The officer nodded peremptorily, and the radio car swung in another U-turn to resume its course.
With shaking fingers Calhoun lighted a cigarette before starting on.
He maintained a speed of thirty-five, five miles less than the limit, through Lackawanna and down to the circle where Route Five met Seventy-five. He took Seventy-five the few miles to where it crossed Twenty.
Five and Twenty ran parallel clear from Buffalo to Erie, Pennsylvania, occasionally joining each other and becoming one road for short stretches. Calhoun chose Twenty at this point because Five ran along the lake through numerous small towns, while Twenty was relatively unpopulated for the next twenty-five miles. He could have saved considerable time by entering the Thruway at this point and taking it as far as the Pennsylvania border, but this would have entailed stopping at a brightly lighted toll gate on both entering and leaving the Thruway. Calhoun didn’t choose to risk having some sharp-eyed gatekeeper notice the damaged fender and perhaps recall that an alert was out for a green Buick.
He kept to a sedate fifty miles an hour for the next hour, joining Five again just before Irving and staying on it. At Westfield, some sixty miles from Buffalo, he slowed and drove aimlessly up and down several side streets.
“What are you doing now?” Helena asked.
“We have to get gas.”
“We passed a station right in the center of town.”
“I know,” Calhoun said. “But we can’t leave any record of a banged-up Buick stopping anywhere for gas here. The alert won’t reach as far as Cleveland, but it’s sure to have gone this far.”
Finally he found what he wanted: a car parked in a side-street where all the houses were dark. He parked behind it, facing the wrong direction, so that the rear of the Buick backed up against the rear of the other car, and switched off the lights. Getting out of the car, he lifted the gas can and rubber tubing from the rear floor.
“Slide over under the wheel,” he ordered.
She stared at him for a moment, then she obeyed. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Steal some gas. And we can’t afford to get caught. If anybody challenges us, be ready to take off fast. If I have time to get in, fine. If I don’t, take off without me. I can beat a gas-stealing rap, but we’re dead if the police get a good look at this car.”
“Where would I go?”
“Straight on to the next town. Ripley, I think it is. Wait for me at the village limits on this side of town, on Route Twenty. If I don’t show within a few hours, check into the first motel you come to the other side of Ripley and wait until I do.”
She said, “You think of everything, don’t you? I’m beginning to think you earn your money, Mr. Calhoun.”
“Why so formal?” he asked. “My name’s Barney.”
In the darkness he could see her looking at him, and could just make out her expressionless face. “All right, Barney,” she said after a moment.
Calhoun glanced up and down the street, then unscrewed the gas cap of the car behind them. He siphoned off a gallon of gas and emptied it into the Buick’s tank. He repeated the process three times.
He was siphoning off a fifth gallon when a large-lensed flashlight suddenly blinked on from the side of the house the two cars were parked in front of. The light wasn’t fifteen feet away.
“Got you this time!” a triumphant voice cracked out. “Hold it right there, or I’ll shoot!”
The long muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun protruded from behind the flashlight.
9
From the corner of his mouth Calhoun said, “Take off. Fast.” At the same moment he dropped the rubber tubing and elevated his arms.
The Buick’s engine roared and the car spurted away, its lights still out. Apparently in the darkness the man with the shotgun hadn’t realized there was anyone in the car, for the move caught him by surprise. The shotgun muzzle started to swing in the direction of the Buick, but the light remained fixed on Calhoun. The car was out of sight in the darkness before the man could possibly get its license number or, probably, even identify its make.
The muzzle swung back to center on Calhoun.
“Let him go,” the voice from beyond the flashlight said grimly. “The fellers at the State Police barracks can find out from you who he is.”
He advanced until the uptilted muzzle almost touched Calhoun’s chest. With the light directly in his eyes, Calhoun could get only a dim impression of the man holding it. He couldn’t see the face at all, but the figure seemed lean and spry. By the man’s voice Calhoun judged him to be elderly.
“How long you fellers think you could get away with this?” the man demanded. “Three times in one week is plain dumb. You might of knowed I’d set a trap if you kept it up.”
Calhoun said nothing. The man’s face came into view as he thrust it beyond the source of light to peer up at Calhoun’s. It was the lined, weathered face of a man in his late sixties who has spent most of his life outdoors. Calhoun guessed him to be a retired farmer.
“You’re no local feller,” the man said. “Where you from, boy?”
“Syracuse,” Calhoun said. “I was just hitchhiking through. May I take my hands down?”
“You keep ‘em up there,” the elderly man said. “Hitchhiking, you say?”
“Yes, sir,” Calhoun said. “I don’t know who the guy driving was. You caught the wrong man. The other guy has your gas.
The man with the gun grunted. “How come you was stealing gas for him?”
“He was running out. I had a choice of going along with it when he suggested it, or walking. I didn’t figure I could find another ride this time of night.”
There was another grunt. “Easy conscience you got, boy. Me, I’d of walked. Well, all we can do is let you describe him and the car to the state police. Know the license number?”
Calhoun shook his head. “I don’t even know the make of car. I can’t tell one car from another. And I didn’t see his face very well. It was dark in the car.”
The elderly man chuckled dryly. “Maybe your memory will improve after you talk to the law.”
“Why can’t we settle it out of court?” Calhoun inquired. “It’s only four gallons of gas, and you gained a can and a hose. Would five bucks fix it?”
“If you got money,” the old man said shrewdly, “why didn’t you offer to buy your friend gas, ‘stead of stealing it?”
Calhoun shrugged. “Easy conscience, like you said, I guess. How about it? Will you take five and call it even?”
“Don’t believe I will, mister. Think I’d rather catch the feller’s been stealing my gas. And I think maybe you’d remember who he is after a while in jail.”
“I couldn’t describe him if I rotted in jail,” Calhoun said earnestly. “If you turn me in, you’ll get nothing for your trouble. I’ll make it ten.”
“Hmm. Going up, huh? Well, now, I like a horse trade. What you say to fifty?”
Calhoun felt relieved enough to accept the terms on the spot. But he sensed that immediate capitulation would only bring a further jump in price.
“Twenty,” he temporized.
“Nope,” the man with the gun said. “Guess we’d better phone the police barracks.” After a pause, he said. “Make it forty-five.”
They haggled for another five minutes, and settled for thirty-five. Agreement reached, Calhoun slowly lowered his arms, careful to make no sudden movements. He drew out his wallet and counted out the money. The elderly man kept him covered throughout.
After backing up and checking the denominations of the bills by flashlight, the elderly man said, “Okay, boy, guess you can go. Next time just remember that crime don’t pay.”
“It certainly doesn’t,” Calhoun muttered as he walked off.
He wasn’t far from the west edge of town. He made his way to Route Twenty, and trudged along it toward the village line, intending to take up position there and try to hitch a truck ride to Ripley.
As he neared the villag
e-line marker, he saw the taillights of a car parked just beyond it. As he drew nearer, he recognized it as the Buick.
Coming alongside, he found Helena calmly smoking a cigarette.
“I told you the next town,” he greeted her in a growling voice.
“I knew you’d get away,” she said serenely. “I have full confidence in your ingenuity. I thought you might need a getaway car, though. Are the police after you?”
“No,” he said. “I bought him off. It’ll be on the expense account.”
He walked to the back of the car and replaced the gas cap, which had been hanging by its chain when Helena drove off. Then Helena slid over and he slipped under the wheel.
“We may just about make it,” he said as he started the car. “Let’s hope your estimate of how much gas we had when we started was conservative. If we had two gallons more than that, we should make Cleveland if this thing gets any kind of mileage.”
“It gets fine mileage,” she assured him. “But why take the chance of running out of gas? Can’t we try the same trick again? It’s a pretty remote chance that we’d run into another trap.”
“No hose,” he said. “Our friend kept it and the can as part of the deal.”
The delay in Westfield had consumed nearly an hour. At their conservative speed they had averaged only thirty miles an hour since leaving Helena’s house. It was now past one thirty in the morning, with approximately a hundred and thirty-five miles still to go.
They didn’t stop again until they hit the outskirts of Cleveland. Ordinarily Calhoun would have driven the remaining distance in three hours at most, but now he took no chances of being stopped for anything at all. On the open highway he stayed well below fifty; in the towns he kept five miles below the posted speed limits. It was just six P.M. when Calhoun drove the Buick into a truck stop at the edge of Cleveland.
Helena said, “What do we want here?”
“Breakfast,” Calhoun told her.
“Shouldn’t we rent a couple of cabins before we do anything else?”
“No,” he said. “We’ve got several more important things to do first.”
They finished breakfast by seven, but Calhoun insisted on dawdling over his coffee for another full hour. When Helena exhibited signs of impatience at the delay, all he said was, “There’s no point in going into town until places open.”
It was eight when they left the truck stop, and by the time they got far enough into town to pass small neighborhood businesses, barber shops were open. Calhoun accomplished the second of the more important things he had mentioned by getting a shave.
“Couldn’t that have waited?” Helena complained when he rejoined her.
“I have to look respectable for the next stop,” he told her.
Heading in the general direction of downtown, he drove until he spotted a sign reading CAR RENTALS. He parked half a block beyond it.
“Just wait here,” he instructed Helena. “When I come by in another car, follow me.”
As usual she showed no surprise. As he got out of the car, she slid over into the driver’s seat.
The car-rental place didn’t have exactly what Calhoun wanted, but it was close enough. He would have preferred a Buick coupe or convertible the same color as Helena’s, but the rental service didn’t have any Buicks. He settled for a green Dodge coupe a shade darker than the convertible. The rate was nine dollars a day plus eight cents a mile, and he told the proprietor he wanted the car for a week. He gave the name Henry Draves, a Detroit address, and left a hundred-dollar deposit.
Only minutes after Calhoun had left her, he pulled up alongside Helena in the Dodge, honked the horn, and pulled away again. In the rear-view mirror he saw her pull out to follow.
He led her back to the eastern edge of town, found a street which seemed relatively deserted, and parked. Helena parked behind him.
In the trunk of the rented car Calhoun found a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. Helena watched with her customary lack of expression as he switched plates on the two cars.
Then she said, “I don’t think I understand.”
“Probably an unnecessary precaution,” he said. “I’m sure repair garages this far from Buffalo won’t be watching for a green Buick. But here a New York plate stands out more than an Ohio one. Now when I take this thing in to be fixed, it’ll be just another local car. And on the off chance that there’s ever a check to find out who it belonged to, the license won’t lead anywhere except to a car-rental outfit and a nonexistent guy named Henry Draves of Detroit.”
Her lip corners quirked ever so slightly. “As I’ve mentioned before, you think of everything, don’t you, Barney?”
“I try to,” he told her. “I’ll drive the Buick now, and you follow me in the Dodge. Next stop is a repair garage.”
She remained where she was. In her husky but slightly flat voice she said, “Let’s get settled in cabins first. I want a bath and a change of clothes.”
“It won’t take an hour to locate a garage and make arrangements,” he argued.
She shook her head. “We’ve been here over three hours now. I wanted a cabin at six, but I waited while you fed yourself, wasted an hour over coffee, got a shave, rented a car, and changed plates. I’m not waiting another minute.” She looked at him serenely and added, “Besides, they take your license number at tourist courts. We’ll have to drive in with the Buick.”
She was right, Calhoun realized. They should have signed in somewhere before he changed the plates. He didn’t want the New York plates now on the Dodge listed on even a tourist court’s records. Disconsolately he considered changing the plates back again, then decided it wasn’t necessary. There wasn’t much danger in some motel proprietor’s seeing the damaged Buick so long as it didn’t have its own plates on it.
“You win,” he said. “Follow me.”
Helena shook her head again. “You follow me this time. I saw just the court I want when we came in on Twenty. Maybe you’re smart on some things, but I prefer to trust my own judgment on a place to sleep.”
Shrugging, Calhoun climbed back in the Dodge and waited for her to start the procession.
10
Helena drove nearly ten miles east, back out of town, on Route Twenty, passing a half dozen motels that looked adequate to Calhoun before pulling off to the side of the road suddenly and parking.
“Lock it up,” she called back to him.
He wound the windows shut, got out, and locked the Dodge. When he slid into the Buick next to her, he said, “You must like to live dangerously. I’ve been expecting you to run out of gas for the last five miles.”
She glanced at the fuel gauge. “There’s probably still a gallon or two left. Enough to get us back into town.” She pointed through the windshield toward a large tourist court about a hundred yards ahead on the opposite side of the road. “That’s the one. Isn’t it nice?”
It didn’t look any different to Calhoun from the half dozen others they had passed, except that this one had open-front stalls for automobiles.
“It’s lovely,” he growled. “Let’s get it over with.”
The place was called the Starview Motor Court and advertised hot baths and steam heat. Since the temperature hovered around eighty, neither seemed like much of an inducement to Calhoun.
Though it was probably an unnecessary precaution this far from Buffalo, Calhoun had Helena swing the car so that the left side was toward the office.
With dozens of automobiles driving in and out of the court daily, it wasn’t likely the proprietor would notice that the green Buick convertible had changed to a green Dodge coupe a few hours after they checked in. But Calhoun saw no point in calling attention to their smashed fender. Just possibly it might catch the proprietor’s attention enough to make it register on him.
The proprietor was a sad-faced man in his fifties who had an equally sad-faced wife. They occupied quarters behind the small office. Both of them went along to show the cabins.
They were nice m
odern cabins, clean and airy and walled with knotty pine. The bathrooms were large, instead of the usual tiny affairs you find at most tourist courts, and contained bathtubs with showers.
“We’ll take two,” Calhoun told the proprietor. “We’ll be here a week, so I’ll pay the full week now. How much?”
The man said the normal rate was nine dollars a day, but as a weekly rate he would settle for fifty-six dollars each. “With another fifty cents a day knocked off if you do your own cleaning instead of having maid service,” he added.
Helena surprised Calhoun by saying she preferred to do the cleaning herself. The proprietor’s wife gave her a pleased smile. Apparently the wife constituted the maid service.
Helena stayed outside when Calhoun went back to the office to register. He signed as Howard Bliss and sister, Columbus, Ohio, and listed the Ohio license number registered to the Dodge. Then he paid the proprietor a hundred and five dollars.
The cabins were Numbers Six and Seven. When Calhoun got outside again, he discovered Helena had backed the Buick into the carport between their cabins while he was registering.
“You could have left it in front of the cabins,” he said to her. “We aren’t going to be here long.”
“We’ll be here at least a half hour. I told you I’m going to take a bath.”
“Several times,” he said wearily. “Which cabin do you want?”
She looked at both speculatively. The one on the right went with the carport they were using; a door near the rear wall of the port led into the cabin.
Helena said, “I’ll take the right one.”
He got her bag from the car, carried it into the righthand cabin via the carport door, and set it on the bed. Then he got his own bag from the car and went into his own cabin.
Inasmuch as he was going to have to kill a half hour anyway, Calhoun decided to take a cold shower. He took his time under the water, letting its coldness knock some of the tiredness out of his muscles and wash some of the sleepiness from his eyes. Twenty-five minutes later, refreshed and in clean clothes, he knocked at the next cabin door.
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