I glanced at the two men in the car and I felt a cold chill snake up my spine.
They were cops. Although in plain clothes, there was no mistaking them: two
big, hard-faced men with aggressive jaws and cold alert eyes.
I kept going, feeling sweat break out all over me.
A voice bawled, “Hey! You!”
I stopped and turned.
Both men got out of the car. Both of them were looking at me.
Lola was staring at them. She knew what they were. She was as tense as I was.
I walked slowly over to them, fighting down my rising panic.
“I’ve got a flat,” the bigger of the two said. “It’s in the trunk. Fix it, will you?
I don’t want to go over the mountain without a spare.”
“Why, sure,” I said, and taking the key he offered me I went around to the
trunk and opened it.
The other cop said to Lola, “Fill her up, sister, and how about some food
while the flat’s being fixed?”
I saw Lola hesitate. She hadn’t the nerve to refuse them.
“Sandwiches okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Hurry it up. We’re late already.”
I pulled the tyre out of the trunk and trundled it into the repair shed. It had
never been off the rim and it took me twenty minutes to get it off. By then
sweat was streaming off me. My escape time was running out. It took me another twenty minutes to repair the flat. While I worked the cops ate
sandwiches and drank beer.
It was ten minutes past eight by the time I had fixed the tyre and put it back
into the trunk. By that time I should have been on the mountain road, heading
for Tropica Springs. It looked now as if I wasn’t going to make the New York train.
As the two cops drove away, two cars, loaded with a bunch on vacation, pulled up. All of them yelled for food and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I said to Lola, “It isn’t going to work out. We’ll have to some other time. I
thought all along this was a cockeyed idea. The timing is wrong.”
She gave me a stony look, then went to the lunch room and opened up. The
timing was wrong.
For the next two hours we worked like galley slaves. Cars came in in a steady
stream: everyone wanted food. It wasn’t until ten o’clock that the traffic
dropped off.
Both of us were sweating and tired. The night was oven hot: the hottest night
I had known out here.
We stood together in the lunch room, looking around at the pile of dishes, the
trays of used glasses, the ash trays crammed with butts.
“Go and open the safe,” Lola said.
“Not tonight,” I said. “It’s too late. We’ll have to try some other time.” She
stared fixedly at me.
“You heard what I said. Open the safe!”
“He’ll be back in four hours. That doesn’t give me time to get away.”
She came out from behind the counter and crossed to the wall telephone.
“You either open the safe or I’ll call the police. Please yourself.”
“You said you would give me twenty-four hours!”
“He won’t know you have gone until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. He won’t think to look in the safe for maybe a day or so. You have all the time
you need. Go and open the safe or I’ll call the police!”
I saw she wasn’t bluffing. I went back to the garage and collected the bag of
tools. The time was ten minutes after ten. I couldn’t hope to reach Tropica
Springs now before three o’clock in the morning. There would be no train. I
would have to ditch the station wagon as soon as I got into town. Jenson had
only telephone the police that I had taken the station wagon for them to
descend on me like a swarm of flies. I would now have to hide up in Tropica
Springs until the morning. With the hair bleach and a change of clothes, I still
stood a good chance.
As I crossed over to the bungalow a truck pulled up by the pumps. I saw Lola
come out of the lunch room and go over to the truck.
I went into the sitting room, turned on the light, pushed aside the settee that
hid the safe and squatted down on my heels beside it.
I spun the knob of the dial. It worked smoothly and that was a good sign.
Then crouching forward, with my ear pressed against the cold steel of the
door, I began to move the dial very gently and slowly from left to right.
In a few seconds I heard the first tumbler drop into place. I reversed the dial
and began again. There was nothing to it. You just had to know by
experience when the faint sound told you the tumbler had dropped. As a safe,
this one was the biggest swindle of them all.
Six times I went through the operation, then I reached out and pulled the door
open. It had taken eleven minutes by my strap watch.
The money was there. Neatly stacked in 100-dollar bills: one hundred
packets, lovingly put away for the three-year trip around the world.
I reached for the bag, then took hold of the first pack of bills. I heard a sound
behind me.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Jack?”
Jenson’s voice went through me like a sword thrust. For maybe two seconds I
remained crouched before the open safe, my hand still on the stack of bills,
then slowly I looked over my shoulder.
Jenson stood in the doorway, staring at me. His expression was shocked and
bewildered.
I became vaguely aware of the roar of the truck’s engine as the truck moved
off. I remained crouching before the safe, unable to do anything but stare at
Jenson.
He moved his ponderous bulk into the room.
“Jack! What do you think you’re doing?”
Slowly I stood up.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jenson,” I said. “It must look to you as if I were going to steal
your money, but I wasn’t. I give you my word. I know it looks like it, but
you’ve got to believe me.”
Then Lola appeared in the doorway. She was white as a fresh fall of snow
and she was shaking.
“What’s going on here?” she cried, her voice shrill. “Did he open the safe? I
knew it! I warned you, Carl! I knew he wasn’t to be trusted. He must have
sneaked in here while I was in the kitchen!”
Jenson didn’t seem to hear her. He was still staring at me.
“What are you doing in here, Jack?” he asked. There was real agony in his
voice. It cut into me like the thong of a whip. “How you got an explanation?”
“Yes. I’ve got an explanation. First, I’m not Jack Patmore: that’s not my
name. I’m Chet Carson. I escaped from Farnworth jail six weeks ago.”
I saw his heavy face tighten. Moving slowly, he went over to the settee and
sat down.
“I read about that. So you’re Carson . . .”
“Yes. She saw a photograph of me in an old paper that came in the groceries
box on Tuesday. She recognised me. She said if I didn’t open the safe so she
could steal your money she would give me to the police.”
“You liar!” Lola screamed. “Carl! Don’t listen to him! He’s lying! He’s
trying to save his rotten skin! I’m going to call the police!”
Jenson turned slowly and stared at her.
“I’ll call the police when I want them. You keep out of this.”
“He’s lying, I tell you! You don’t believe him, do you?”
“Will you be quiet!”
She leaned against the wall. Her bre@sts under the white overall heaved as she
tried to steady her breathing.
To me, he said, “What else, Jack? Or isn’t there anything else?”
“I planned to take the money,” I said. “I was going to clip her on the jaw and
take the money to Tropica Springs. I was going to send it back to you with a
letter telling you the truth. That way you would believe me and save yourself
a lot of grief in the future.”
He stared fixedly at me for fully five seconds. I stared right back at him. Then
he turned slowly and stared at Lola. She flinched from his probing eyes.
“You say he is lying, Lola?”
“Of course he’s lying!”
“Then look at me.”
But she couldn’t. She tried, but every time her eyes met his, her eyes shifted.
She just couldn’t take that probing, steady stare.
Slowly he got to his feet. Somehow he seemed now older and his great
shoulders sagged.
“Go to bed, Lola. I’ll talk about this tomorrow. Never mind the night shift.
I’ll handle it. Go to bed.”
“What’s going to happen to him?” she demanded. “I’m going to call the
police!”
He crossed the room and took her arms in his great hands and gave her a hard
little shake.
“Go to bed! No one is calling the police!”
He pushed her out of the room, then he turned and went over to the settee and
sat down.
I still stood by the open safe.
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” I said. “I just couldn’t face going back to
Farnworth so I was a sucker for her blackmail.”
“Funny how these things work out, isn’t it?” he said in a low, flat voice. “The
President of the Legion had a heart attack just before he left for the meeting.
When I got there, the meeting was cancelled. Because a guy has a heart
attack, another guy finds out he’s married a tramp.”
I stiffened.
“You mean you believe me? You don’t think I’m lying?”
He looked at me, his hands rubbing his knees.
“I told you: I don’t make mistakes about men, Jack, but it seems I do about
women.”
I drew in a long, deep breath.
“Thanks,” I said. “You would have got the money back. There was no other
way to save it.”
He looked at the open safe and shrugged his shoulders.
“You’ll have to go, Jack. You won’t be safe here now. She’ll give you away.
You can be sure of that.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll give you a stake and you can take the station wagon. Any idea where
you’ll go?”
“New York. I can get lost there.”
“I’m going to give you thirty thousand bucks,” Jenson said “With that, you’ll
be able to start up in business.”
I gaped at him.
“Oh, no! I couldn’t take as much as that, Mr. Jenson. Don’t think I’m not
grateful, but I just couldn’t take it.”
“You can and you will,” he said, looking directly at me. “I won’t be going on
this world trip alone. I don’t need the money now, and you do. I’ve never met
a guy I like better than you, Jack. You’re going to take it.” He looked away as
he went on, “I’ll miss you.”
Then I saw her.
She had been pretty quick, for she had changed from her overall to her green
dress. Her face was white and her eyes glittered. In her right hand she held a
.45 revolver, and she was pointing it at us.
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