Fredric Brown - The Shaggy Dog and Other Murders

Carl nodded. "But listen, Tom, I'm not drawing it out to go on a bat or anything. I suppose I might as well tell you. You've heard the Keefe-Owen Agency isn't doing so well, I suppose. Well, it's worse than that. It's on the rocks!

"And if it goes under, well--I don't know what I'll do. I want to try to buy out Roger Keefe. Owen's good, but Keefe is the bottleneck there. If Bill Owen and I could run it together, without that damned-- Well, you know what I mean. Incidentally, this is confidential. Not even Bill--nor Keefe, either, as yet--knows what I have" in mind."

Tom whistled softly. "Taking a big risk, Carl!"

"Maybe it is, but I'm sure Bill Owen and I can make a go of that agency, with Keefe out. // I can talk Keefe into letting me buy his share."

"But, Carl, why the cash? People do business other-wise. And you'll have to carry the money, besides maybe keeping it overnight. Why take that risk?"

Carl Harlow nodded. "There's that, of course. But I have a small safe at home. And nobody's going to know I got the money except you and the teller outside. I don't think either of you would try burglary--although after one or two of the bluffs you tried to run in that poker game last night--"

Pryor chuckled. "It's an idea. Ten thousand is a lot of money. A year's salary for me, Carl; I'm not a high-priced advertising executive like you and Bill. But granting there's little risk of losing it, I still don't see why you want cash."

"You bankers!" said Carl Harlow. "Got to know every-thing, don't you? All right--and this is off the record. Keefe is being hounded by creditors. They'll grab off whatever he gets, if it shows. He might be able to give me a better price if half of it goes under the table.

"I mean, we might make out the papers for four thou-sand, and the other four on the side--where a referee in bankruptcy wouldn't find it. I have a hunch he'd take eight thousand that way, rather than a check for ten thousand. Now, I hope you're satisfied!"

"Um-m-m," said Pryor. "Satisfied to the extent I wish I hadn't asked you. That's hardly legal. Well--" he shrugged his shoulders-- "it's none of my business. Have you an ap-pointment with Keefe?"

Carl Harlow shook his head. "I'll just run up there to-morrow."

"He's out of town a lot, weekends. Why not ring him up from here and make a date? If he can't see you this week-end, then you won't have to carry that cash out."

"It's an idea," Harlow agreed. He called up Keefe's home, and a minute later put the phone back on Pryor's desk in disgust. "You were right," he said. "His brother says Roger's in New York till Monday."

"Carl, that gives you the weekend to think this over. Monday, if you still want to go through with it, I'll waive the bank rules and let you have the money."

"Okay, Tom." Carl Harlow stood up and started for the door, then turned around. "Oh, the check. You'd better--"

Pryor picked up the check lying on a corner of his desk and held it out. "Here, tear it up and don't carry it around endorsed. Write a new one Monday, if you still want to."

Harlow tore the check twice across and dropped it into the wastebasket. He said, "At that, maybe six thousand will be enough to take in cash. We can use a check for the aboveboard part of the deal."

"Damn it," said Pryor, "quit telling me about that! I told you I wished I hadn't asked you! Don't make me an ac-cessory; forget you told me. Have you talked this over with the other half of your family?"

"Nope. I'll tell Elsie if it goes through; otherwise, she needn't know and then be disappointed. Well, so long, and thanks."

He drove home slowly, wondering if maybe he should talk this over with Bill Owen. Well, he could see Bill after the golf this afternoon and think it over meanwhile.

And then there was the empty house. With Elsie gone, it didn't seem home at all, except for his own room. He wasn't hungry, but he made himself a sandwich in the kitchen and then went up to change clothes for golf.

It was too soon to leave, and he had a quick one out of the decanter of rye on his bureau to wash down the sand-wich. He even had time to sit down at the typewriter in his room and bat out a copy idea for the Krebbs Hardware account. Not a brilliant one, but worth putting on paper before he forgot it.

Then it was time to drive out to the golf club.

Nemesis was still after him, but it was Swender, the golf pro, who met him in the doorway of the locker room. He said, "Doc Millard phoned, Mr. Harlow. He tried to get you at your office, but you'd left. He doesn't think he'll be able to get here."

"Why not?" said Carl. "Did he say?"

"A baby case. Mrs. Nordhoff."

"Nordhoff? Oh, Tom's cousin. These inconsiderate women, breaking up a perfectly good golf date just be-cause-- Say, how's about you playing around with me? You can give me a lift on those chip shots."

"Sorry, Mr. Harlow." The regret in the pro's voice was genuine. "Sprained an ankle yesterday and I'm on the shelf. I'm a clubhouse fixture for about three days."

Carl Harlow stared down the inviting fairway gloomily. This course, like a lot of other small, private courses, was never crowded Saturday afternoons, because Saturday afternoon was proverbially busy and no one came around unless they'd made reservation. Like he and Doc had done for two o'clock.

If he waited an hour, there'd be Owen and Pryor-- but that was a full foursome already and he could not butt in. Well, now that he was here and dressed for it, he might as well play around alone. The exercise would do him good.

Playing alone wasn't much fun; there's little satisfac-tion in a beautiful approach, with just enough back spin to hold the green four feet from the pin, when there's no one watching you make it. And, paradoxically, it's even more disgusting to flub a would-be explosion shot out of a sand trap when there's nobody around to tell you how lousy you are.

He'd just flubbed that explosion shot--with a sweet new No. 9 iron which, for its effectiveness at that moment, might as well have been an umbrella handle--when the bullet came.

The first sensation was like somebody drawing a sharp-edged piece of ice across his side. He jerked involuntarily and said, "What the--" And looked down and saw the horizontal rip in his sweater, along the course of the rip, begin to turn red instead of white.

Then, and only then, did he realize that he'd heard the sound of the shot.

He looked up in the direction from which the shot had seemed to come--up on the hillside that flanked the fair-way ahead, past the green he'd been approaching out of the trap. Up there near the top, in among the scrub pine maybe two or three hundred yards away, he thought he caught a gleam of sun on metal that might have been a rifle barrel.

Somebody up there was being damned careless with a rifle, shooting out over the golf course! Some fool hunter, and that wasn't hunting land, anyway. Carl Harlow yelled, "Hey! You with the gun--" wondering if his voice would carry that far.

And then that second bullet whined somewhere be-tween his shoulder and ear, and he knew that he was being shot at. Deliberately! Probably by someone with a gun with telescopic sights, if they were shooting at that distance.

The first bullet, the one that had raked his side, could have been an accident. But that second shot was some-thing else again.

Carl Harlow had never been shot at before, but it didn't take him long to figure out the best thing to do. He dropped flat into the sand. There wasn't a bunker to duck behind, but the sand trap itself was a slight depression, maybe eight inches in the center below the fairway.

He dropped down flat, trying to accomplish two things. First, to fall naturally, as though that second bullet had been a fatal hit, and second, to fall so that most of him would be in the deepest part of the trap and would pre-sent as poor a target as possible to the distant marksman.