Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 6, April 16, 1938

I

Maybe it was a Jot of nerve to sit down in a booth and then only order a cup of coffee. The waiter didn’t seem to like it anyway. He smacked the cup on the table, spilling a little of the coffee, and grabbed my nickel. I waited until he had gone and then picked up the sugar bowl and poured about a quarter of a pound of sugar into the cup.

It’s an old trick and it wouldn’t do for a steady diet. But when a man’s only got a dime, a nickel and a few odd pennies... well, sugar gives you a lot of energy.

There was a fellow at the counter who was half turned around on his stool staring at me, a little runt of a guy with patches of those brown liver spots on his face. He must have seen me rob the sugar bowl.

He came over to me with a highball in his hand, set it on the table and slid into the seat opposite. He pulled out an almost full pack of cigarettes and held it out.

“How about a smoke?” he said. His voice was high and he talked through his nose. “It ought to go good with that — uh — that meal of yours.”

A guy hasn’t got much pride when he’s broke and hasn’t had a puff of the old weed for a couple of days. My fingers trembled when l pulled out a cigarette, but I didn’t care. He held his lighter to my cigarette and I took a long drag.

“Kind of up against it, aren’t you, son?” he asked, lighting one for himself.

I nodded and took a pull at the sweet, sticky stuff in my cup.

“Sort of think a hundred bucks would look pretty good to you?” he went on.

A hundred bucks. He might just as well have said a million, it couldn’t have sounded any sweeter.

“A hundred bucks,” I repeated. “There’s no such thing.”

He laughed. I didn’t like his laugh. It was sort of shrill and windy like the noise a sick horse might make. But he was talking about money-big money — and nothing else counted. At least, not when you’re hungry.

“Oh, yes there is,” he said. “You can make a hundred dollars for a little job I’ll tell you about. It won’t take much time and it won’t be much trouble. What you say?”

“When do I start?”

“Pretty soon. But you look like you could use something to cat.”

“A couple hamburgers wouldn’t be bad,” I admitted.

He wigwagged the waiter, ordered three hamburgers, a piece of apple pie, a cup of coffee, a rye highball and a pack of cigarettes.

While we were waiting he stuck out his hand. It was skinny and a little damp, but what of it? He had what it took to buy eats. “My name’s Mercer,” he said. “Al Mercer. When you get done we’ll drive out to the house. My partner’s there and he’ll tell you all about it.”

The hamburgers and the rest of the stuff arrived and I went to work on them. When I finished I lit a cigarette and we went out to a big, black sedan. He got behind the wheel and we started off. It was a pretty long ride. He didn’t say a word and I was too busy digesting to talk. It was dark now, must have been around seven-thirty. We were in the outskirts of the town where the houses weren’t very close together. Finally he pulled up at the curb.

“Here we are,” he said.