Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951
- Автор: Кристи Агата, Куин (Квин) Эллери
- Год: 1951
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mercury Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 90, May 1951». Краткое содержание книги:
We hit Oklahoma that day about noon. I was getting worried. I figured four hours was long enough for Briney and the Plaza Trust and the police to get together and start to add.
The police back home had my license number and the description of my car, and pretty soon so would the police in Oklahoma. And Texas, if we got that far.
So just outside of Tulsa I turned off into a country road and drove the car over into a gully.
“Get out,” I told Soney, “and get the bags out.” I pushed the car until gravity took it and it crashed down — way down — where nobody would see it for a long time.
Maybe months — because it was beginning to snow pretty hard. And I’d heard on the radio that a blizzard was coming. So maybe it would even be covered up and not discovered until spring.
It was nearly two miles to the city bus line, and we were nearly frozen before we made it. In Tulsa I bought a good used car. Paid for in fairly small bills from the suitcase.
And I made Soney go to a beauty shop way off on a side street and get herself changed into a brunette.
And we were off. Into the blizzard. The radio was warning people to stay at home. But that didn’t mean anything to Soney and me. We had to move.
I had been planning to head from Tulsa down to Dallas and Fort Worth and through San Antone into Laredo and across the border there. But then Soney said:
“Really, Park, I wasn’t trying to run out last night. It was true. They were suspicious. You’ve got to believe me. Mexico, the ranch, won’t mean anything if you don’t.”
And I believed her and got panicky. Thinking the police would be more apt to figure us for the direct route, I took off cross-country for the panhandle. Figuring to cut down towards El Paso through New Mexico. We could buy horses and cross the border in Arizona. I knew that country a little.
Night came, and then midnight, and then we were in the panhandle. And then we were in the northern tip of New Mexico. And there was a road-block ahead. The sweat broke out on my forehead and my hands.
“This may be it,” I said to Soney, as we approached. “We should have had the radio on. There might have been news.”
“Relax,” she said. I looked at her face in the cold blizzard light, and it had that funny crooked smile. Her eyes were as cold as the snow that swirled through the darkness. And in her new black hair she looked like somebody I’d never seen — and never wanted to see.
“Relax,” she said. “There’s only one cop. There’s two of us and I got this. I’ll take care of you.”
And she eased her hand out of the new fur coat. Long enough to let me see a gun.
But I couldn’t say anything more because the patrolman was waving at us to stop. He had a shotgun crooked in his arm, but that doesn’t always mean anything on a lonely stretch of road like that one.
I rolled the window down.
He seemed friendly. Young and pink-faced from the cold.
“Where you folks headed?” he asked cheerily. “Pretty bad up ahead. Can’t get through, I’m afraid. Better turn back.”
“Can’t we get through at all, officer?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “We’re in a pretty big hurry. I’m due at a meeting in Santa Fe.”
“Sorry,” the pink-faced patrolman said. “It’s plain suicide up ahead. Drifts ten feet high some places. You’ll have to back up till you can turn around. And you’d better hurry.”
I started to protest, when Soney said, “Look, copper, the man said we’re in a hurry. Get out of the way.”
The cop opened his mouth in surprise — and Soney fired. Right in his mouth. Through the pocket in her new fur coat. From the hip. And the cop’s face had a hole in it, and he fell over backwards into the snow. And in thirty seconds the blizzard had covered the red stain on the snow.
I looked foolishly at the smoking, smouldering hole in Soney’s new coat. She had the gun out of her pocket and pointed at me.
“Get movin’! Or do you wanta urp first.”
I did and just got my head out the window in time. Then I drove off into the blizzard, still unable to speak. With Soney holding a gun on me.
Within ten minutes we ran into a drift and the car stalled and wouldn’t move either way. Even though Soney did have a gun.
She put the gun away and said, “Now what do we do?”
“You name it,” I said, “it was your idea.” And I kept thinking of that young pink-faced cop with the hole in his face, and I had to get out of the car again.
The blizzard was getting worse. You couldn’t see ten feet now in any direction, and there was nothing but snow and more snow. And darkness.
“Well, don’t stand there. Do something,” Soney said. She was out of the car standing beside me.
“What is there to do?” I asked. “And you’d better get rid of this gun, in case help does come. Just in case,” I said.
“Don’t be funny,” she said, and then turned the gun on me. “Look for some wood. We’ll build a fire.”
That sounded sensible, and I looked around, but you couldn’t see anything but snow and darkness. No trees, no fence posts, nothing.
We both walked away from the car a little way to look for something that might burn. But it was no use.
When we came back to the car, I grabbed her when she wasn’t looking and wrenched the gun away from her and threw it as far away as I could. Out into the darkness into some deep drift.
But I really didn’t think anybody would come and find it on her. It was too much to hope for.
Without a word we both got back into the car and settled down to wait. I tried to keep the engine running so we could have some heat. Pretty soon it stalled. I started it again. And then it stalled and wouldn’t start at all.
The fine powdery snow of the blizzard was beginning to sift into the car. Through cracks you couldn’t see. It covered us, and before long we were numb.
And though I hated the look and the touch of her, we huddled together and tried to keep warm.
Then I had an idea. How to put off death for a while. Without a word to her I got out of the car, and digging down through the snow, I pried off a hub cap with my knife.
“Get in the back seat,” I ordered Soney, “we’ll start a fire on the floor.”
“With what?” she sneered.
“With this,” I said, starting on the upholstery with my knife.
We started a little fire in the hub cap and huddled over it. The smoke was terrible and in two minutes our eyes were burning and we were both coughing — but the heat was good.
Two hours of that. Opening the door occasionally to dear the smoke out.
Then all the upholstery was gone. And when I felt myself get numb and I knew the dreams were just dreams, I began to want only one thing. To let people know how it all came to happen. How it was because of Soney and not me. How I never would have done it without Soney.
I especially wanted my friends to know that it had been Soney who killed that pink-faced cop. Not me.
And there was only one way to do it. Write it. And to do that I had to have some more fire. Just fire enough until I finish.
Without a word I got out of the car into the howling wind and snow.
I don’t know how long it took me to struggle around to the trunk compartment and get out the heavy suitcase. Maybe half an hour.
When I got back in the car, Soney looked like she was asleep.
I’d burned maybe five thousand dollars worth of Soney’s dreams of a ranch, and life as the movies say it is, when the heat brought her around. Or maybe it was the smoke. The coughing.
When she got her breath, she took one look at the bills burning in the hub cap and she let out a scream:
“Why, you stupid fool — what are you doing? Give that to me — give it to me! You can’t burn my money!”