Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

In the sudden silence Patience exhaled slowly.

His voice strangely high, he said, “That’s how it happened before! I remember now! Bright lights coming down on us. I got over as far as I could. The car rolled and I knew I was being thrown through the darkness, right through the canvas top. Then blackness.”

He put his arms around her and held her close. She was shivering.

She said, “If I’d let you talk me into driving, we’d be over the edge.”

He frowned, “I don’t get it. We should have hit him with a smash. I thought we were dead ducks. Got a flashlight?”

She clicked open the glove compartment and handed him a flashlight. He climbed out into the rain. The car was at right angles to the road, with the rear wheels barely on the pavement. The bumper was nosed into the muddy hillside.

He inspected the damage. An odd iron bar was wedged into the grill. There were fragments of glass on one end of it. The other end showed the bright face of fractured metal. He grabbed it and pulled it free. The left headlight had been smashed by it. The bar had punctured the radiator.

He climbed back in and put the bar on the floor. “We’ll ruin the engine if we try to make the rest of the hill. All the water has run out of the radiator.”

“Can we coast back to the Ocean Club? Do you think the other car went over the edge?”

“I didn’t hear anything. And I saw taillights going down the road in a pretty orderly fashion.”

“He could have stopped.”

Matt didn’t answer.

“What was that thing you put on the floor?” Patience asked.

“Something I want Evan to look at...”

Once more the three of them were in the private room in the Ocean Club. Evan began to respond to hot coffee. He sat nodding, as Matt told the story of the near-accident, made him repeat it.

Only then did he examine the odd bar which Matt had wrenched out of the grill of Pat’s car. He lost his sleepy look, became the competent engineer.

He said, “See here? This outside shell is hollow. This solid bar with the gear teeth on the bottom moves back and forth through it. This was a lamp socket. A headlight was fastened to the solid bar. See the slot in the shell so it could move freely?”

Patience frowned. “What does it mean? What is it?”

Evan said, “This thing goes on the front of a car. Suppose a guy is coming down that road and there’s a car coming up he wants to wreck. He can’t take a chance on moving over toward it. He might get clipped and go over himself. So he rigs up the gimmick. Maybe he’s got a little handle on the dash. As he turns the handle, the solid bar, carrying the lights with it, moves out to his left, activated by a little gear that fits against these slots.”

Pat’s eyes widened. “And the people in the other car would see the lights and they wouldn’t know that the lights were moving out toward them but the car itself was staying over on its own side. They’d get out of the way.”

Matt said slowly, “And our pal Roy was a part owner of a garage when Alicia and I went off that road. I remember being forced off.”

“This isn’t a new gimmick,” Evan said. “See the rust spots. This thing was out in the rain a long time ago. Nine years ago, maybe.”

Patience sat down suddenly. “He couldn’t!”

“Who did, then?” Matt asked. His voice was hoarse with hate and anger. Was this what Alicia had been trying to tell him for so many years?

“But why would he do it tonight?” Patience asked.

They looked at each other, bewildered. Then Evan began to smile. It wasn’t a pretty smile. He said softly, “Who inherits when you die, Patience?”

She put the back of her hand to her mouth. Her eyes were wide.

“Exactly,” Matt said. “And that’s why he went through with the wedding. He knew that if he couldn’t get the stock through her, he could work it another way. That’s why he had the party out here. Why, after Sue fainted, he said that he had been planning on taking her home early anyway.”

Evan was frowning.

“How would he know which car you’d be in?”

“There’s a parking spot at the top of the hill. You can see the Ocean Club from there. With a decent pair of binoculars, you could see who was getting into their cars. The lot here always is floodlighted.”

“Then he watched for you and Alicia nine years ago?” Patience asked in a tight voice.

Matt smacked his palm with a clenched fist. “Rose Carney suspected what had happened. She tried to tell me when she called me up, but I was too stupid to listen. She said he took her home from the Ocean Club nine years ago and left her. And that he came back later. That was when he drove us over the edge. He hated me for taking Alicia away from him. He must have made the gimmick in the garage after hours. Why, on that evening he even came over for a few final words with the condemned!”

Patience shuddered.

“The guy is crazy,” Evan said.

“Crazy, and efficient,” Matt said.

“What will we do?” Patience asked in a small voice.

“Get to a phone,” Evan said. “His car will still have some stuff on it to show where this little toy was attached. This rain won’t wash away the marks you made on the shoulder. We ring the cops in on this quick and have him picked up for attempted murder before he can dispose of the evidence.”

“I’ve got to get to Susan,” Patience said...

The man at the high desk picked up the phone and said in a tired voice, “Sergeant Rolph speaking.”

“This is Evan Cleveland, Sergeant.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Cleveland?”

“I want Roy Bedford picked up immediately on a charge of attempted murder.”

The sergeant’s hand tightened on the phone. “You got enough for us to go on?”

“Plenty. And I don’t know anything about the statute of limitations, but I think I can prove he killed the Crane girl nine years ago.”

“An accident case, wasn’t it?”

“Look, Sergeant. I know how it is when anybody asks you to pick up a man like Bedford. He has influence and—”

“And Rose Carney’s sister is the wife of the deputy chief, Mr. Cleveland. We aren’t too fond of Bedford. Any idea where he is?”

“We’re at the Ocean Club. Twenty minutes ago he was in his car on the hill between here and town. I don’t know where he went from there.”

“We’ll see what we can do. Suppose you come in here. Ask for Lieutenant Canady. I’ll give him the pitch.”

The sergeant hung up, clapped a fist into a meaty palm and headed for the radio room...

Patience and Matthew stood on the wide porch of the Crane house. Matt rang the bell for the third time. The house was dark.

“You don’t suppose he came back here?” Patience asked softly.

“I wouldn’t think so.”

After a few moments a dim light shone in the hall. Matt, looking through the glass, saw a husky man in a bathrobe walking toward the door.

He opened it and said, “Yes?” The quiet, dignified voice of a trained domestic.

“We wish to see Mrs. Bedford, please,” Matt said.

“Sorry, sir. Mr. and Mrs. Bedford have retired for the night.”

“This is urgent.”

Smoothly the man said, “It certainly can wait until morning, sir.”

“It will not wait until morning,” Matt said.

The man’s eyes flickered dangerously. He said, “Very sorry, sir,” and began to close the door.

Matt drove against the doorframe with his shoulder. The man staggered back, his face ugly, his hand dipping into the pocket of the bathrobe. Matt rushed him. The hand flashed up and, as it started to come down, his wrist smacked into Matt’s palm. Matt tightened his fingers on the wrist and twisted. The man was powerful. He put a beefy arm around Matt’s neck and the dark hall filled with the hoarse sound of their breathing.