Роберт Колби - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972

As I follow Hall back to the hotel I think about the letter. I don’t doubt for a moment that he wrote one and that it is in the possession of his lawyer. He thinks it protects him from harm, and in a way I guess it does. I smile as I walk behind him into the lobby. I wouldn’t have the stomach to kill him anyway. That would be breaking the law.

We hit Saint Louis that month, and Indianapolis and Chicago — then on to Detroit. I know his route so well I could almost fly ahead and meet him there. But that would be defeating my purpose, so I stay close to him, almost always within sight, while I wait for him to crack — and he’s close to cracking. In Indianapolis he came over to me in the hotel bar and threatened to hit me, but I told the bartender to call the police. That calmed him down.

I stay very close to Hall now, and it doesn’t surprise me when I overhear him ask on a lobby telephone for a reservation on the afternoon flight to Miami. Still, I think my heart skips a beat, and I’m not an emotional man. Miami is not on Hall’s itinerary.

I call the airline he uses and book a seat on the same flight he’s on. Usually I do that. I like to sit in front of him on the plane so he can see the back of my head. We both know he can’t give me the slip on an airplane.

Hall rents a car at the Miami airport and drives to a big motel out on the edge of the city in a fairly secluded area; but this time I don’t stay where he’s staying. I check in at one of the biggest hotels I can find, with a private beach and recreation area. The place is thronging with people, and I take a room on the middle floor with a window overlooking a busy street. It’s a small, well-furnished room, quiet but surrounded by activity. Perfect. After placing a phone call to Hall to irritate him and let him know where I’m staying, I settle down to wait.

Hall shows up that very night, as I thought he would. He can’t afford to waste time. When I open the door he seems ready to force his way in, and it kind of surprises him when I smile and stand back to let him enter.

“To what do I owe the honor?” I ask.

Hall looks around him, as if checking the room. The blinds are closed. He draws a gun from a pocket of his uncharacteristic drab brown suit.

“I take it you’re going to kill me,” I say.

“That’s right,” Hall says, and he grins, but his small eyes are angry. “You asked for it. It’s the only way I can get you off my back.”

“But aren’t you afraid you’ll be caught?”

“That argument won’t save you,” Hall says, his grin widening. “I traveled here under a different name, and I’ll return the same way tonight. Nobody’ll even know I was in Miami. Even if they suspect, I bought me a nice alibi in Detroit. Right now I’m back there playin’ poker in a hotel room.”

“You were at the races when Adelaide was murdered, weren’t you?”

“Sure,” Hall says. “I even had the torn tickets to prove it — mailed to me special delivery from Louisville.”

“Clever,” I say with admiration.

“Too clever for you, buddy boy. This time you outsmarted yourself, flyin’ here like a regular pigeon, so fast you couldn’t even have had time to tell anyone where you were going or why. By the time they find your body I’ll be back in Detroit. And the best part is, as far as the police are concerned, I don’t even have a motive to kill you.”

“There’s one thing,” I say. “Suppose I lured you here to kill you?”

Despite himself, Hall’s florid face suddenly goes pale. Then he regains some of his composure. “You won’t harm a hair on my head, pal. Remember the letter?”

I swallow and nod.

“Into the bedroom!” His voice is higher now as he gets up his nerve for the actual business of killing me.

“You’ll get the electric chair,” I say to him as he jabs the gun barrel into the small of my back and pushes me into the bedroom. “You’ll be counting those last seconds.”

“You got it backwards, buddy boy.” He picks up a pillow and folds it around the gun.

I don’t even hear the shots as I feel the bullets rip into my chest and I fall backward onto the bed. I’ll bet he wonders why I’m smiling when I die. I bet that will bother him.

He doesn’t know yet about the recorder in my pocket. Or about the letter I left with my lawyer.

This is what one could call a most timely double take.

Sheriff Frank Miles already had two things worrying him the afternoon he learned about the escapee.

One of those things was that the election, in which his job was on the block, was only two weeks away, and the consensus around town was that he was going to run second. A strong second, but still second.

The other thing that was worrying him was Gloria.

It was Gloria he was talking to on the phone just before Billy Ruud, his deputy, came in to tell him about the escapee.

“You did a lot of sweet talking when we first started seeing each other, Frank,” Gloria was saying. “You had me convinced that you really cared.”

“You know I cared,” Miles said. He pictured her long red hair the way it looked spread out on a pillow. “I cared a lot.”

“Cared? Or still care?” she wanted to know. Her voice was bitter.

“Both,” he told her. “Only—”

“Only what?”

“Skip it.”

“No, I won’t. Only what?”

“We’ve been through it before, Gloria,” he said patiently. “There’s a way you want to live and there’s a way I want to live. Unfortunately, they’re two different ways. Yours is a little too rich for me.”

“That’s a pretty weak excuse, Frank,” she snapped.

“I don’t think so. When it comes to money, I can’t compete with your husband; it’s as simple as that.”

“It’s not that you can’t compete, Frank. It’s that you won’t. ”

“Have it your way,” he said. He swore silently under his breath.

Before Gloria could continue, there was a quick knock on his office door.

“Hold on a minute,” he said into the phone. He swiveled his chair around to face the door. “What is it, Billy?” he called.

The door opened just far enough for Billy Ruud to stick his head in. “Teletype from the highway patrol, Sheriff. Some guy busted out of Sanford and they think he might be heading our way.”

Sanford was the state prison for the criminally insane. It was twenty miles into the next county.

“How long’s he been out?” Miles asked.

“They don’t know for sure,” Billy said. “He was there for the morning count but missing at the noon count. They spent two hours searching for him inside before they notified the highway patrol.”

“That was nice of them,” Miles said. He did some quick calculating. Morning count at Sanford was at seven o’clock. Assuming that the escape was made within the next hour, by eight at the latest, that would give the escapee a four-hour start by the time the noon count was taken. Add two more hours while they searched the prison, that gave him six hours. It was twenty past two now; the guy could have been out for six-and-a-half hours. Figuring three miles per hour through the woods and across the fields if he stayed on foot, he could be walking across the county line any time. “What was he in for?” he asked Billy.

“Murder,” the deputy said quietly.

Miles nodded and Billy withdrew his head and closed the door.

Miles put the phone back to his ear. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Some guy’s loose from Sanford and he’s had enough time to get almost this far.”