting at shadows, but they were wasting ammunition and that was all right by me.

  I reached the square of window.

  I slithered through it, feet first and rump after. There was a patch of weed directly underneath the outside of the window and I landed into it.

  I crouched there for a while to catch my breath. The flying egg-whisk was still hovering over the rafters. The dawn was broadening and I didn’t like that one bit. In my black chauffeur’s coat and cap, I could keep well out of sight in the darkness but, in the first light of the new day, the outfit would make me stand out like a crow on an acacia tree.

  Down in the weeds, I squatted, gripping the Colt.

  My left sock was soggy, the sticky trickle had reached the sole of my foot. At this side of the house, there was a clutter of wild bushes and more trees beyond them, thick trees a man could hide in, trees that were full of shadow to hide a man in a dark outfit. If only he could get through that tangle of bushes to reach them.

  I was thinking about attempting a run through the brush when two sharp-suited figures came around the corner of the ruin. Two of the Shelmerdine hangers-on the big boss had called up to intercept Joanne and myself. They were cheap. They wore loud suits and looked as crummy as a crumb can get; they were lower on the social scale of crookdom than even the black overcoats and soft fedoras.

  But they carried guns and were too close to me for me to feel easy.

  So I fired.

  I hit the leading one in his gun-hand. He dropped his heater with a howl like that of a wounded alley-cat and ran back, clutching his hand. I didn’t think he was too badly hurt. He would probably still be able to write out his two-dollar bet—if he was able to write at all, that is.

  His pal ran with him, bawling: ‘He’s round the side of the house!’

  Which just about fixed it for me, I figured.

  I heard the whirring of Shelmerdine’s flying-machine coming over the remains of the gable of the house.

  And feet were pounding around to my side of the ruin from the front.

  I began to stretch my legs for the undergrowth of bushes separating me from the shelter of the trees. My left leg was aching as if somebody had sneaked up on me and poured a soup-spoonful of hell into my sock.

  The sun came to life, big and golden and sudden.

  I noticed that as I ran because I figured it was the last time I would ever see it. It was an old friend. I had walked under it for a matter of thirty years and I had grown to like it. Right now, though, it was ratting on me, showing me up as a scuttling black beetle for my enemies to crush.

  I made the bushes. They were knee-deep and treacherously tangled.

  The hoodlums who came around from the front of the old house opened up. They fired three or four times as I stumbled through the undergrowth. I ducked and kept running. The bullets missed me, but some only got just by without taking pieces of me with them.

  I fired a couple of wild shots at the hoodlums, which was a panicky and stupid thing to do because it now left me with only three cartridges in the Army Colt.

  The whirring of the hovering aircraft’s propeller sounded loud behind me. I went stumbling through the brush. Vaguely, I wondered about Joanne Kilvert and whether those hoods Shelmerdine had sent after her had caught up with her.

  I turned and saw the rounded mass of the forward part of the helicopter very low behind me. The remainder of the mobsters had held off firing, because Athelstan Shelmerdine was standing up in the machine with a Thompson crooked in his arm. He couldn’t miss now. They knew it. He knew it and was grinning.

  I knew it and, if I grinned, it was a grin of fear.

  There was a symbolic touch to the scene. A reversion to what Shelmerdine had been in the old booze-running days. These many years, he had been the big puppet-master, pulling the strings that operated a bunch of cheap hoodlums and made them do his dirty work. He sat in his mansion, read history books, collected paintings, breathed air scented with beeswax polish, and didn’t even pack a heater.

  Now, he had turned full circle.

  The helicopter was a modern touch, but it didn’t alter the
picture too much. Thirty years ago, it would have been an automobile racing down some obscure Chicago street; but Athelstan Shelmerdine was still what he had been in those days.

  A mobster with a rod.

  Nothing more.

  He was waiting. Standing up and biding his time, holding the Thompson levelled at me. Waiting and grinning while I stumbled through the tangled brush.

  The other mobsters were looking on, waiting for the showdown.

  I kept staggering and stumbling in the direction of the trees.

  I half-turned and fired all my remaining bullets at the hovering machine. They missed, because I was running and panicking, but one starred the tough perspex of the globular body of the machine.

  And Shelmerdine grinned. The youthful chauffeur at the controls grinned.

  I wondered how many times Shelmerdine had done this before, thirty years ago in the alleys on the territory of whatever Chicago side he ran with.

  Giving a man a start. Watching him run down the alley, waiting until he was almost clear, but not quite. Just clear enough to have the hope that he stood half a chance in his heart.

  Then gunning him in the back.

  I figured Shelmerdine was about to start gunning at any second.

  I threw the Colt away. It was empty, useless.

  Then I pitched myself down to the roots of the bushes, just as he opened up with the submachine gun.

  I heard the dry crackle of the weapon and the spatter of the bullets slashing through the greenery. But, I had fooled him. He couldn’t see me. I was down in the depths of the shrubbery, crawling quickly off to one side among the soil and roots.

  I heard Shelmerdine swear above the rattle of the weapon. He stopped firing and the helicopter came dropping lower. I stopped crawling, so the rustle of the bushes would not betray my position.

  Very cautiously, I shoved my head upwards. I could see a small portion of the machine, hovering low enough to be almost touching the tops of the bushes.

  I could see the obese form of Shelmerdine, still standing and flourishing the Thompson, and the pilot, Cortines, crouching over the controls.

  All at once, I remembered the derringer I took from Cortines when I frisked him in the field the day before.

  It was still in my pants pocket. I had forgotten it.

  I fumbled for it, found it, and took aim as the copter nosed a little nearer my position.

  When I fired, I fired at Cortines.

  The perspex of the rounded windshield shattered. I couldn’t miss at that range. Cortines stiffened back in his seat, then he slumped over the controls.

  I started crawling for a new position as Shelmerdine whirled about.

  I kept crawling until I heard a shrill yell, accentuated by the fact that the whirring of the copter’s blades had ceased. I shoved my head up far enough to see the machine plummeting down into the brush, and in a strangely slowed-down fashion, I saw Shelmerdine falling out of the craft, like a man being pitched from a boat.

  Cortines must have fallen across something that cut the engine.

  The helicopter landed in the shrubbery with a terrific crash. It bounced on its skids and heeled over on to its side.

  A voice was screaming horribly and hoarsely from the direction of the machine and I got up into a low crouch and went haring towards it. I realised dimly that Shelmerdine had thrown the Thompson outwards as he fell and I wanted it.

  I was aware of the remaining hoods running towards the overturned machine.

  The hoarse voice was yelling. No words, just yelling and yelling.

  I found the submachine gun lying close to the copter.

  The yelling was coming from Shelmerdine. He was pinned under the weight of the overturned machine. Only the upper third of his body was visible and he was yelling and yelling.

  I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him this time.

  With the submachine gun in my hand, I waited until the hoods got a little nearer. Then I gave them a short burst.

  It was enough. Two dropped and the rest went running back.

  Shelmerdine was still yelling.

  If he’d been an injured dog, I would have shot him to put him out of pain.

  But he wasn’t anything half so worthy as a dog in my book.

  I stood there, my leg throbbing madly. I was prepared to stand there and give the mobsters the remainder of the magazine if anyone showed any fight.

  Maybe I was just a little crazy at that moment.

  A voice called: ‘Hold it, Lantry! Hold it!’

  I saw figures coming forward from the direction of the tree-crested hill, figures in civilian suits, figures in police uniforms, and a slim feminine one in a flowered summer dress.

  I didn’t believe it.

  The mobsters were giving themselves up. There wasn’t an ounce of fight left in them. I guess every one of them was wishing he’d stayed in the pool halls of Gary Bend right then. The cops had their bracelets out in nothing flat.

  Shelmerdine’s screeching died in a gurgling squawk.

  It was Walt Toland who came forward and dropped a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Better late than never, chief,’ he grinned.

  ‘It was damn near never,’ I said. ‘How did you manage to pick up the state police on the way? I didn’t think there were any cops left in the world.’

  ‘They came just natural. When we arrived at the highway back there, they were standing around wondering why so many cars were parked across the roadway and pondering on the nearby shooting.’

  A hefty figure with a crew cut and an arm in a sling came out of the cluster of cops, World Wide Investigations men, and mobsters.

  ‘Hi, Lantry!’

  ‘Jack Kay! What brought you in on this?’

  ‘When your boys came down from Chicago the other day, they stopped by at our place for a brief checkup on what had happened. I joined them for this little run around Indiana. It was like the old days in France, but not quite so much shooting,’ he grinned. ‘Now let’s get back home for a bite to eat. Beth will give me hell for staying away this long.’

  ‘I’ll come back to South Bend,’ I told him, ‘but it’ll be to see the cops about that stiff I planted on your lawn.’

  ‘Strikes me you’ll be commended for that, Mike, not blamed. The cops came nosing around our place after you lit out, and intimated that Speedy Kornes was no loss to anybody. You shot in defence of a third party, which makes it pretty clear for you, and the radio calls for your arrest were strictly routine because you took it on the lam after the shooting.’

  Joanne Kilvert was standing a little coyly at one side.

  ‘So you made it,’ I commented.

  She nodded.

  ‘And you didn’t get caught by the nasty ruffians Athelstan sent after you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No. I reached a service station in East Chicago, phoned Chicago as you told me, then I decided to make a temporary trade with the owner. I gave him that conspicuous big car for a beaten-up old coupe. He thought I was mad, of course, but I drove back here, just in time to meet the police and tell them what was happening. Your investigators arrived a short time later.’

  I forced a grin.

  ‘Smart kid. So you passed Shelmerdine’s lugs somewhere on the way, and the change of cars fooled them. Any time you want a job as a lady shamus, come to World Wide. I think you’re okay, too.’

  The mobsters were handcuffed and a senior policeman came forward, with a friendly smile which is unusual when a public cop faces a private one.

  ‘Seems you’ve been instrumental in busting up a big combine, Mr. Lantry,’ he praised.

  My injured leg remembered to start aching again and I got slightly irritable.

  ‘Stick around, O’Callaghan,’ I said. ‘Wait until World Wide puts certain papers into the hands of the Crime Commission. You’re in for some fun. You’ll see a lot of people in high places suddenly falling into low ones. Meanwhile, you’ll find more Shelmerdine hoods in the custody o
f the Sheriff at Stokestown.’

  Jack Kay fished in his hip pocket and produced a whisky flask. He fisted it into my hand. You can’t beat a sensible married and settled-down man for applying good judgement at the right time.

  ‘Take a swig, Mike, you look peaked.’

  It tasted good.

  ‘Boy!’ I breathed, gratefully. ‘I intend to have three or four more stiff drinks right after I have a slug taken from my leg and square myself with the South Bend Police about that shooting match.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Jack Kay.

  ‘Then a meal and a long, long sleep.’

  ‘And then?’ asked the elfin-featured Joanne.

  I looked at the cute face that could get to grow on one.

  ‘After the schemozzle you got me into, girlie, another vacation—what else?’

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Anthony Arthur Glynn was born in Manchester in 1929, and had a disrupted wartime childhood, including enduring the Luftwaffe’s blitzing of the city in 1940 and 1941.

  Drawn to art and writing from an early age, he was strongly influenced by two uncles, one a newspaperman who, in his spare time, wrote a variety of articles as well as fiction for juvenile weeklies. The other, who settled in Canada, was a chief theatrical scenic artist, working on the sets for many top stage shows.

  Reading avidly from a young age, he became interested in all kinds of books and devoured popular fiction. Discovering the American comic strip Buck Rogers when he was about seven sparked off a lifelong interest in science fiction, and he later became well known among British science fiction fans. This activity led to lasting friendships and opportunities to write and illustrate in the amateur fanzines of Britain and the US.

  At twenty-two came his first professional science fiction sale. Others followed and he worked in other fields, including juvenile fiction and, eventually, western and detective novels.

  He started work as a textile designer in Manchester at sixteen and studied the subject at Manchester Regional College of Art in the evenings. After two years’ National Service in the army, he changed direction for a short period, his fascination with theatre and film leading him into the professional film world—as a projectionist for the Rank Organisation.