Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
Corey knew what he had to do. Reaching out with his left hand as the lieutenant stopped firing, he yanked open the door and leapt inside. If Perkins’s partner was hiding behind something, or the lieutenant had simply missed, then Corey was likely to be killed or wounded. Speed was his best hope for safety. He had to cover the ground between them while his opponent was still ducking for cover from the lieutenant’s shots.
Darting into the baggage car, Corey almost tripped over Perkins’s accomplice. The payroll robber was lying on his back with two holes in his chest. He wasn’t dead yet, Corey noted as he kicked the man’s pistol farther away from his hand, but he probably would be before too much longer.
The lieutenant entered the baggage car behind Corey and wasted only a moment looking at the dying man before going to check on his own soldiers. Three were dead. The sergeant was unconscious, breathing raggedly. The lieutenant’s face had gone white, losing all of the bravado with which he’d faced storming the baggage car a few moments earlier.
“Mr. Callaghan, would you please return to the passenger car and ask if there is a doctor on board, or failing that, if one of the womenfolk knows anything about caring for a wounded man?”
Corey started at once toward the passenger car.
The lieutenant stopped him. “And, Mr. Callaghan, please ask Father Murphy to come back with you. Some of these men were Irish. I think there are certain prayers that Catholics say over the sick and the dead.”
Corey went out, stepping nimbly over the gap between the cars to reach his destination. All sense of adventure had left him at the sight of the dead men. He had placed his hand on the door to open it when he suffered a vivid recollection of shots piercing a similar door on the other car. “Miss Parson!” he called out. “It’s Corey Callaghan! I’m coming in!”
The door was pushed open from the inside and Miss Parson looked out at him. “Are you quite all right, Mr. Callaghan? We heard shots. Were you or the lieutenant injured?”
Corey stepped into the railcar. “We weren’t hurt, but the same can’t be said for the lieutenant’s men.” He raised his voice. “Is there a doctor here? We have wounded men in the next car.” He lowered his voice to normal tones. “Father Murphy, I’m afraid we’re going to need your services as well.”
Father Murphy got to his feet, but no doctor volunteered himself. The priest staggered a bit as he began to walk, but whether from too much whiskey or the motion of the rolling train, Corey couldn’t tell.
“I know something about tending wounds as well,” the priest announced, then stepped past Corey and out of the car.
Miss Parson leaned close to Corey. “We’re going to have to figure out what to do about Mr. Sully and the other man as well. They’ll be back with horses just as soon as the train stops rolling — maybe before.”
“Patrick!” Corey ordered. “Help Mrs. Black keep watch on Miss Davis. The authorities will want to speak with her. We’ll be talking it over with the lieutenant in the next car.”
Sully did not prove to be the problem Miss Parson had feared.
The lieutenant browbeat four of the men in the passenger car to join him, Corey, and Patrick on the roof of the train to deter the robbers from returning. He armed the men with the carbines formerly wielded by his own soldiers. It was hot, dry waiting, even after they put down blankets to protect their bodies from the searing heat of the metal roof.
The lieutenant tried to coach the men in military discipline, but Patrick fired his weapon almost as soon as the two riders and their five horses came into view. Most of the other men, Corey included, fired right after him. Between them, Corey and Patrick knew most of what there was to know about boxing, but neither was worth a damn when it came to other weapons.
Jim Sully rode closer to the engineless railcars after the shots, just to make certain of things. He spied the lieutenant and his new troop of men and thought better of the whole payroll venture. He waved his hat in mock salute and led his partner and their horses away.
When the authorities arrived, the lieutenant was the center of most of the attention. It was unclear yet if he was the hero of the piece, but he certainly was not treated as the villain. A military inquiry at Fort Bridger would eventually settle that question.
Miss Davis was taken into custody, although Corey doubted that anything too serious would happen to her. Her connection to events was all too vague, and Corey suspected she would gaze on the jury with her pretty blue eyes and mournful frown and the twelve honest men would acquit her.
As for the rest of them, it appeared that they were off to Fort Bridger — Corey, Patrick, Miss Parson, Father Murphy, and even Mrs. Black and her children. The lieutenant had asked them to come and serve as witnesses to what had happened before a board of inquiry. No one appeared thrilled at the prospect, although Mrs. Black assured them it was “the proper thing to do.”
“Do you really want to go to Fort Bridger, Mr. Callaghan?” Miss Parson asked him.
Corey honestly did not want to go. He felt he’d done enough for the lieutenant. Now he would like to find some nice town with decent prospects where he could restart his training — not a fort in the middle of nowhere on the edge of Mormon and Indian territory. Still, he was pretty certain that the lieutenant had flattered Patrick into agreeing to go, so he put a brave face on the situation. “One place is as good as another, I guess. And with all of those soldier boys about, I’m sure Patrick will have no trouble fixing me up a fight or two.”
“Soldiers also gamble,” Miss Parson observed, as if she too was trying to convince herself that helping the lieutenant was the right thing to do. “If they can be convinced to let a lady join the game.”
“You’ll convince them,” Corey smiled. “It’s what you do best — convincing men to listen to you.”
“Why, Mr. Callaghan, I’m not sure whether or not I’ve been complimented.”
“You have,” he assured her.
“Do you really want to go to Fort Bridger?” she asked again.
“I don’t mind,” Corey admitted, “so long as you are going too.”
Death at My Door
by Percy Spurlark Parker
The green glow of my clock radio told me it was 3:17 A.M. as the doorbell prodded me awake. It wasn’t all that unusual an occurrence, Vegas is a twenty-four-hour town, and I carry a P.I. license.
The name’s Trevor Oaks. I have living quarters over Miller’s Game Room, an arcade I own just north of the Stratosphere on Las Vegas Boulevard. I climbed out of bed as the doorbell rang again, made it out of the bedroom at a fairly steady stride, and aimed myself in the direction of the apartment door. All in all a considerable feat, taking in the fact that my bum knee had been acting up for a week.
I made it to the door, pushed the intercom button. “Yeah, who is it?”
Nothing. Great.
“Okay, you got me up now. What the hell do you want?”
Still nothing, or almost nothing. It was very faint, like a slight cough.
I started to go back to bed, but hell, I was up and already at the door, and whoever was down there could start ringing the doorbell again. I opened the door to my apartment and hobbled down the stairs to the front door. Looking through the peephole the only thing I could make out was a car parked halfway onto the sidewalk, its headlights still on. Maybe some drunk had an accident.
He must have been crumbled at the base of the door because when I opened it he fell into the foyer. Dennis Rimmey. He lay on his back across the door’s threshold, a .38 snub nose on the sidewalk inches from his hand. From the blood on his shirt he’d been shot at least twice, once in his chest and once just above his belt line. A trickle of blood smeared the right corner of his mouth, and there wasn’t a flicker in his open eyes. The little cough I’d heard had probably been the last thing he’d uttered.