Collection of Stories
- Автор: Стерлинг Стюарт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Collection of Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
Koski cocked an ear at the flurry of police whistles out in the street. Either the reserve men had rounded up their prisoner, or the chase was heading in a different direction.
“What’d this holdup guy look like, Mister Negus?”
The dredger captain scowled thoughtfully. “I’m not one of these here camera-eyes,” he said. “But near’s I rec’lect, he was about twenty-five years old, not as tall as you are by a couple of inches, kind of thin and sallow-complected. He was wearin’ gray pants or maybe dungarees an’ a sweater-cap, I think. He had this bundle under his arm. I didn’t rightly notice what it was because, by that time, I’d seen the guard layin’ on the floor and a couple other guards runnin’ in from the truck. I didn’t see Bill at all, ’till later.”
“They got him!” somebody out in the street yelled. The cops got him!”
Koski grunted skeptically. Win Negus’s description hadn’t sounded to the Marine Division man like that of a stickup specialist. Those boys were usually pretty careful dressers — the sweater was off-key, somehow.
As far as the man the precinct boys seemed to have cornered, he didn’t fit in with Koski’s notion of a criminal clever enough to have planned a coup like this, either. The holdup man had evidently known just when the day’s receipts would be handed over, and had timed his attack shrewdly enough to intercept the money before it got in the hands of the armored truck guards. Was it reasonable to suppose he’d figured all that out so neatly-and then left his getaway to such a slipshod chance as running out in the street, without even an escape car at the curb? There was a false note, somewhere.
“How much was stolen, Mister Negus?” Koski asked.
“Don’t know, exactly. Cale will.” The fishboat man pushed open the door to the inner office.
An ambulance interne was holding an ampule under the nose of a middle-aged, snowy-haired, apple-cheeked man who lay back in an old-fashioned oak chair, his fingers clawing at the arms. His collar had been loosened. His plump, rosy face was shiny with sweat.
“All right to ask a few questions, Doc?” Koski said.
The interne glanced up. “Why... uh—”
Cale Telfer rolled his head loosely toward the newcomers. “What you want to know?” His voice was deep and gruff, but there was a curious quaver in it.
The interne shrugged, closed his kit and went out.
“How much was stolen?” Koski watched the man’s eyes. They flickered swiftly to Negus and away again, as if to question what one partner had said about the other.
Cale lurched up from his chair then, took two unsteady strides to a high bookkeeper’s desk. That slanting shelf must have been polished by generations of Telfer elbows, Koski thought.
“Here. Here are duplicate deposit slips.” Cale Telfer’s trembling fingers passed the paper to Koski.
“Traders and Marine National,” Koski murmured, reading. “For deposit — thirty-six thousand, four hundred twelve dollars and eighty-eight cents.” Koski’s eyes narrowed the least bit. “That’s a big haul.”
“If you doubt my word, sir—” Cale began.
Negus cut in. “This last Friday before Lent is always one of the biggest days of the year. But it won’t hit the firm. We’re covered by insurance, aren’t we, Cale?”
The wholesaler rubbed a hand over his forehead as if he was dazed. “Yes, of course, Win. But what difference does it make, with Bill—”
“I realize it must be a shock.” Koski put the slip in his jacket pocket. “You saw the gunman, Mister Telfer?”
Cale’s round face puckered in an agony of recollection. “Clear’s I see you, sir. And as near.” His forehead continued to wrinkle, his cheek muscles to contract spasmodically as he went on to describe, in terse detail, the man Koski had found in the junk boat. “That’s the man, sir. I’d know him, wherever I saw him, even if it was twenty years from now. And I won’t rest until he’s been punished — if it takes twice that long!”
He collapsed, trembling, into the chair. His face had lost all its color. The rosy cheeks were dull putty.
Negus hurried to him. “But Cale, are you sure? The police are after another—”
Koski warned Negus back with a gesture. “Tell me just what happened, Mister Telfer.”
His lips scarcely moving, Cale answered. “I gave Bill the bag — to take out to the armored guards. When Bill got to the weigh scales — this murderer came up behind him — grabbed the bag and—”
“Behind him?” Win Negus cried. “How the devil could he have gotten behind Bill?”
Koski got between the dredger captain and his partner. “Let him tell it, mister,” he warned Negus.
“He must have got in the same way he left, Win,” Cale said hoarsely. “By the pier door, there at the side—”
“It was locked!” Negus roared. “I locked it myself! I always do, after—”
Koski put an elbow in the dredgerman’s stomach, shoved him back. “Clam. Stay clammed. Understand?” Negus fumed, but kept quiet. The Harbor Squad detective touched Cale’s shoulder. The wholesaler’s eyes were closed.
“Did you tell this to the police when they came?”
Cale opened his eyes wide. “Didn’t tell anyone. Nobody asked me anything — until just now.”
Behind Koski, Negus cursed thickly. “How in the devil could he have answered questions anyway, when he collapsed? He was out like a light until a couple minutes ago!”
“Yeah,” Koski said, continuing to address Cale. He pointed to the door by which he himself had entered the oyster house. “You say the gunman ran this way, out onto the wharf?”
“Yes.” Cale panted convulsively. “He grabbed the money bag. The guard coming to meet Bill saw it — pulled his gun. The murderer shot the guard. Bill grappled with him — and got two bullets right—” the father faltered, forced himself to go on — “right under the heart. Then the murderer spun around, ran back to the door there — and out. That’s all I–I remember. When I saw Bill was — was—”
He sprang up suddenly, lurched at the glass door and stumbled out. Koski turned. Through the partition, he saw a slender, dark-haired girl in a squirrel coat break out of a patrolman’s grip, fling herself on the dead boy’s body.
Negus crowded through the door with Koski. But before they could reach Cale Telfer, he was bending over the wailing girl, trying to wrestle her away from his son’s body.
“Get — away — from — him!” he raged. “If it hadn’t been for you getting your claws in him, you hellcat — this wouldn’t have—”
“Cale!” Negus bellowed, breaking his partner’s grip on the girl. “For God’s sake, man, use a little sense!”
In the scuffle, the cop grabbed the girl, hauled her roughly to her feet.
“I’ll have to run you in, if you don’t obey orders, miss.”
“I can’t help it,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe he’s—”
She turned away, whimpering, covering her mouth with her hands. Even with her face contorted with anguish, there was a sort of wild beauty in her gypsy-like coloring, her enormous dark gypsy eyes.
Cale mumbled what might have been an apology.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was upset. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
Negus helped him back to the office, explaining, beneath his breath, to Koski, “What Cale meant — if Bill’d been on the Mollie B. with me, the way his father wanted him to be, he’d have been ashore now with the rest of the crew. Cale wanted him to learn oysterin’ from the beds up, way we did, thirty years ago. All hand-tongin’ then. No power hoists like nowadays.”