The riddle remained one to an extent; rather, it had a bit of miracle mixed up in it. The metal-sheathed tip of the holster had obviously deflected the bullet ever so slightly, while it had been further deflected by the iron-hard botch of broken bones and cartilage that formed his rib cage. But still he was very lucky to be alive. And the wound was still nothing to laugh off.
Extending from a point immediately over his heart, the flesh had been furrowed bone-deep across his chest and halfway around the left side of his body. Probably because of the way he had fallen—his chest arching against his clothes and holster strap—he had bled relatively little, much less at any rate than he normally would have. But movement had opened the wound wide now, and he was losing blood at a dangerous rate.
He made a bandage with his undershirt, binding it tight with his belt and holster strap. That helped, but not much; nor did it help much more when he added his socks and handkerchief to the bandage. He had one thing left—two things rather—readily available for putting over the wound. The two thick sheaves of bills he had sequestered from the bank loot. But if he used them, got them bloody—and they probably wouldn’t do a damned bit of good anyway…
Huh-uh. He had to keep that dough. As long as he had dough and a gun and a car—but above all, the dough—well, he had a chance. To live. To catch up with Doc and Carol. Beyond that—catching up with and killing them—he couldn’t think at the moment. It seemed both a means and an end to him. In their deaths, somehow, he would find life for himself.
He climbed weakly into the car and gunned the motor, sending the vehicle roaring up and out of the creek bed and onto the road in a skidding series of jumps and jounces. It was the way it had to be. He lacked the strength for reconnoitering, the strength and the time. All he could do was come up fast, and hope for the best.
His luck held; no one was passing on the road. Luck continued with him as he skirted Beacon City’s outer streets and took to the highway again on the other side. Then swiftly, with his blood, it began to flow away.
He fumbled in the glove compartment of the car, took out a half-filled pint of whiskey. He took a cautious drink, then feeling warmed and stronger, a bigger one. He capped the bottle with one hand, dug cigarettes from his pocket. He found one that was still usable and lit up, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. Suddenly, for no reason—except that he was drunk—he guffawed.
Laughing, he took another drink, another long puff on the cigarette. Abruptly the bottle fell from his hand, and the car swerved crazily toward the ditch.
The cigarette saved him. As he fought to avoid the ditch, he jammed the burning butt between his palm and the steering wheel, and the pain screamed his mind awake, gave it the complete alertness that it needed. But it began to fade almost as soon as it came. He was conscious; then surely, swiftly, he was losing consciousness again.
“Foolish Rudy. So little blood he has, and he mixes that with alcohol!”
Rudy brought the car to a weaving stop. Awkwardly, gasping with weakness, he raised and turned himself in the seat, reached down onto the rear floor. His fingers found what they were seeking. Closing them with shaky tightness, he flopped down into the seat again.
The two sandwiches were dry and stale. The coffee in the vacuum bottle was cold and tasted sour. But Rudy consumed all of it, and all of the food.
Had to eat when you were losing blood. Had to pack the chow down to come off a jag. Had to—had to…
Had to get to a doctor.
He was driving again. He could not remember starting up, but the wind was whipping into his face and the highway was leaping madly beneath the car.
“D-doctor,” he mumbled drowsily. “Got tuh hurry’n see a—see Doc an’…”
Awareness flooded over him again. He cursed savagely, bitterly, his dark face contorting into a baffled scowl.
How could he go to a doctor? There’d be other people around; patients, a nurse, maybe the guy’s wife. And even if he could take care of them and get treated, then what? So, sure, he’d bump off the sawbones as soon as the job was done, but that wouldn’t help. Doctors were busy guys. People were always calling on them, dropping in on them, and…
“Not necessarily, my poy! Not with a certain kind of doctor. Oh, perhaps he vould haf calls. But they would be relatively few, and the callers being under no such dire necessity as would prevail in…”
Rudy brushed the sweat from his eyes. He began to slacken his speed, to study the occasional R.F.D. mailboxes at the side of the highway.
Country doctor? Was that it? Huh-uh. Country docs didn’t live in the country. Right in town, same’s any other kind. And if one of ’em was killed or missing, the heat’d be on fast. Faster than fast this close to that bank job. Wouldn’t take no Eddie Hoover to figure out that—that…
The highway began to blur; everything began to blur, to sink into a kind of gray fuzziness. He crouched forward over the wheel, brushing constantly at his eyes. Just before he lost consciousness completely, he turned into a side road.
He could remember doing nothing after that, yet he did a great deal. As much as he would have if he had been fully aware of his reactions. The frightful present no longer existed; he was reborn, free of all fear and the hideous savagery which festered in it. For Little Max was with him. Max Vonderscheid of the leonine head and the dwarfed, hunchbacked body. And he was laughing in a way he had never laughed before, or since.
“Aw, haw, haw! Now you’re kidding me again, you little old Dutch bugger, you!”
“But vot iss so funny, my poor paranoid friend? You should read Jonathan Svift. It vill gif you a better perspective.
“Vy not? Der schooling has many parallels. Even it might be said that he must know much more of medicine and anatomy than your proud M.D. The basic difference? Only that der patients are usually more deserfing and inwariably less demanding.”
Rudy came back into consciousness as quickly as he had gone out of it.
He was awake—and considerably refreshed—the moment the other car turned into the side road.
He had crouched down on the floorboards before passing out, lying on the seat from the waist up. Thus he could not be seen, unless someone peered directly into the car. And now he remained hidden, making no move except to firm the grip on the gun he had kept in his hand.
No move was necessary. He had already done everything that could be done in just such an emergency. Both windows on the left side were rolled down. The right wheels were parked on the edge of the roadside ditch. The rearview mirror was twisted to an angle which permitted him to see without raising his head.
It was a black-and-white patrol car. There were two men in it, one young, one middle-aged; apparently a rookie and a regular. They got out on opposite sides of the vehicle and started forward that way. Hands on gun butts, they kept well apart from one another. Moving up on the suspect objective from different directions.
This, of course, was and is the proper procedure, never to be deviated from under any circumstances. Due to the way the car was parked, however, it would have been bothersome if not impossible to carry it through. And since the vehicle was obviously empty, it seemed unnecessary.
So after a moment’s pause, one of them shrugged and the other laughed, and they came on together. Almost shoulder to shoulder. Just that once they violated regulations.
And a split second after Rudy reared up over the seat, both of them were dead.
He took their guns and ammunition. He whipped his car around in a U-turn, running partly over the older man’s body, and took to the highway again.
He knew what he had to do now, and the knowledge gave him strength. It also amused him, and he laughed as he had when Max Vonderscheid gave him the tip which he was now about to use.
Now, wasn’t that somethin’ though? Who’d ever think of a dodge like that?
Getting yourself fixed up by a vet, a horse doctor!
6
Doc McCoy’s greatest vice and major virtue was his sureness. He had
been right so often and so long that he could not conceive the possibility of being anything else. Genially, he might charge himself with error, good-naturedly accept the blame for another’s mistake. But that was just Doc—part of his masquerade. In his heart he was never wrong—never, that is, about anything that really mattered. And to have a doubt raised as to whether he had actually killed Rudy—a thing at once simple yet vital—made him as near to angry as he ever came.
“I’ll tell you, Carol,” he said, a trace of fiddle-string tightness in his voice. “I don’t know who shot those two cops. I don’t care. All I know is that it was not done by Rudy Torrento.”
“Well—if you say so, Doc. But…”
“Look at it this way. I wasn’t a great deal farther from Rudy than I am from you. Suppose I decided to plug you right now. Do you think I’d kill you or not?”
Carol laughed uneasily. He was smiling at her; joking, of course. No one knew better than she how much Doc thought of her, the lengths he was willing to go to for her sake. But if she hadn’t known—if she hadn’t been sure that Doc wanted and needed her just as much after the bank robbery as before…
The thought nettled her. She spoke in a tone, a manner, that was almost an identical match for his. “Suppose I decided to plug you right now,” she said, smiling, playful—steady-eyed. “Do you think I’d kill you or not?”
“I’m sorry,” Doc said warmly. “To answer your question—I wouldn’t blame you if you did exactly like that.”
“I don’t like being shut up, Doc. I don’t intend to be.”
“And you’re quite right, my dear.”
“So don’t talk to me that way again. Never, ever, understand? I know you didn’t mean it like it sounded, but…”
Doc turned the car off onto a country road. Stopping just over the crest of a little hill, he turned silently and took his wife into his arms. He kissed her, drew her more and more tightly to him. He kissed her again, his sure hands pressing and caressing her small hard-soft body.
And afterward, as they drove on, they were again one with each other; each an extension of the other.
Their brief flare-up was forgotten. There was no more mention of Rudy. Carol was glad to be convinced, to be sure that Rudy was dead.
Mostly they were silent, happy and content merely to be together. But as the sun sank lower in the sky, there was more talk of Beynon. The man—his motives, rather—still bothered Doc. It was difficult to believe that the parole chief meant to grab all the bank loot, instead of the relatively small share he had agreed to accept. To think that such a man would commit murder—as he would have to—for any amount of money was nothing short of ridiculous. On the other hand, was it any more ridiculous than his ostensible sellout—at the risk of his career and reputation—for a mere pittance?
Carol was of little help with the riddle. She seemed indifferent to its answer; a little bored, dully withdrawn. Then, a few miles from Beynon’s place she brightened, turned almost gaily to her husband. “I’ve got an idea, Doc. Let me take Beynon his fifteen grand.”
“You?” Doc gave her a quick glance. “Without me, you mean?”
“Yes. You take the money satchel, and…”
“And just where would I take it to? Where would I wait? At the side of the road, or at one of these little inland villages—some wide place in the road where every stranger gets the big-eye and maybe an interview by the town clown?”
“We can work it out. Please, Doc. What do you say?”
“That I can’t believe you’re serious,” said Doc evenly. “I appreciate your concern for me, of course, but—” he shook his head. “It just wouldn’t do, lamb. As I mentioned before, if Beynon is planning something, we’ve got to know about it now. We’ve got to get it settled now.”
“I could settle it.”
“But he wouldn’t bring things to a showdown if you were by yourself. In any event, the kind of settlement—if one is necessary—is something I’d want to decide on myself.”
Carol started to say something else, then shrugged and lapsed into silence. Doc lighted a cigarette and extended the package, and she shook her head wordlessly.
They skirted a small village, its church spires poking up through a grove of trees. Doc slowed the car to make a quick study of the road map, then resumed his former speed. A few miles farther on, he turned into a narrow dirt road which stretched ribbonlike up through the hills.
It was less than an hour before sunset now, and a chill southwesterly wind was stirring. Back in the hills, Doc got an occasional glimpse of a ranch house or an outbuilding. He didn’t like that. In this isolated area their car could be seen for a very long ways, and one as conspicuous as theirs was certain to be remembered.
The trail met with another. At the rutted intersection, two mailboxes stood catercornered to each other. On one of them, crudely printed in black paint, was the name Beynon. Doc stopped the car and looked carefully around the lonely, rolling terrain.
Apparently the intersection was not visible from either of the two houses which must be nearby. He considered this fact, murmuring absently that Beynon’s place should be just over the next hill to their right.
Carol responded with a murmur of agreement. Doc scratched his cheek thoughtfully, then reached into the back of the car and lifted the money satchel into the front seat.
He opened it, sorted out fifteen thousand dollars and put it in the inside pocket of his coat. Then, as long as it was something that needed to be done anyway, he gave Carol a few hundred dollars in small bills, stuffed his wallet with a few hundred more, and assembled a third sheaf totaling perhaps a thousand. This was scat money—dough to be kept readily available. Doc fastened it together with two of the bank’s paper money bands, laid it in right at the top of the suitcase and closed and locked it again.
Then he got out, unlocked the trunk and put the suitcase inside. He did not lower the trunk lid immediately; instead, catching Carol’s eye in the rearview mirror, he gave her a grin and a wink.
“That idea of yours,” he smiled. “If you don’t mind a variation of it, along with a little cramping.”
Carol’s face lit up. She hopped out of the car and came around to the rear; pulling the gun from her belt, she checked its chamber with two crisp metallic clicks before shoving it back into place. The action sent a frown flickering through Doc’s eyes. He laid a hand on her arm as she started to climb into the trunk.
She was to take it very easy, he cautioned. To do nothing without his lead. Beynon was not a killer. He was a very prominent man. And they—she and Doc—had a long way to travel.
Carol nodded that she understood. She climbed into the trunk, and Doc lowered the lid, leaving the lock off the latch.
As he had supposed, Beynon’s place was only a few hundred yards away, just over the crest of the nearest hill. The house was one of those old-fashioned ranch dwellings, two-storied and painted white, with a long veranda or “gallery” extending across the front.
Down the slope to the rear of the house was a large red barn, now partitioned down one side to provide a garage for Beynon’s car. Adjoining it was a plank corral, which opened at the far end into a lushly grassed pasture. Grazing in it were a couple of riding horses and a few head of white-faced cattle. Beynon kept no employees; the ranch, if it could be called that, was merely a hobby with him. When business affairs took him away, a neighbor looked after his small amount of livestock.
Doc parked the car in the yard beneath a gnarled cottonwood tree. He got out, casually brushing at his clothes, and looked around. It was very quiet. The big old house, with its shadow-black windows, seemed never to have been occupied. Beynon’s car—a three-year-old model—was in the garage, but there was no sign of him.
Doc strolled across the yard, whistling tunelessly, softly. He stepped up on the porch. The front door was open. Through the screen he called, “Beynon,” and stood waiting, listening. There was no answer—no sound. But that in itself, the no-sound, the complete silence
, was an answer.
Doc opened the screen. He slammed it again—from the outside. Then he stepped down from the porch and strode silently around the house to the back door. It also stood open, and the screen was unlatched. He peered in, eyes squinting against the shadows. With a soft sigh, he walked in.
Beynon sat at the long kitchen table, his head pillowed in his arms. On the checkered oilcloth in front of him was a tipped-over glass, and a half-empty quart bottle of whiskey.
Drunk, Doc thought, with less tolerance than was customary to him. The great man had troubles, so he got drunk.
Picking up a glass from the sink, he walked around the table and sat down opposite the parole chief. He poured himself a drink, took a sip of it, and lighted a cigarette. Deliberately he spewed smoke at the man across from him—it was probably the least startling way of any to wake him up. Beynon’s head, with its wild mass of black hair, jerked irritably; then, abruptly, he sat up.
Except for a very faint thickness of speech, he seemed quite sober. Either he had spilled much more of the whiskey than he had drunk, or he had slept it off. His burning, black eyes were clear. They were as contemptuous, as knowing of Doc as they had been back at the prison.
Doc smiled, made a small gesture with his glass. “I hope you don’t mind? It’s been a rather trying day.”
“Where’s your wife?” Beynon said.
“We’re traveling in different cars. She’ll be along in an hour or so.”
“How nice of her,” Beynon said in his rich, musical voice. “How very, very nice of her to come to see me.” He poured himself a drink, threw it down at a gulp. “Or perhaps she isn’t,” he said. “Perhaps her comings and goings have ceased for all time.”
Doc shrugged idly. “If you’re inferring that I killed her…”
“Where’s Rudy, McCoy? Where’s your friend Torrento? He’s in another car, too?”
“Yes. And neither he nor the car is moving, in case you’re interested. I thought you’d be primarily interested in knowing that I have the bank money in my car.”