by Craig Rice
“But—” Bingo paused. He’d started to say, “How do you know?” and then changed his mind. He’d ask that later, in private.
Will Sims asked it for him, anyway.
“Why,” Handsome said, looking a little surprised at the question, “I made the staged photographs. I used to work for Arthur Thompson.”
“That would mean,” Bingo said, “Reverend Frederick Hammerville Williams did know about the bank robbery and the part this girl’s father played in it.”
“Pure coincidence,” Uncle Fred said.
“That may be,” Bingo said. “But you sure picked a convenient time to start looking for a missing niece with amnesia or something.”
Now, everybody was looking at Uncle Fred, who was beginning to turn a little pale.
“And while we’re on the subject,” Bingo said, with malicious delight, “where were you last night about the time that guy was being murdered?”
“I—was on my way here—” He paused, frowned at Bingo, and said, “What right do you have to question me?”
“He hasn’t any,” Sheriff Judson said. “So I’ll just ask the same question.” There was a deceptive gentleness in his voice. “Where were you?”
“I was on my way here. Naturally my first act on arrival was to contact the responsible authorities.”
“Oh, naturally,” the sheriff said, in the same gentle tone. “Where did you come here from?”
“Michigan. My home is there.”
“And how? On what?”
“The bus.”
Sheriff Henry Judson scratched behind one ear. “Only one bus comes here, mornings. The local line, from Spring Hill. Gets in at five-forty, and goes on to Lima Junction. One of the Johnson boys drives it. He oughta be home now and he’d remember if this feller was on the bus or not. Maybe we oughta go back to the jail and call him up.”
They got in the sheriff’s car, drove back to the jail, and called up the Johnson boy.
The Johnson boy, sleepy and very cross at being disturbed, stated that he’d never seen Uncle Fred in his life, nor anyone who looked remotely like him. There had been only three passengers after Spring Hill and he knew all of them.
Uncle Fred refused to answer any more questions.
Then Sheriff Judson and Will Sims really got busy on the telephone.
An interstate bus driver, located at his home in Des Moines, reported a passenger answering Uncle Fred’s description, who’d gotten on board at Council Bluffs and left it at Lima Junction, the nearest stop to Thursday. The bus had reached Lima. Junction right on schedule, three-fifty-five P.M.
Uncle Fred muttered that his car had broken down in Council Bluffs and been left there for repairs.
A call to the Council Bluffs garage verified that. The car had been left at about one o’clock and would be ready next Monday. The mechanic added that the owner must have been driving it in one hell of a hurry and that it was a shame to treat such a nice car like that.”
Uncle Fred had nothing to say.
Sheriff Judson finally reached the owner-driver-manager of a one-man taxi service in Lima Junction, who drove occasional passengers in his Ford sedan as a side line to his grocery store and job as postmaster. He remembered Uncle Fred very well, and was delighted to hear that Sheriff Judson had found him. He’d driven Uncle Fred to the outskirts of Thursday—Uncle Fred had wanted to walk the rest of the way—and left him there, about five o’clock. Uncle Fred had given him a lead half dollar.
“A mistake anyone could make,” Uncle Fred said furiously. “Someone must have handed it to me in change. I’ll make it good, in spite of the fact that he charged me eight dollars and fifty cents for what couldn’t have been more than a five-mile drive.”
“Seven miles,” the sheriff said. “Guess you were here in time to have murdered that fella, Parson. Why did you say you just got here this morning?”
Uncle Fred didn’t answer that question. He referred, warmly and lengthily, to his rights as an American citizen under the Constitution, and the fact that he was a minister, even though (as Bingo put in at that point) he’d had to found his own church to be one.
“No alibi,” Sheriff Judson said. “Possible motive. If that feller really knew where that money from the bank robbery was buried and if the Parson, here, made him tell where it was, why then he might of murdered that fella so he wouldn’t go dig it up himself.”
Will Sims beamed and said, “You’re absolutely right.”
“Or,” the sheriff said, “he might of not wanted this fella to meet up with his daughter again, for reason or reasons unknown.”
Shortly after, the Reverend Frederick Hammerville Williams was lodged in the Thursday County jail under suspicion of the murder of one John Doe, unidentified; resisting an officer (Sheriff Judson stubbornly maintained that refusing to answer questions constituted resisting an officer, in spite of Will Sims’ legal opinion), and passing a counterfeit half dollar.
Will Sims thanked everybody concerned, apologized again to Bingo and Handsome for not keeping his appointment with them, and made another appointment for later. He had to hurry back to the lake, where Eddie Hoskins was still waiting to pass his woodcraft examination. He again reminded Bingo and Handsome that a great motion picture could be made on the subject of summer camping.
The “John Doe” in the murder charge was the result of a few private words between Bingo and the sheriff.
“I hope you won’t object to a friendly little suggestion,” Bingo said. “But I don’t think you ought to let anyone know that the murdered man has been identified. Or everybody in Thursday County will start digging for buried gold, and you’ll have a lot of trouble on your hands.”
Sheriff Judson agreed that was a good idea, and a new light came into his eyes. Bingo could translate it without much trouble. Maybe that money was hidden somewhere around Thursday. Maybe he, Sheriff Judson, could find it.
But not, Bingo thought, if he and Handsome could find it first.
“And I guess you fellas are free to go,” the sheriff said. “Chris Halvorsen’s turkeys are all found and O. K., and we arrested a murderer. In case you’re in a hurry to get on to Hollywood, any time you want to leave is all right with the law.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Bingo said with elaborate casualness. “We’re in no hurry. We might as well stick around awhile and see how things turn out. Besides, we want to wait until you find that girl who ran off with our hundred and seventy-two dollars.”
Sheriff Henry Judson swore solemnly that the entire law-enforcement system of Thursday County would be devoted to finding that girl. He started Herb to work immediately, calling up every deputy in the county. He called Earl, out at the Halvorsen farm, and told him to keep an eye peeled for her. He settled Ollie at another phone, to give her description to every restaurant and filling station within reach of Thursday. And finally he announced that he was going out himself and drive up and down every highway, road, and lane.
But with all that, it was Bingo and Handsome who finally found her.
CHAPTER TEN
“We could have been in grand island, Nebraska, by now,” Bingo said bitterly, “if we’d just given Gus his ten bucks and gone on our way.”
“Better’n that,” Handsome said, “if we’d kept to our schedule. What time is it, Bingo?”
Bingo looked at his watch. “Quarter to ten. Why?”
“We’d have been entering Fort Hook, beyond North Platte. Named for Colonel Hook, who—”
“Handsome,” Bingo said, “pretend you never read that guidebook. We aren’t in Grand Island, and we aren’t entering Fort Hook, and how much cash money have you in your pockets?”
Handsome paused on the jail steps and counted solemnly. “A dollar and forty-five cents.”
Bingo walked on down to the convertible, got in, and hauled out the change in his pocket. He counted it carefully. “Two dollars and thirty-eight cents.”
“That makes—wait a minute.” Handsome felt in the pocket of his jac
ket, pulled out a package of gum, half a package of Lifesavers, a neatly folded dollar bill, two quarters, and three pennies. “Change. From when we got gas, yesterday morning.”
Yesterday morning. They’d been on the way to Hollywood. Plenty of money. No trouble. They hadn’t even heard of Thursday, Iowa.
“Add it up,” Bingo said wearily.
“Five dollars and thirty-six cents,” Handsome reported.
Bingo sighed. “We can’t get to Hollywood with that. And I never saw such an on-the-blue town to be broke in.”
He stared gloomily at the main street of Thursday, Iowa. Two parallel rows of yellow-brick store buildings.
“Bingo,” Handsome said, “we got the cameras.”
“I thought of that,” Bingo said. “But there’s no hock-shops in this town.”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Handsome said. “There must be a lot of people in this town who want their picture taken.”
Bingo thought that over. He and Handsome hadn’t done too badly, strolling up and down New York streets with their cameras, snapping pictures of likely customers and handing out cards—Mail this in with twenty-five cents (no stamps) for an action picture of yourself. Cheerful refunds if not satisfied. Remember to include your name and address.
He looked at the streets of Thursday, Iowa, and saw exactly two people. One of them was a small boy, delivering newspapers. The other was a girl coming out of a grocery store, her arms filled with bundles.
“Even on a busy day,” he said bitterly, “I don’t think there’d be more than two bits’ worth of business in this rube-eroo.” Suddenly he grabbed Handsome’s arm. “Look! That girl!”
The car had started already.
“I saw her, too,” Handsome said.
The girl with the bundles was Henny.
She had on a cute black-and-white-checked dirndl skirt, a white blouse, and a red patent-leather belt that matched her carefully made-up lips and her high-heeled red sandals.
Handsome expertly stopped the car squarely in front of her just as she started to cross the street.
Bingo hospitably opened the car door and said, “Good morning. Can we give you a lift?”
She looked at them coldly and without a sign of recognition, and said, very formally, “I beg your pardon?”
“You left your shoes at our place, where you stayed last night, cutie,” Bingo said. “Maybe you’d like to come back and get them.”
She lifted her eyebrows and said, “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. Will you kindly move your car and let me cross the street?”
“No,” Bingo said, “but I’ll kindly open the car door and let you get in. Or would you rather I dragged you in by the long hair on your pretty little head?”
“I will call a policeman,” she said, “if you persist in annoying me.”
“I will call two policemen,” Bingo said, “if you don’t get in this car. Would you rather be in this car, or in jail?”
She started screaming, by way of answer. She screamed louder and more persistently than anyone Bingo had ever heard in his life. Nothing but a fire engine going up Seventh Avenue could have hit the same note and volume.
The main street of Thursday, Iowa, had been deserted. Suddenly it was full of people. Storekeepers, grocers’ clerks, gas-station attendants, businessmen, children, even a few housewives with the soapsuds from the breakfast dishes still on their arms. In the resulting excitement the girl ran across the street and jumped in a black roadster that immediately started moving. The driver of the roadster was a man with red hair.
“Handsome, follow them!” Bingo said.
To follow them would have necessitated running over a number of dogs, cats, and children, and half the adult population of Thursday, Iowa. Handsome pushed heavily on the horn. Instead of getting out of the way, the spectators crowded closer around the convertible.
Handsome leaned out the window and yelled, “Hey! They went that way!” He pointed.
The street was clear almost immediately. Handsome stepped on the gas and the convertible leaped forward. He swung around a corner, past the feed-and-seed store, the Standard Oil station, the Methodist church, and the grain elevator. He speeded up as they passed the red-brick high school.
“That must be Clancy,” Handsome said, “driving the car. He had red hair. All the Clancys I ever knew had red hair like the Ed Clancy that drives the taxi. I remember a family of Clancys over in Jersey. They all had red hair, including the girl I was going with, Catherine Frances Clancy. She married a guy named Haley who runs a saloon in Newark.”
He missed an oncoming Ford by inches and said, “Good thing I used to push a hack once.”
They’d reached a crossroad. There was a puff of dust about a half mile away, straight ahead.
“That must be them,” Bingo said hoarsely. “Step on it.”
“O. K.,” Handsome said. The convertible shot ahead on the dirt road. “Bingo. That gun. Have you got it?”
“What gun,” Bingo said.
“The one we borrowed off her last night.”
“No,” Bingo said. He thought for a minute. What had happened to the gun? She must have taken it with her, along with the hundred and seventy-two bucks. Could it have been the gun that—no, certainly not! She might have shot Uncle Fred, and good riddance, but she wouldn’t have shot the father she’d never seen and had come so far to meet. “No, I haven’t got it. Why?”
“Because,” Handsome said, “even if she’s got the money with her, she’s got that Clancy guy in the car. All the Clancys I ever knew had quick tempers. I remember once when the big brother of the girl I was going with—”
“Look out,” Bingo yelped.
Handsome dodged expertly around a farm truck that was coming out of a driveway.
“—got mad at some guy he claimed had skinned him in a crap game. Before he got through he tore the guy’s left ear clean off.”
“They turned left.” Bingo yelled at him. “That next road!”
Handsome skidded around the corner, sending up a cloud of dust. “We’re gaining on ’em. He never got arrested for it, though, because he had a lot of uncles and cousins on the force. Most of that Clancy family were cops.”
“Hey—Handsome!”
The car ahead had suddenly turned into a driveway. Handsome swung the convertible sharply to the right, roared up the driveway, and slammed on brakes that screamed with protest, coming to a stop squarely beside the car they’d been following.
It was a battered Chevrolet roadster. Its only occupant was a sunburnt, bewildered, and slightly indignant young farmer.
Bingo blinked. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“Spring Hill.” The young farmer climbed out of his car. “Is it any of your damn business?”
Bingo and Handsome looked at each other helplessly.
“We must of lost ’em,” Handsome said unhappily, “right behind that schoolhouse. It’s the only place they could of turned off.”
“Never mind,” Bingo said consolingly, conveniently forgetting the fact that he’d pointed out the puff of dust and identified it as the car they were following. “We all make mistakes.”
Handsome was already backing carefully down the driveway. The young farmer ran after them. “Hey! What’dya want?”
“A hundred and seventy-two dollars,” Bingo called to him, as Handsome turned into the dirt road and drove on, fast.
A moment later Handsome said, “Now all we got to do is find the way back to Thursday. You know something, Bingo? She wasn’t the girl.”
“Nonsense,” Bingo said. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize her?”
“O. K.,” Handsome said. “I guess we turn left here. Yeah, left. Only. She looks like the girl, but she ain’t the girl.”
“I suppose there’s a couple of identical twins running around Thursday County,” Bingo said crossly, “on top of everything else that seems to be running around Thursday County. Look out for that hay wagon.”
“Yes, Bingo,” Handsome said, subdued. He went carefully around the hayrick and drove in silence for a few minutes. “Anyway, they couldn’t be identical twins because the parson’s missing niece wasn’t twins.”
“If she was, he didn’t mention it,” Bingo growled. “And I think we would have noticed it. Stop bothering me, I want to think. About money.”
Handsome said, “Bingo. We’ve got the cameras. And a guy could draw a crowd in Thursday. You remember.”
“Oh, sure,” Bingo said wearily. “But we can’t be sure we can get a girl to stand out on the street and scream.”
Just the same, it was something to think about. All the equipment was packed neatly in one of the suitcases. The five dollars and thirty-six cents, plus what they could pick up taking pictures, would be enough to carry them to the next state, maybe to Hastings, Nebraska. There they could hole up in a tourist camp and take more pictures. Keeping that up, they could eventually get to Hollywood, and once they were there—
And he was beginning to feel a great urge to get out of Thursday, Iowa, even if over a quarter million dollars in gold was hidden here somewhere, even if they did have an invitation to Sunday dinner with Christine Halvorsen. Even if they were broke. Even, in fact, if they had to crawl on their hands and knees.
Handsome said, “Good thing I looked at all those maps before we left New York. This is county highway R. There’s a crossroad about half a mile from here that leads to state highway 22, and that brings us direct to the national highway, just beyond Thursday. Ought to take us right near our house. Bingo, I’m positive she isn’t the girl.”
“I’m thinking,” Bingo said sternly.
Even if they had to leave without getting back the thousand bucks they’d given the still-missing Gus. Or the hundred and seventy-two bucks Henny had swiped from his shoe.
Handsome swung onto the concrete road, and there was the sign that read THURSDAY. POP. 1042.
“Handsome,” Bingo said, “what’s 1042 times twenty-five cents.”
