Ellery Queen's Double Dozen, page 23
Joey gave Hector and Janet a confident little smile, and then he went out into the night with the two men and Uncle George. The big Imperial had been moved through the blockade of cars and was headed south. Sheriff Egan stood by the driver’s side, rain lashing against his leathery face. He squinted at Uncle George.
“You still figure on going south to Hyland Brook and over the west ridge into New York State?” he asked.
“You got a better idea?” Uncle George asked.
“Nope,” Egan said laconically. “I still think you’re all nuts. You won’t be able to follow any trail in the dark, George. Trees down, brooks runnin’ out of their courses. You’re just wastin’ time to start before daylight.”
“The gain of an hour or two might mean everything to our business deal,” McVey said pleasantly. He stood close to Joey. “I understand Mr. Crowder knows these woods inside out.”
“He’s the best,” the sheriff said. “But sometimes even the best can’t do the impossible.”
“I think we ought to get started,” McVey said with an apologetic smile.
Stack got in behind the wheel. Joey, Uncle George, and McVey walked around to the other side of the car. The old man and the boy got in front and McVey climbed into the rear seat. The doors were closed. The motor hummed.
“Good luck!” Egan called out above the noise of the storm. “So far, so good,” McVey said, looking out the rear window.
“You played that nice and casual, Uncle.”
Uncle George sat wedged in a corner of the seat, his gnarled fingers clenching and unclenching in his lap. In the faint light from the instrument panel Joey stared at his uncle, as though hoping for some magic trick to emerge from behind the scowling forehead.
“You may not be able to go more’n a mile or so down this road before we hit pretty deep water,” Uncle George said. “But I figured all the walking we could save. . .” His voice faded off.
A few moments later the car slowed down. “Looks like a lake up ahead,” Stack said, peering ahead through the space in the windshield cut by the lashing wiper blade.
“I guess this is about it,” Uncle George said. “That’ll be the overflow of Hyland Brook. Better pull up over to the side here, Mister.”
The car stopped. McVey’s orders were precise. He and Joey and Uncle George would move out and stand in front of the car in the headlight glow. Stack would keep them covered while McVey tied the clothesline to Joey and himself.
Presently, each of them equipped with a flashlight, they started off across a muddy field, following the side of the flooded brook. Uncle George led the way, with Joey behind him. The imprisoning rope trailed back to where it was lashed around McVey’s pudgy midsection. Stack brought up the rear.
The violence of Nature against Man in these periodic eruptions is terrifying and costly beyond an accountant’s ability to totalize. But Man, hiding in the securest place he can find, is seldom a witness to the awful damage that Nature inflicts upon herself in these moments of convulsion. Three men and a boy struggled slowly up the first gradual rise of the west ridge, and they saw trees uprooted, boulders laid bare, great jagged ditches dug in the earth by angry waters.
With only the flashlights to see by, they came suddenly to an impasse and had to scout blindly, through the wind and rain swept darkness, for a way around. They fell, scrambled up, fell again—the drive for escape still strong in McVey and Stack. Uncle George, like a gaunt, bent tree, moved steadily and slowly, always up. Occasionally he would reach back to help Joey.
The noise of the storm seemed to grow louder. McVey yanked on the rope and signaled Joey that he wanted to talk to Uncle George. The four of them huddled together. McVey had Joey by the arm, the gun held firmly against his ribs.
“Sounds like a waterfall!” he shouted at Uncle George.
The older man nodded. “Called the Devil’s Slide. We want to stay as close to the edge of the stream as we can here. Other wise we’ll have to take a big circle around. Cost us a lot of time. Once we get above the falls the going should be easier. But stay right behind me. You don’t want to lose your footing in this next bit.” He looked down at Joey. “Getting tired, old timer?”
“I’m fine,” Joey said, a little breathless.
They started up again. The stream to their left was an angry torrent, and straight ahead of them the water thundered over the Devil’s Slide. The climb was steep now. McVey kept turning his flashlight from the boy to Uncle George ahead of him.
They were halfway up the side of the foam-lashed falls when Uncle George seemed to lose his footing. Even over the noise of wind and water they could hear him shout. He staggered to the left, arms flung out to save himself, then pitched headfirst into the boiling falls.
McVey, gasping for breath, scrambled up beside Joey, who crouched on the edge of the falls, shining his flashlight down into the murderous water, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“ Uncle George! Uncle George!”
The two men were silent, shaken by the suddenness of it. Stack turned his flash around. “We better move,” he said, licking his lips. “You can see where the bank’s undermined here in spots. It gave way with the old guy right here.”
“Come on, let’s get away from the edge,” McVey said. He yanked on the rope that was attached to Joey, pulling the dazed boy away from the falls.
“We gotta try to find him!” Joey wailed.
“You crazy?” Stack said. “Nobody could live through that. He’s already pounded to death on the rocks.” He looked at McVey. “So now what?”
McVey shone his flashlight on Joey’s white, fear-struck face. “It looks like it’s up to you, Junior,” he said grimly. “You know these woods, don’t you? Been out here with the old boy before, haven’t you?”
Joey nodded, as though he only half heard.
“Your uncle said there was a way around the falls. Longer, he said, but it’s probably a damn sight safer. You know the way?”
“There’s an old logging road,” Joey said. “I—I think I could find it from here.”
“You better,” McVey growled. “I’m warning you, sonny-boy, you try to pull one on us and I go back after your old man and your old woman, and that pretty teacher—”
“I—I think I can find it,” Joey said in a shaken voice. “So—get started!”
For half an hour they floundered around in brush and fallen tree limbs. Suddenly Joey turned, pointing with his flashlight. “Old logging road. You can see it,” he said to McVey.
They moved with greater ease now. The road was rough, but there was no obstacle of undergrowth.
“Even if it is longer we can move faster,” McVey said to Stack. He gave a little jerk on the rope and gestured to Joey to speed it up.
And then things happened so suddenly that McVey had no chance to act.
Directly in front of them the headlights of a car sprang into light. At the same instant Joey plunged forward, Hat on his face. McVey had only a fleeting glimpse of the figure that stepped into the beam of light ahead of them—the dripping figure of Uncle George. He had raised a rifle to his shoulder and quite methodically he pulled the trigger. McVey’s body jerked upward like a marionette on strings, then pitched side ways into the darkness. There was a round black hole in the center of his forehead.
Uncle George turned the gun slightly to the left.
“No!” Stack screamed. “Don’t shoot!” He swung his arm and threw the .45 he was carrying into the underbrush. “Don’t shoot!”
“Hold it, George!” another voice said. “We need him to do some talking.” Sheriff Egan stepped forward into the light, a shotgun cradled in his arm. “You hold dead still, brother, unless you want a double load in your gut!”
Uncle George took three quick steps to the fallen boy and knelt beside him, cradling him in his arms.
“You did fine, boy,” he said unsteadily. “You did just fine!”
It was all Joey could do to keep awake. His mother had given him two aspirins and a cup of hot tea. He was wrapped in blankets, and the heat from the kitchen range made him so drowsy that he felt his head drooping and he had to fight to listen.
Joey’s mother and father, and Uncle George, and Sheriff Egan and the lovely Miss Graves were all there. They had all made a great fuss over Joey. Miss Graves had actually kissed him. His mother kept telling him he ought to get to bed, but she smiled at him gently and didn’t press the point.
“These guys knocked over a diamont merchant in Montreal,” the sheriff was saying. “Killed him and got away with about a half a million dollars in stones. Had ’em in that brief case all the time! They figured they could drive away at night—and ran right into the flood. When they saw Russ Toomey waving his torch at ’em they thought it was a police road block and they deliberately ran him down.”
“I still don’t understand the rest of it, Mr. Egan,” Esther Trimble said. “How did you know to go to George’s shack in the woods? And how did Joey know what to do?”
“It’s George’s story,” Egan said.
Uncle George chuckled, and his pale blue eyes moved affectionately to Joey, who smiled back sleepily. “Fellow with a gun always figures he’s stronger than the fellow he’s covering,” Uncle George said. “And he usually thinks he knows more than the poor sucker who’s looking into his gun barrel. That was McVey. He fell into a trap when he made that up about arguing with Russ Toomey, but he was still top man—the smartest guy on earth. We didn’t have any choice, it seemed, but to do just what he said—not with that gun pointed at Joey’s head! But we weren’t entirely licked.”
“I’ll say!” Red Egan chuckled. He was sitting next to Janet Graves and Joey guessed she must be too interested in the story to notice that the sheriff’s hand was resting against hers.
“I tipped Red off right away there was trouble,” Uncle George said. “Told him I was heading ‘south to Hyland Brook.’ Hyland Brook is north of here in the next county! I told him I was going to take these fellows over the west ridge into New York State. Red knew as well as I did that if we went over the west ridge we’d wind up in Massachusetts. Told him we were taking a camp kit he’d given Joey—which he never gave him. Mistake after mistake that the two strangers couldn’t suspect—so Red knew there was trouble, and he also knew enough to let me play in my way!”
“Always let you play it your way, George.”
“Then I told Miss Graves here to tell Red to meet me at my shack in the woods and stay under cover till he heard from me.”
“How could you tell her?” Hector interrupted. “You were never out of McVey’s sight—or the other fellow’s.”
“There were three people in this town who made friends with Russ Toomey,” Uncle George said. “There was Joey, first and best, and me, and Miss Graves, who tried to teach the poor deaf and dumb boy a little on the side. So we learned to talk his way—with our hands! I stood at the door with McVey staring right at me and told Miss Graves with my hands what to tell Red. And then in the ca’.r I told Joey what was up—the same way. You remember the Devil’s Slide, Esther—when we were kids? Water comes over the falls—overhang up top. At the bottom there’s a pool hid right behind the water coming over the falls. I told Joey I was going to dive in there. They wouldn’t be able to see me through the overflow—not in the dark with only flashlights. Then Joey was to stall a while and finally lead ’em along the logging road to my shack.”
“You were taking a pretty big gamble with Joey’s life,” Hector Trimble sputtered.
Uncle George’s face was grave. “Yes, I was, Hector. But don’t think for a minute McVey was going to let us go after we’d served his purpose. He’d have left us both in the woods dead. Had to take a chance. So while Joey was leading ’em around in the woods I lit out for the shack. Red was there, and we parked his Jeep heading straight up the road. I’d told Joey the minute the headlights came on he was to dive flat on his face.”
“You told him that—with your hands?” Esther Trimble said. “Right in the car—right in front of Stack. You might say Russ Toomey brought his own killers to justice,” Uncle George said.
“But weren’t you scared, Joey?” Esther asked. “Weren’t you scared maybe George hadn’t made it back from the falls? Joey?”
Uncle George looked tenderly at the boy. “I guess we could all do with a little sleep,” he said.
VICTOR CANNING
Flint’s Diamonds
© Copyright, 1963, by Victor Canning
The second in a new series—how the members of the Minerva Club came to the rescue of Flint Morrish in his terrible predicament. . .
The Minerva Club—of which most people have never heard—is in a turning off Brook Street which, as you probably know, is very handy for the Ritz. It is a very exclusive club, chiefly because its membership is restricted to those who have served at least a two years’ prison sentence and are able—beg, borrow, or steal—to pay yearly dues of £50.
Outside the Club, the members are free to carry on their professional activities without any fear of being expelled—no matter what trouble they get into. But inside, there is nothing but good manners and the most honorable behavior. You could leave your wallet on the edge of a hand basin and find it there a month later. In other words, it is an oasis of tranquility after the cut-and-thrust of the outside world where every man is for himself. The membership includes some distinguished names from the criminal calendar—Milky Waye, the Club’s Secretary; Solly Badrubal, Chairman of the Wines Committee; Jim O’Leary, Treasurer—others including Horace Head, Marty Martin, Dig Sopwith—dozens of them. And Flint Morrish.
This story is about Flint. He was one of the nicest men ever to have done time. He had a wooden leg—the result of something that went wrong with the gelignite in an early safe job; he had a beaming country-squire kind of face and an incurable faith in human nature—particularly in the female side of it. Flint was always looking for the perfect woman—and always being disappointed. In romantic affairs he was as short-sighted as his own eyes—and he did nothing about either defect. He wouldn’t wear glasses and he wouldn’t learn by experience.
His latest “little number” was a blonde perfection, weighing about a hundred and ten pounds, somewhat top-heavy in her physical distribution, and with a pair of blue eyes that were like sultry lagoon-pools. She came into the ring listed as Lottie Larson, age twenty-eight (unsubstantiated by any birth certificate). And Flint was gone on her. For him she was the woman, and for her he was the man—as soon as he could, no matter how, produce a properly authenticated bank balance of £10,000.
At the time of this story, Flint had about £5,000—which was high for him—and he was working on the balance. In fact, although he had taken Lottie on holiday to a small seaport town in Hampshire called Brankfold, Flint never missed a chance to pursue his calling—Flint was a man who always had both eyes open for the slightest tip of the head from Opportunity.
One day, driving by himself—Lottie had stayed in the hotel with a headache—he passed a large country house just in time to see a man and a woman and two children drive out of the main gates. Flint stopped up the road and then wandered back to the house. He went round to the servants’ entrance and knocked. If there had been any reply he would have tried to sell the cook a complete set of the Child’s Wonder Book of Nature, £14, delivered by post as soon as the check was cleared. . .But there was no answer to his knock.
So Flint went into the house through a convenient window, and wasting no time on reconnaissance he quickly found the study and the safe. It was a laughable safe to a man of Flint’s experience. He opened it up with a collapsible jimmy (which he always carried with him), and found himself with about £50 in notes and a small wash-leather bag of uncut diamonds. At a quick and happy glance he knew the diamonds would be worth about £20,000 from any fence.
Flint drove back to his hotel whistling and found that Lottie, according to the hall porter, had recovered from her headache and gone off to the Pier Ballroom to a tea dance.
Now Flint, because of his wooden leg, was not much of a dancing man. However, for Lottie’s sake, he did his best. So he went after her, eager to show her the bag of diamonds.
Squinting around the ballroom, he finally picked out her blonde topknot. She was dancing with a man who, as far as Flint could see, was just a tall length of Donegal tweed with a black thatch on top.
Flint pushed his way across to them on the floor and took Lottie by the arm. It should be mentioned here that Flint was by nature a very jealous man where his “perfect women” were concerned—even though Flint knew that there were some limits to perfection.
Very politely Flint said, “Excuse me, the lady is tired,” and started to lead his beloved away. But the face under the black thatch said to Flint, “The lady is not tired and is enjoying this dance with me. Stump off, you old pirate.”
Now this was a most unfortunate thing to say to Flint. Flint didn’t mind a bit being ribbed about his leg by members of the Minerva Club—but for any nonmember even to show he had noticed it, let alone draw a crude allusion to it, was like putting a match to a powder keg.
Flint let go a roundhouse and put the man on the floor; but the man jumped up to an accompaniment of shrieks from the dancers and a drum roll from the band, and flashed over a quick right cross to Flint’s jaw that dropped him to the floor as if he’d been shot. After that there was a few minutes of sharp give—and take, during which Lottie disappeared, and then the police arrived. Flint and the other man were hauled off to the local police station—charge, disturbance of the peace.
Now on the way to the station Flint did some quick thinking. He knew that he would be up before the beak the next morning and he knew that with his record he would get at least a month—while the other fellow, such is justice, pleading he had been assaulted, would probably get off scot-free. The thought of a month didn’t worry Flint much. In his profession the calendar was always coming up with such temporary blanks—but, of course, he was worried about the diamonds.
