The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel

by Gordon Landsborough

She got herself worked up. She wanted to show her gratitude, and she wanted to be embraced and kissed by me, and she suddenly started to use her strength to get her desired ends.

  Her strength.... My God, that gal was as strong as her menfolk! She wrapped me up and lifted me off my feet, and I could feel the play of her mighty muscles under that thin—awfully thin—dress at that moment. I was enveloped in warm, young flesh, and it didn’t do me any good. It made me forget that curtain, and I began to play back. She was young and eager and impetuous, and she had too much strength for me. I’d never done any necking like that before. A bit more and it would have been all-in wrestling, with no holds barred....

  A minute later we heard a sound...several sounds. That gal went spinning away from me as if I was red hot. When that curtain parted, one-tenth of a second later, she was five yards away from me, in the far corner of this rocky cell.

  I looked on faces peering at me in the firelight through an opening in that sacking—hairy faces, with eyes suspicious and animal with those red lights reflecting in them. I took a deep breath and adjusted a tie that had gone round my right ear, and I said: “Boys, you came just in time. You saved me from a fate worse than death.”

  Then I looked across at that great, strong, broad-thewn Turkish girl, and I thought: “Oh, death, where is thy sting!” Some fate. Some gal. Some other day, I was promising....

  And she was looking so demure that none of her men-folk suspected anything.

  They came in. They didn’t recognize me until I spoke, because last time we’d met I’d had my mud pack on. But their faces became almost human when they got my drawl. They’d probably had a hellofa bender on my dough and I was a fond memory to them.

  I was also, right now, talking a language they knew. I had a fistful of kuruş extended towards them.

  I said: “Tonight you’ve got to earn them. Brothers, I want to recruit you as my strong-arm boys, my muscle-men, get me?” They didn’t, but I knew they’d go where all that jack went. These were the boys who would defend the Gissenheim project against all comers—and they’d take the tonsils out of the lawyer-man’s apes!

  I started to go out and jerked my head for them to follow. They got my meaning, but all the same they hesitated, like men saying: “The hell, haven’t we done enough for one day?” I looked at them and thought they were more than usually tired-looking and dirty, and wondered what job had kept the bunch out so late.

  I tried to reassure them. “You don’t need to worry about work. There won’t be any. Just now and then I’ll tell you and you’ll up and kill someone, that’s all. It won’t be like work at all, and the pay’s good.”

  They didn’t understand a damned word, but they got my meaning. They grinned and nodded and started after me. I took one last glance at the girl, and her eyes were shining. as they looked at me. I gave her a wink. She knew then one way or another, I’d get the nylons out to her.

  I stumbled along a path that was barely discernible, though the moon was stronger now. One of the porters thought he’d be kind and he picked me up and carried me right out to the end of the alleyway—and I top two hundred pounds weight.

  It made me feel a cissy, but you don’t argue with those boys. So I tried to look nonchalant and fished out a Camel and stuck it in my mouth and lit up. I saw grinning teeth in the moonlight and stuck a Camel between them and we both came out happily smoking.

  My cab driver had two chums with him. I put the porters into two of the cars—the usual big, American sedan-type they always use out here. The drivers danced around frantically when they saw what was going in on their upholstery, and the porters hung back, overawed by those splendid vehicles. But I was down on my feet now and rapping out orders.

  I shoved ’em in and bustled the Turkish drivers back into their seats. They saw my roll, and after that there was no argument. I told my driver to take me to the new airfield, and he went twice as fast as usual in an effort to please me, and I felt glad, because I had a feeling I was running against time.

  Three hours had passed since B.G. had left me. If he’d wisened up Benny to Marie’s whereabouts, those apes might be at the field right now looking for her. I also thought: “Maybe the rubes who bust up Gorby’s equipment might also be out there ahead of me.” And I had a happy picture of the apes and the rubes running into each other and knocking the hell out of each other, But things like that never happened in real life....

  I knew there was something wrong when we came over the hill and I saw the brilliant floodlights on, all around the big excavation-site. The lights wouldn’t have gone on unless there had been trouble.

  I got the driver to go as close as he could to where that hill was sliced in half, and then I leapt out and went running crazily towards the equipment park where the machinery was grouped. I was staring at the giant grab, desperate to catch any reassuring glimpse of the girl I had left up there those few hours before, but the cabin was higher than the floods and was lost in shadow. Anything might be happening up there.

  I went stumbling around the mighty equipment and vehicles, shouting as I went. There should have been plenty of watchmen around, but I couldn’t see any. Then I caught a movement under the shallow flooring of the throbbing generator, and I stooped and yanked, and a squealing old man came into the light.

  When he saw me, he stopped squealing and tried not to look ashamed. But he also looked into the darkness beyond range of the lights, and he was a haunted man. He had spent another night of terror, and he was nearly through with this job. When a watchman couldn’t sleep, it was time he packed up and went.

  I shook him and rapped: “What’s been happening here?” Because I could see that things had been happening.

  I could see that the rubes had been down and torn the place apart again. They’d given an encore before they were expected!

  As I looked at the chaos—at the trucks with their bonnets up and their engines mussed up, at the conveyors lolling drunkenly over again...and other confusion and damage—I heard that excited old man’s voice.

  They had come right after darkness. The other watchmen had fled, but he had fought to his last gasp, he assured me. They had wrecked the place and departed.

  But who were they? The old man’s English wasn’t that good and I couldn’t understand. But I was relieved.

  They wouldn’t have found lovely Marie Konti up in the heavens....

  Or would they?

  I started to run towards the giant grab, and then I found that old man’s clinging hand holding onto me.

  I stopped, turning and trying to shake him off, and saying: “What in hell?”

  Then I saw that he was haunted. Right then he was looking at ghosts. And I’ve never seen terror like that on his face right at that moment.

  I whirled. Snarling men were almost breathing on my neck. Mighty hands were reaching for me, and the intention was to tear me apart, bone from bone, and muscle from those self-same bones.

  I shouted: “Are you crazy? I pay you—I’m the boss!” And I knew then how B.G. must have felt at times.

  I shouted: “Leave me alone!” But they didn’t, and I was swept off my feet like a child, while they snarled round me like rage-maddened gorillas. Eight of them.

  And I couldn’t understand it. For they were the men I had brought out with me, the trogs—the porters—my muscle-men!

  They started to take me to pieces.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CONCLUSION

  You know, truth comes to you at the most unexpected moments. That’s how it was then. Or maybe it was the inspiration which death is supposed to bring to its victims.

  For in that second I was able to see my folly. I was able to understand what monumental stupidity I was responsible for.

  My muscle-men were the rubes.

  That’s where the trogs had been, these last couple of nights. They’d been to the site, wrecking this machinery, which was a threat to their livelihood. Get machines to do a man’s work, and what happens to the man? That�
�s a question that has occupied the minds of men in every country in the world ever since the beginnings of civilisation.

  And I had brought them back to the scene of their vandalism! Oh, innocent Joseph Phineas Heggy!

  But I hadn’t time to indulge in mental woe. Other things were pressing. A bit more of that pressure, in fact, and J.P.H. would have been represented by a long tube of boneless pulp.

  I got out of their grip. I thought up a bit of yogi, and got one trog howling and dancing, and then I threw another and beat it round the generator. They were after me, howling. their heads off, and I didn’t stand a chance in the long run, and they knew it. They must have thought I’d got them to the scene of their crimes to punish them, and they weren’t having any.

  I jumped onto the throbbing generator footboard and grabbed for the string lamp. I tore madly at the lamp-holder, and it came off in my hands. The rubes were bounding, bare-footed, towards me, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t see of them because of those bright floodlights.

  I saw murder in their eyes, anyway.

  “Just now and then I’ll tell you and you’ll up and kill someone. It won’t feel like work at all.”

  That’s what I had told them. And it wouldn’t feel like work to these boys, in their present mood of indignation. Only, I hadn’t figured on being the first corpse.

  Right at the last second I thumbed apart those bare wire ends and then threw a switch. When a raging, bellowing cubic yard of muscle bounced onto the generator I just poked out and touched him on the chest.

  He went back in a somersault that cleared the ground by a good five feet, and ended on his backside against a fuel hut. He sat up and looked at me, dazed, and then he started to rub his chest, and his manner said: “Boy, do you pack a kick in that hand of yours!”

  I jabbed another rube who hadn’t drawn any moral from that first incident. He went back howling and cartwheeling. Then all the other trogs halted and stared at me, and they reminded me of cows standing with lowered looks.

  Maybe they couldn’t see those ends of wires just protruding from my fist, and they really thought I was packing a power-grab type of punch. And they respected accordingly, for they had never seen a man hit another of their kind so hard that he could knock them for a homerun in that fashion.

  After a bit of hesitation, another trog did come at me, but he defeated himself by being half-hearted. He swiped to knock off the Heggy head, but I ducked and kicked and that was good enough. For he collapsed, nursing his stomach. That didn’t matter much to him, and he never bore me any malice afterwards.

  Then I looked down and saw the legs of that Turkish watchman. He’d gone to ground again under the generator. I tickled him with the bare ends of those wires and he came out so fast he could have broken several world’s records, and he was an old man.

  I grabbed him and held him until he had stopped howling. I wanted that Turk because he could speak two languages. The trogs were closing in again but cautiously now, with suspicion written on their tough faces.

  I shouted above the din of that throbbing generator. “You tell these guys they don’t have to worry about what they’ve done. Tell ’em they’re on the payroll, and there’s no work they have to do to earn it. Here, hand this jack out!”

  I shoved a wad into the watchman’s hands. Putting eight trogs on to the payroll instead of having them bust up the joint was good tactics, and Gissenheim’s wouldn’t bother about the expense.

  That watchman’s scrub face parted, and he began to give out in inspired manner. The trogs were suspicious. and for a time wouldn’t take the money, They didn’t get things easily in their lives, I guess, and they couldn’t believe what they were hearing. So I tried again.

  “Tell ’em it doesn’t matter a damn about what they did—just so long as they don’t go on bustin’ the joint. Tell ’em they can lie around and eat well and do no work for a month or two, just so long as they clump people to the ground who have no right on this land.”

  They began to believe, then. They relaxed and grinned in happy delight. Brother, had the millennium arrived! Or don’t Turks have a millennium?

  Carthorses of men came up and tried to demonstrate their forgiving nature. They took the dough and patted me wherever a man can be patted, and I felt like a movie god with fans again. Even the guy whose belly had been kicked came and grinned at me and held my hand for so long I got embarrassed.

  I told the watchman to get food for them, but first I gave the boys their instructions. I was expecting trouble. Probably a quartet of apes would arrive, and would they please do such things to them that in the end they could only just manage to crawl—and that painfully?

  Would they! I didn’t get a word of what they jabbered, but I knew it added up to one thing—they were promising to take apart anyone whose mug I didn’t like. When those apes arrived, they were saying what ghastly things would happen to ’em.

  I started to go off towards the mobile workshop—towards the mighty power-grab, which reared up behind it. I wanted to climb up to where Marie Konti was. Back of my mind was the thought that there could be a pleasant time for me—for both of us—up there beyond the range of lights. It made my stride quicken. Marie Konti was worth hurrying for...and she lifted me...a lot.

  I looked back when I was turning the end of the workshop, and at once my friends the trogs smiled and shook their heads and even laughed to show what jolly people they were, and how friendly they all felt towards me now.

  I started to turn, towards Marie in her sky hideout.

  I was thinking: “Let ’em all come now.” In fact I was wanting them to come, that lawyer-man and his apes.

  I’d got allies now, and I felt these trogs would follow me to the death. Anyway, they’d make potato shavings of a mere quartet of apes. Yeah, boy, let ’em come and see what we’d do to ’em, I was thinking grimly, smacking my fists together at the thought.

  So they did come. Immediately.

  In fact they were right there at that moment. They grabbed me as I came round the end of the workshop, just out of sight of my muscle-men. They might have been there a long time, watching—they must have come trekking across the dark wastes from a car which had approached without headlights, and I’d run slap into their arms.

  They started to give me a work-over. It was painful. One held me while the others stood around and tried to chop me down. I got the taste of blood in my mouth from the start, and I began to feel again the awful pain of those earlier beatings, for my bruises were still all there. They came in, and now they started to growl as they got worked up to their mayhem, and I began to get that roaring in my ears that comes when consciousness is being slapped out of you.

  It was all or bust. I just picked my feet up off the ground. That was all. But I weigh two hundred, and these apes, for all their strength, weren’t trogs. I was too big a baby to hold, and that ape back of me grunted and let go of me.

  I hit the floor and had sense to start rolling. I also started to shout. I came into view of the generator and my muscle-men just as I was lurching to my feet.

  The apes came at me in a succession of dives, trying to floor me before I could get moving. I thought up all the football strategy I knew to escape their tackles. I sidestepped, jumped, and found a swerve that had been forgotten for years.

  They crashed into each other, and I battered off the only ape to get a grip on me. Then I found myself free and I went streaking for the generator. I started to shout to my trogs, and pointed back towards the apes. The trogs spat on their hands and looked delighted to oblige. They started to come padding forward on their mighty feet, and I stopped running to let them join me. I felt safe now. My muscle-men were a match for anyone, and they were two to one against the apes.

  When they came up I turned and started to run with them, because I felt primitive then and I wanted to do a few things to those apes who had tried to chop me down.

  The apes were looking worried. Some were still down on their knees. The one I’
d smacked over was rolling on his back, trying to get over the agony of a badly-treated face. It looked like peanuts to the cheerleader that I was on the winning side.

  And yet I wasn’t.

  That sleek huckster came striding into the light, suddenly. He was the personification of authority—you know what I mean...some men ooze power, and this lawyer-man was of the old aristocratic order who have such belief in themselves that it cannot be denied by lesser men.

  Now he just waved his arms and shouted angrily, brusquely, in the direction of the charging trogs. He had guts, that boy, and he walked out quickly towards them, shouting rapidly all the time in Turkish.

  You know the effect on those trogs was miraculous.

  They had the strength to take that lawyer-man and his apes apart, if they had wanted to, but just his personality stopped them and made them as helpless as—carthorses. He was of the pasha class, and when pashas gave orders, a lifetime of training said they had to be obeyed implicitly.

  All in one second I realized that the tables had been turned again. My muscle-men weren’t a damn bit of use to me!

  That brought the apes into the picture once more. They came lurching towards me, and, holy-moly, what those babes weren’t going to do to me!

  I started to sprint for it. I was on my own again. The trogs just stood and looked on and would have stood and looked on no matter what I offered and what I’d given them so far.

  The apes came bounding in my rear. We streaked between the rows of trucks and bulldozers and then the car started to chase me, too. It had been standing quietly against the cliff-like side of that hill into which we had been digging. Now, when I came into view, the driver started up the engine and came roaring to cut me off...and run me down. It was just like old times.

  I might have outdistanced the apes in a straight run in the open, but I couldn’t lick that car. And dodging among the vehicles wouldn’t get me anywhere with the apes on my tail. Goddamn those trogs, I swore! They’d let me down badly.

  That made me think of Marie, up there in the power-grab cabin. I thought: “If I could get up there, maybe they wouldn’t think of coming up to find me.” Maybe. But I couldn’t see any other way of dodging these monkeys.