Том Годвин: Ed McBaines 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine. Volume 1, No. 4. April, 1975

Gloomily, Waring pulled his rifle out of the mud, and used his handkerchief to clean the stock. The action, he noted, was still clean and bright with oil.

Suddenly he felt a surge of hope. The gun was power. Could that power be used to save him?

He thought of stuffing a foot of rope into the muzzle, and then winced at his own folly. Fill the barrel and fire a bullet; sure; blow up the gun and your own silly face. A billet was out. How the devil did they use rifles to launch grenades, and why didn’t those guns blow up? He racked his brain trying to remember. Korea, but that was a long way back, and he hadn’t been a combat soldier; a medico didn’t become an arms expert. Still, he’d always been curious and observant.

One idea came back. A hole in the middle of the grenade to let the bullet through; then the blast did the actual tossing. Or was that the old, obsolete method?

Waring groaned at his own fallible memory. Hell, he should be able to figure it out for himself, anyhow. You couldn’t fire a slug, not with anything in the barrel, but maybe in the last quarter inch... But he knew that wouldn’t work. No way to get enough weight from that small a bit of rope, or from anything else. You had to have something sticking well down the muzzle — those rifle grenades had a shaft several inches long; yes, they did; he remembered, now.

Then the solution came, like a flashbulb in the brain. A blank. A good, strong blank — that’s what it took. He snatched a shell from the wooden block where he had piled them, took the penknife, and got busy. It was easy to remove the soft-nosed bullet, and replace it with a small wad of paper — a torn credit card from his wallet.

But that was only part of the answer. What did you tie the rope to? He searched the ground again. A few rusty bolts, but much too thick for the muzzle. Surely he wasn’t going to fail now, with so much figured out.

Then his eyes fell on the little cleaning kit. Of course, The jointed brass rod: a perfect fit, naturally. He took out the sections, joining just the first two, to make a shaft seven inches long. He tied one end firmly to the rope, arranged the figure eight piles again, and chambered his blank.

Waring pressed the stock firmly against the wooden block, pointed the muzzle towards the mouth of the shaft, and with a silent prayer, fired.

The sound was ear-splitting in that confined space. He saw the bit of rod sail up perhaps thirty feet, pulling the cord with it, then the thing wobbled, hesitated, and fell back.

Waring swore grittily, biting the words off between his teeth with a viciousness that would have startled his patients. What the devil was wrong now? Time was getting short. He tried to make a calm analysis. First of all, the rod probably wasn’t heavy enough. To carry that much rope, a heavier weight was needed. All right; I’ll tie a couple of bolts to it, he thought. And maybe — just maybe — the blank wasn’t powerful enough, either. How should that be remedied?

Waring thought he knew. He opened two shells, and used a double charge of powder. Then with the new weight, he tried again. This time he almost made it; the rope soared gracefully to a point just below the mouth of the pit. Waring knew that victory was near.

Assuming the weight was about right, that meant more powder. This time he used three loads. The roar was incredibly loud, and he realized that even the marvelous 30-’06 action had its limit of strength, and would never fire again.

But then he saw with joy that it wouldn’t have to. The weighted rod had sailed far over the rim, and when he tugged at the foot of the rope, it slid down only a few yards before tightening. Somewhere, outside the mouth of the shaft, the mass of metal was safely snagged. All that was left now was the climb itself. And then the reckoning with Rankin. Waring began the long, tiring ascent. He topped the rim just as the sun sank.

I knew that Jack Browder was planning to murder either me or Doris when he wanted me to go with them on their hunting trip.

I couldn’t have proved it but I didn’t need any proof. I knew Jack for what he actually was.

Women liked him. He was tall and handsome, with long lashes over dark eyes and the kind of curly brown hair that made a woman want to run her fingers through it. When he spoke in his deep, melodious voice and flashed that engaging smile of his, you could practically see them melt at his feet.

Yeah, women liked him and nobody knew better than Jack Browder how charming he could be. But I had long ago seen what actually lurked behind that handsome, smiling front of his.

It was something heartless and cold and calculating, like a coiled rattle snake waiting for its prey.

And Doris had married him.

Two months before she had been Doris Reynolds — the prettiest girl in Phoenix, nineteen years old, with red-gold curls the color of an Arizona sunrise, lips as sweet as the petals of a wild rose, and big, trusting blue eyes that made you want to go out and fight a lion or something to protect her.

Also, she was rich. I guess that was one of the reasons I lost when handsome Jack Browder became the competing suitor against me and my busted-down nose.

Not that she was accustomed to wealth. It had been only the year before that her father had accidently found a rich gold vein out in the hills and the Reynolds family suddenly had lots of money.

A few months later both of Doris’s parents had been killed in a traffic accident and Doris was left all alone in the world — all alone and lonesome, with no one to care what became of her and nothing for company but a big bank account.

That was Jack’s cue to enter the scene.

For my part, her money worried me. I was afraid she would think I really wanted it instead of her. I had a fair income but not along the order of new Cadillacs every year, annual trips to Europe, and things like that.

Jack didn’t have any money at all but he managed to wear expensive clothes and give the impression of being well off. He turned on all his charm with her, and he could turn on a lot. It wasn’t long until I was sure I saw the handwriting on the wall — I didn’t stand a chance.

I told her good-by one evening, knowing that it would be for the last time. She smiled up at me, the sweet radiance of her youth and beauty like a light on her face, and I told myself, She smiles at Jack the same way — except more often.

“Good-by, Bill,” she said. “Until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” I answered.

I didn’t sleep that night. When morning came I knew I wouldn’t be able to forget her if I stayed in Phoenix. So I left, and didn’t come back for six weeks.

I was told, the day I returned, that Jack and Doris had left that morning to get married in Las Vegas. I moped around like a fool for a few hours, feeling miserably lonesome, then I went to a bar, wondering if I was an even bigger fool to try to drown my sorrows in whiskey.

When I woke up in jail the next morning with a bad hangover I had the answer to that question.

I heard that — at Jack’s suggestion — they spent their honeymoon in Las Vegas and that he had a gay time in the casinos and show places there. They had been married seven weeks when I saw Doris again.

She was standing before a fall bargain display of dresses and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. All the radiance was gone from her and she had aged ten years.

She saw me and exclaimed, “Bill!” her face lighting up for an instant. Then the light was gone as she said in a tone that I would have thought held sombre accusation if I hadn’t known better, “You walked out one evening and left town and never even wrote to me. Why did you do that?”