Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972
- Автор: Breese Edward Y., Бриттен Уильям
- Год: 1972
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972». Краткое содержание книги:
“Hi, there!” I said amiably. “Just thought I’d drop by for a little chat. Anything interesting here?”
“You’re gonna drop on your head if you’re not gone in five seconds flat,” he growled as he rose half out of his seat.
I hoisted the fold of the newspaper slightly and let him see the short snout of the .38. He sat down again with the most bewildered expression. “And don’t expect any help from your friend,” I added to the threat of the gun. “He got sleepy in the rest room and I didn’t have the heart to awaken him.
“Tara,” I said from the corner of my mouth, “I want you to sit beside the nice gentleman and show him some real affection. And while you’re being affectionate, I want you to relieve the man of his nasty little gun like this one, which should be concealed somewhere on his person, perhaps in a holster.”
Tara giggled and said, “Oh, Cliff, darling, you are an absolute gem!” Then she shifted to a close position beside Stiletto-Nose. With an arm about him, her free hand patting him lovingly here and there, she soon produced the second .38 which she passed to me inside the discarded magazine of her captor.
I sneaked the revolver into a pocket and sat waiting with a show of cool, though suddenly, in the aftermath of impulsive action at high risk, I was in a sweat of nervous tension and my legs quivered from the strain. I took a deep breath.
The next step would be the last, and I hoped that we could make our escape before that great hunk of fallen muscle was discovered, or awakened, to complicate the situation. Disoriented, I was trying to remember what the next stop would be, when the train slowed and the conductor bawled the answer.
“Phil-a-del-phia next,” he droned. “Phil-a-del-phiaaa.”
“We’ll be getting off here and you’ll be coming along,” I told Stiletto-Nose. “You’re to walk just in front of us and then I want you to stand nice and still on the platform. At the very last second, on command, you’ll say bye-bye and you’ll climb back aboard. Get the picture?”
He shook his head. “I’ll say this — you got guts, lover. But we’ll catch up with you two. You’ll never get away with it.”
I could see that he meant it, and I felt a chill of self-doubt, but I told him to shut up and move out to the exit door. We followed at his heels to the vestibule, the gun peering at his back from the folds of the newspaper. The train halted with a velvet jolt and we stepped off.
We stood silently on the platform as some passengers got off and others got on. During that time, his jaw arrogantly cocked, Stiletto-Nose never took his eyes from me and I could almost see the wheels of his mind spinning away, calculating my destruction. I was quite certain that he had some clever, immediate plan to trick me, and I kept a taut finger against the trigger of the hidden .38. In the end, however, when a conductor far up the platform cried, “Boaard,” and I motioned him on, he obediently climbed the steps, turning once to peer down at us with icy rage, before he vanished abruptly and the train swept out of the station.
Even then, hurrying away with Tara, I darted glances behind us, half expecting the impossible — that by some mysterious back-up arrangement, there were others who would take up the chase.
It was then late morning on one of those days of skin-soaking heat in late spring. We had planted ourselves in the cool sanctuary of a small, side-street bar where we faced each other across the table of a dark, corner booth.
Tara had been drained by the fear and excitement, but after the first frigid martini she began to giggle and then to laugh almost hysterically. Caught up in that nervous storm of glee, I released a few halfhearted chuckles of my own. It was kind of funny if you like black humor.
“Cliff, you were truly marvelous!” Tara howled. “If you only knew what a miraculous lifesaver you are! How in the world did you happen to be on that particular train?”
“My sister lives in Baltimore,” I explained, “and I’ve been visiting her on weekends. I was on my way back to New York this morning, and there you were on the same train with those creeps, who no doubt forced you aboard at Washington. It’s that simple — or is it?”
“Maybe it’s fate,” she said brightly. “If certain people are right for each other, nothing can keep them apart.”
“Yeah, sure, that must be it,” I answered with fake enthusiasm. I had decided to see her safely on her way, then hustle back to the comparative normalcy of my own existence, however dull. Lots of luck. “Now it’s your turn,” I said. “How did you happen to be on that train?”
Her wide blue eyes became shadowed and her soft features grew solemn. “It’s such an ugly, painful story,” she said. “Mind if I skip the details and give you just the awful facts?”
“The awful facts? How ominous. But sure, anyway you like, Tara.”
The waiter brought another round and when he had gone she puffed her cigarette and said in a rush of words, “Soon after we returned from Europe I got into a disastrous fight with Earl. But for Max, a butler-chauffeur who secretly despised Earl and adored me, we were alone in the apartment when I made the fatal announcement to Earl that I was going to leave him and get a divorce.
“Earl said he would never let me go because he had this passion for me, and besides, I knew too much. For a few minutes he shouted me down, then he took me to the bedroom, locked the door and informed me that he was going to teach me a lesson I’d never forget.
“I knew what was coming — another beating, worse than the one he gave me in Rome. I snatched his gun from a drawer and warned him, but he only sneered and kept on moving toward me. So... so I shot him. I meant to hit him in the leg, but my aim was rotten and he... he fell dead at my feet.”
“Impossible!” I said. “There was nothing in the news and anyway—”
“At the sound of the shot,” she continued, her palm extended to silence me, “Max came on the run. He told me he thought Earl got just what he deserved, but that didn’t mean the cops would turn me loose. I would be held for trial and even with a plea of self-defense, there was a chance I would wind up in prison.
“I was plenty scared, and when Max offered to dispose of the body while I rushed off to hide out with a girlfriend in Washington, I agreed with a sigh of relief. Max worked up a cover story for Earl’s little pals — that Earl got a sudden call to San Juan where he had, as they say, a piece of the action, and where he also had some rivals who might be blamed for causing him to vanish permanently. But those hoods didn’t believe Max. They tortured the truth out of him, right down to my hiding place in Washington.”
“So those two hoods on the train came and got you,” I inserted.
“Oh, no!” she gasped. “It wasn’t that way at all! But how could you know?”
“How could I know what, Tara?”
“That since Earl’s buddies figured they were on the right side of the law for once, they simply thought of turning me and Max in to the cops to get their revenge without risk. The New York police had the Washington cops haul me in for questioning, and when I found that Max had let the cat out of the bag, I confessed. So, after some legal red tape, they sent those two plainclothesmen to bring me back to New York for trial—”
“Wait a minute!” I bellowed. “Wait just a damn minute! You mean to tell me that the big one I knocked cold, and his sharp-nosed buddy, were cops!”
“Now don’t be angry, darling. You could always say it was just a little misunderstanding. But I have a feeling they wouldn’t believe you.” She chuckled. “As we got on the train, I begged them to take off the handcuffs, just during the ride in front of all those people. And they smiled and said, well, they supposed they could handle one little girl on a train. Darling, can’t you see the funny side of this?”