Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951

Meanwhile Soney had been busy. According to our plans, she was to shake her shadow by six o’clock. She’d pulled the old powder-room gag.

During the day she’d had to get down to the basement and snafu the lock on the freight elevator. So she could get in through the alley.

When she got in the building, she had to walk up twelve flights, unlock her elevator, move it down to the eleventh floor, walk back up, remove the money from the top of the elevator, then go down and move the elevator back up.

This all had to be done without a cleaning woman seeing her, or the night watchman who ran the one elevator at night. Or anybody else who might be working late.

After she got the money, she had to carry it down the hall to an office that had windows overlooking the alley. She’d got the key by dating a man who worked in the office, swiping his keys, having one made the next day, and then giving them back — saying she’d found them in her apartment.

She was waiting by the open window in the dark office above the alley when I flashed the car lights three times. Almost immediately, I saw a dark shape coming slowly down the back side of the building. It was the two money bags on a rope.

I drove to the country, put the money in a wooden box in a hole we’d dug two weeks before in a lonely cornfield, and covered it up. I put the Plymouth back where I’d found it, walked to my car, and drove home.

Soney had to spend the night in that office because the night watchman came on at seven and he usually parked by the stairway to the basement, where she had to go to get out by the freight elevator. But the cops are rather used to a gal like Soney not coming home to sleep.

Then all we had to do was wait. Wait wait wait. And drink to keep from getting too fidgety, and hope you wouldn’t get drunk and spill it all some night.

And for me it was dream about Soney and I wished I could see her. Soney and Mexico and a ranch forever.

The police never could understand how the robber got out of the building, and they had me over to headquarters several times. But they just didn’t have a thing. Not a thing.

Briney Armored Service kept me on. Maybe to keep an eye on me. But they changed their system. Figured it was better to have four men do the work of three, they said.

I was really worried sick for about a month. And then I began to realize that we’d really pulled it off. Just like Soney said we would. And then I began to wonder how she was spending her nights and whether the money was still in the hole. Because Soney was not the kind of girl you feel too sure about.

One night I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I drove out to the place I’d stashed the money. And it was gone. There was a hole, but no box, no dough.

The earth around the hole was fresh — plenty fresh. And there were car tracks.

It could have been somebody else who found it. But probably not. I figured fast — and took a gamble.

Pouring the coal on my heap, I raced to the U-Drive-It garage. The same one the car had come from before, on that big night. Instead of heading for Soney’s house.

I was right, and all kinds of luck were with me. By pushing it I’d beaten her there. I was standing behind the entrance out of sight when I saw her yellow head in a car that pulled in and stopped with a jerk of brakes.

Soney could think fast.

“Honey,” she said, breathlessly and very low, when I rushed up to grab her, wanting to kill her. “Honey, I’ve been trying to call you—” She must have known by my face that I’d been out to the money and found it gone.

“Make it good,” I said.

“Park, honey, I think they know. They’ve been questioning me for hours. Somebody told about seeing us together in The Triple T. It was the other waitress, I think.”

I knew she was lying, but it scared me because I’d been wondering if something like that wouldn’t happen. Maybe it would’ve, sooner or later. Anyway, I let her tell me that. And I guess she was afraid to change her story because of what she saw in my face. Maybe I’m to blame for the blunder.

“Get my bags,” she said, giving me the key to the trunk. The biggest bag was plenty heavy and I knew what was in it. The future in Mexico. With a girl who was a fourflusher.

We left town in a hurry — out U. S. 40. Without my clothes. Without saying anything to the Briney Armored Car Service. Without Soney saying anything to the Plaza Trust.

It was stupid. And we hadn’t planned it that way. In another month — a safe time — we could have both changed jobs. And then moved to other towns. Different ones. And then met later, on the way to the border.

But I guess Soney was just a chippy, who’d never had a chance to learn to play square. And so the whole carefully-planned deal was queered that night. That quick.

It was beginning to snow as we left town, and Soney shivered and said, “Park, I’m gonna get a fur coat in the first big city we hit tomorrow morning.” And then she talked and talked about all the things she was going to buy with the money, until she finally went to sleep. And I barreled the car west. I stopped in Kansas City and she bought a dyed muskrat that looked like mink, after I talked her out of the real thing.