Хал Эллсон - Mink Is for a Minx

The pilot looked back at him. “No passengers in here,” he said.

“We should be crossing the coast,” John S. Johns said.

“Couple of minutes,” the pilot said, “you can see it dead ahead.”

“Yes, I see it,” Johns said. He placed the small suitcase where he could reach it quickly next to the escape hatch. The large suitcase he placed beside the small one. Then he took out his pistol.

“Open the escape hatch,” Johns said.

The pilot stared at the pistol. “You’re crazy.”

“Open it.”

The pilot set the automatic pilot and bent to open the hatch. Wind rushed through the cockpit. The pilot stood up. “Where’s my co-pilot?”

“I knocked him out,” John S. Johns said.

“Why?” The pilot stared at him. “So you jump, they’ll pick you up in a day. What’d you do? Rob someone?”

“Right the first time,” Johns said. “And no, they won’t pick me up. I’m afraid this is arranged.” He looked below, they were already inside the coast of Mexico. He said, “Go back to your seat. Quick!”

The pilot went back and took the plane off automatic. “Turn back toward the sea.”

“What?” the co-pilot said.

“Turn back out to sea! Now!”

Johns waved his pistol. The pilot began to turn the plane. When the plane was heading back toward the line far below where the land met the sea, the pilot looked at Johns.

“Your boat better be close. We’ve got maybe gas for half an hour,” he said.

“You won’t need it. Set the automatic pilot.”

The pilot slowly set the automatic and turned in his seat to face Johns. “Now what?”

“Now you crash, I’m afraid.”

The pilot looked at the pistol. “You’re going to shoot me?” he asked, his lips white.

“Oh no, not that,” Johns said. “If I wanted evidence left in the plane I could have planted a bomb. It would have been easier. But this crash is going to look like a simple crash — no injuries that couldn’t come from a crash. Not to the people or the plane.

“That’s why I didn’t shoot your co-pilot. They’ll never wonder about one missing body. With any luck the sharks will get all of us... I mean you.”

And John S. Johns looked down. The plane was nearly back to the edge of the sea below. He stepped forward and hit the pilot. He moved so quickly the pilot did not have a chance. He hit the pilot twice more. The pilot lay still. The plane continued to fly toward the sea.

Johns put his pistol in his trouser pocket, took off his suit jacket and his shirt exposing the parachute harness, and bent down to open his small suitcase.

He stood there bent over for a long time. When he straightened up he held a small envelope in his hand. He stared at it, and he stared down at the three bottles of champagne in his suitcase.

On the envelope he read the words: For A Wonderful Honeymoon to My Love. The words were in Marion’s sprawling, childish handwriting. John S. Johns opened the envelope. He read the words aloud in the humming silence of the pilot’s cabin.

My darling, I’ll be your pillow forever. And what’s a honeymoon without champagne and a silk robe for my man. Love, Marion. P.S. Don’t be mad. It was an awful old cushion, too hard and lumpy.

John S. Johns looked down at the open suitcase. Next to the champagne bottles there was a box wrapped in white gift paper. A silk robe, of course. Bought in New York, probably. And he had given her the money.

He bent over the pilot, but the man was dead. He had hit the man very hard. He looked at his watch. Perhaps twenty minutes before the gas ran out. He began to laugh. He sat there and laughed for a long time. He laughed as he looked at the champagne bottles, and at the big suitcase filled with money.

John S. Johns laughed until the motors sputtered, coughed, and went dead. The plane veered off at a sharp angle and headed down for the sea. In the cabin the passengers began to scream. He began to scream with the others.

Chip Stack ogled the cabana photo of the glamorous Mrs. S. E. T. Harrison for a full minute, gave three seconds each to the pages of the insurance report, and returned his lecherous thoughts to the photo.

“A minx without a mink is like a fish without its scales,” he said. “I’ll bet she has been raising hell.”

Richard Ramsey, chief of Claims and Settlements, rattled the check on his desk. “Seventeen thousand dollars worth of hell, and I have no excuse to hold up the settlement.”

Stack snapped his thumb against the bottom of his cigarette pack to make one jump into his shark-shaped mouth. “You’re being taken! That was the old coat check switcheroo, without trimmings. Some broad walked in with a rat and checked it early in the evening. Then Mrs. Harrison arrived and checked her mink. The two met in the powder room or at the bar and exchanged coat checks. Then the broad walked out with the mink and left the rat for Harrison.”

“The switch could have been a sleight,” Ramsey said. “There’re still some artists around who could take the dentures out of your mouth and stuff it with a baked potato. Or the coats may have been physically switched on the hangers in the checkroom. Or the check girl may have palmed Mrs. Harrison’s proper check and sneaked it to some accomplice. There’s a third possibility. In the confusion of the dinner rush, the check girl may have made an honest mistake and given the coat checks to the wrong parties.”

“Or maybe the mink was a muskrat in disguise!” Chip Stack jeered.

Ramsey shrugged his bony shoulders. “In any case, we’re liable and we’re paying.” He scaled the check expertly into the Outgoing box.

“If you’re settling, why call me in?” Stack grunted.

Ramsey removed his rimless glasses to polish them. “Because if the coat girl made an honest error in the rush and got the checks mixed up, then some career girl in the muskrat bracket is walking around with a seventeen thousand dollar mink on her back — and she is not technically guilty of one damn thing. What we need now is the special aptitude of a shamus who will go to practically any length to get the clothes off some frightened woman’s back. Naturally, we thought of you.”

“I always cherish your high opinions of me,” Chip acknowledged. “You boys want the coat back, but you don’t dare go after it. What are you going to do with an old coat?”

“Return it to Mrs. Harrison with the suggestion she relinquish the new one she will have by then.”

Chip Stack chortled. “You may know the insurance laws, but you sure don’t know women! You’d have a better chance getting the settlement returned by her old man.”

“The age of miracles is past,” Ramsey said dryly. “He happens to be on the board of our own bank, and he didn’t get there without learning that bona fide settlements cannot be repossessed. Just bring in the old coat and you’ll earn your fee.”

Stack poked on his hat and raised his chubby body erect with the surprising ease of a seal surfacing. “I have a terrific streak of chivalry,” he confessed. “I’d much rather bring you in the money.” He punched out his cigarette and moved toward the door with his rolling, carefree gait.

Ramsey’s drill voice pinned him on the doorsill. “You might bear in mind that if you get arrested for blackmail, illegal entry, or named as a correspondent, we don’t know you.”

Chip Stack bowed. “A man appreciates that solid, old school-tie type of loyalty.”

He sauntered around to the investigation file room and got the scuttlebutt on the check girl. Bonded without a question. Not a blemish on her record in six years of checking at the plush spas. Supporting a crippled brother. Savings account. No addiction to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. No steady boy friends — shady or otherwise.