Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956
- Автор: Дил Борден, Томпсон Джим
- Год: 1956
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 12, December 1956». Краткое содержание книги:
Mame looked bewildered. Then, her eyes narrowed knowingly, and she whispered to Mitch. He nodded and spoke to the manager again.
“One other thing, Mr. Baker. You are not to honor any stop-payment on the check... Will you repeat that, please? Miss Dorset is with me, and I want her to hear you confirm it... Thank you, very much, sir.”
Mitch hung up the receiver. Mame shook her head incredulously.
“It’s on the level,” she said, in an awed tone. “You did something that was actually on the level!”
“Yes?” said Mitch with a trace of stiffness. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
“Well... I guess I owe you an apology, maybe.”
He rode back to the store with the moving van. Pocketing fifteen hundred from the furniture dealer, he returned to Bette’s apartment.
She was there waiting for him. She had been worried, fearful that he might have got himself jammed up. And when he walked in grinning, obviously safe and successful, she was almost tearfully happy.
He kissed her, and scooped her up in his arms. Smiling down into her face, he walked toward the bed with her.
“How about you, baby? Any trouble at your end?”
“Not a bit, Mitch. That manager was just as nice as he could be.”
“Swell. You put the dough back in your own bank?”
“I couldn’t, honey. It was too late.”
“Was it?” Mitch shifted her in his arms. “And was it too late to buy money orders or a cashier’s check?”
“Well, no, I guess not. But those things cost money, you know, and—”
Mitch dropped her suddenly, and she fell to the bed with a little scream. He flipped her over on her stomach, sat down on her and took out his roll of tape.
She didn’t struggle much. She had learned the futility of struggling with him, if she had learned nothing else. Mitch bound her wrists and ankles, stripped tape across her mouth and stood up.
She rolled over. Tear-filled eyes glared at him as he stripped the money from her purse. He looked down at her with a kind of smile-frown, irritated but also apologetic.
“Now, what could you expect, Bette? Honest to God, what else could you expect?”
Bette made no answer, naturally. She closed her eyes, and two great tears squeezed beneath the lids, coursed slowly down her cheeks.
Mitch bit his lip. He turned abruptly, and headed for the door. He opened it, took one last look at her as he stood on the threshold. What the hell? he thought. She’d be all right. She wasn’t hurt any; she had a good job; she could work herself free in an hour. She was okay, and he was okay. And yet, somehow, he felt sort of bad.
“Baby...” He spoke awkwardly, hoarsely. “I guess it’s pretty hard to believe, but I do love you. I really do love you, honey.”
“And I,” said a voice behind him, “I love you, too, dear.”
Mitch jumped, whirled. Duke English beamed at him. Duke was small but the gun with the silencer on it was awful big. “A little game, eh?” He nodded toward the door, smirking. “Can I play? I’ll let you be It!”
“Now, look, Duke,” Mitch said hastily. “You paid me off for that whiskey deal. We’re all square now.”
“Why, lover,” Duke pouted. “I’m not twitted with you; truly I’m not. I— But hadn’t you better close that door? I’m afraid it’s making a draft on the little woman.”
Mitch closed it slowly, giving his mind time to catch up with the situation. Duke was calling it quits on the whiskey swindle. It must be, then, that he had changed his mind about bankrolling the chalice deal. In that case...
He turned around, faced Duke again, laughing inwardly, outwardly sober and worried. “Can you make it fast, Duke? I’ve got a lot of hustling to do if I’m going to close on that chalice.”
“You’re still after it, then?” Duke said. “You’re still sure it’s a sweet item.”
“Ten thousand sweet items. A ten-G gross.”
“And you couldn’t promote the little woman? You haven’t raised any of the necessary elsewhere?”
“Well,” Mitch hesitated cautiously, “I have and I haven’t. I’ve kind of made a start, you know, and, uh—”
Duke studied him. He beamed, and patted Mitch’s cheek. “Well, your troubles are over, dear boy. I shall be your partner, and provide the cash.”
“Swell,” Mitch said, “that’s swell, Duke. Now, I can get a train for San Diego in about twenty minutes.”
“Train?” Duke pouted. “Oh, you don’t want to ride those nasty old trains, honey. I’ll let you drive my car.”
“Huh!” Mitch made a fast recovery. “Well, that’ll certainly be a lot better, Duke. I can—”
“And would you mind terribly, darling? You won’t mind if I ride along with you?”
6.
Mitch gaped. Laughing gaily, Duke gave him a push toward the stairs. “Move, honey,” he said. “You’d better get moving!” Mitch moved.
Duke’s big black Cadillac was parked at the curb. Mitch slid under the wheel, and Duke climbed into the back seat. He murmured approval as Mitch cautiously moved the car out into the stream of afternoon traffic. “That’s fine, darling. I do get nervous so easily, and when I get nervous... Even with a silencer, I just simply loathe the sound of a gun.”
The warning was unnecessary. Mitch hadn’t the slightest notion of pulling anything. After all, he’d gotten a total of four Gs from Mame and Bette, to which add half the profit, at least, from selling the chalice — another four thousand. That was enough for twenty-four hours of hustling. Enough, at least, to prevent his risking a bullet for a few thousand more.
They left the city, and hit the highway for San Diego. It passed through some of the most beautiful scenery in America, a semi-tropical expanse of orange groves and gleaming white-sand beaches. A salt-sweet breeze swept in from the ocean; air that one wanted to gulp down like champagne. And Mitch settled back in the seat, very relaxed and content, feeling that this world he had been born into was indeed a wonderful place to live.
There was no need, he decided, to feel troubled about Bette. Hell, he’d really been pretty nice to her. Taught her a valuable lesson; relieved her of money which she didn’t know how to spend properly and would only worry about. Yes, he’d been very fair and decent to Bette. He wasn’t like some guys — this character Duke, for example. Now, there was one for you. Straight out from under the rug. He’d climb a tree to give you trouble when he could stand on the ground and be friends.
Mitch didn’t dig the Duke at all. Duke was up to here in the chips; he was so loaded that it was making him stoop-shouldered to carry it around. Still, he went right on grabbing for more, and the nastier he could be about it the better he liked it.
Take that talk of his. That was meant to rub you against the grain. A kind of defense with him. Uneducated, unable to talk good English, so he made with the dear-dear stuff. It was a cover-up for him. It helped him to get even for the short-changing which he felt the world had given him. That was probably the source of a lot of Duke’s nastiness: a feeling of inferiority. But why the hell didn’t he get at the source of it? With his dough, he could...
Abruptly, for no reason he was aware of, Mitch’s thoughts shifted from Duke to his own pleasant prospects. Eight grand. Between eight and nine grand! The first really big dough he’d ever got his hands on. To hell with a mere stateroom! He’d take a two-room suite on the Super Chief. And when he hit New York — brother! The big town would never be the same again. They’d be cleaning up the red-paint for the next century.
It is about one hundred and thirty miles from Los Angeles to San Diego. They got there shortly after dark, and Mitch parked a little below and across the street from the bar. Duke looked at the place, frowning, as they got out of the Cad.