Erle Gardner - The Danger Zone and Other Stories

“It ain’t as though you were dumb, or couldn’t do anything else. You’re skilful with your hands. You’ve mastered every branch of law breaking, and you’ve done it with an ease that shows how capable you’d be, if you just went straight. But you won’t go straight. You’re so crooked you could hide behind a corkscrew!”

Slicker said nothing. His hands were at his sides, his eyes level, attentive, and expressionless.

The warden made a gesture of disgust.

“You can go now.”

He pressed a button.

Yet, had he only known it, a little sympathy would have cracked through the shell of Slicker’s reserve. Slicker was feeling very lonely, very much abused. A kind word or two, a pat on the back, might, perhaps... But Warden Bogger didn’t believe in wasting sympathy on crooks in the first place, and he was temperamentally unfitted to deal it out in the second place.

So Slicker Williams walked out of the penitentiary with murder in his heart, and the feeling that he was as friendless as a stray cat.

Slicker knew how he had happened to “lose out” that last time. It had been because he had been betrayed by a stool pigeon, and Slicker intended to kill that stool pigeon.

He wanted that much of a joke on the law.

He would do it in such a manner that there wouldn’t be the slightest clew that would point to him, nothing tangible that the law could lay its hand on, and use as a basis for prosecution. Yet everyone in the underworld, everyone in the inner circle of police, every shivering, cowardly stoolie in the pack, would know that Slicker had had his revenge.

It would be clever. It would be fool-proof, one perfect crime. The warden had told Slicker he could hide behind a corkscrew. Slicker would show them just how easily and completely he could hide behind a corkscrew.

The interurban car jolted him toward the lights which marked the big city. Slicker nursed his thoughts. The corners of his lips played in a smile.

The car stopped at a suburb.

A girl got on. She was sad-eyed, patient-faced. She was tired. The gray of fatigue had tinged her face. The eyes were washed out, lifeless.

There was no vacant seat save the one by Slicker.

The girl sat down. Slicker could hear the sigh as her tired shoulders rested against the back of the seat.

In her hand she carried a brief case. She set it down on the floor, between her feet.

Slicker knew the exact moment her eyes rested upon the newness of his prison garb, on the tell-tale prison shoes. He saw her turn her head away, and interpreted the gesture incorrectly.

The car jolted toward town.

Slicker wished the journey would end. He wanted to get back into the underworld where he could ditch those prison clothes. He wanted to kill that stoolie. He wanted to get away from all contact with these high hat office workers who shuddered away from him because he was a crook.

Then the girl turned back, and Slicker suppressed a start of astonishment. Apparently she hadn’t turned away because she was disgusted. She had turned away to hide the tears that came to her gray eyes.

Slicker saw her blink, and then stared incredulously at the hand that rested on his arm.

“I wondered if you wouldn’t like to let me make you a cup of chocolate, when we get to the city,” she said.

He stared at her unbelievingly.

The eyes were not bold, they weren’t commercial. They were pleading and sad, and the voice was vibrant with that quality which had been so singularly absent from the voice of the warden, sympathy.

“You see,” she hurried on. “I had a brother who went through the mill up there. And you look so awfully like him that when I saw you were from there...”

Slicker knew the type now — a sob sister.

Slicker could use fairly good English when occasion required, and he was able to modulate his voice into a semblance of breeding. It always amused him to talk to people who had classified him as a toughie, in a voice that made them start with surprise.

He was polite now, urbane, polished.

He lifted his hat and bowed.

“Madame, I can appreciate your sympathy, and its cause. Unfortunately, however, I have a previous engagement.”

That didn’t cause her to gasp in surprise.

“You talk just like Phil. He was my brother.”

The tears were gone from her eyes, and her voice wasn’t so sympathetic now. It was more of a friendly voice, the sort of voice one expects of a friend one has known for a long time.

Much to his own surprise, Slicker Williams continued to talk to her. She didn’t mention the chocolate any more, and Slicker was genuinely sorry. He was commencing to like her.

She got out of the seat when the car jolted to a stop out in the district of the cheaper but respectable apartments.

“I’m leaving you here. I hope you... hope you go straight!”

Slicker surprised himself again. He found himself getting to his feet, bowing, lifting his hat.

“I’ll see you as far as your apartment, if you don’t mind,” he said.

The patient eyes quickened into a smile.

“I’d be delighted.”

He got off the car, helped her off, and took her arm as she crossed the street. He felt proud of himself. She wasn’t a sob sister at all, just a good pal that knew how a man felt when he was getting out of stir.

Her apartment was about a block and a half from the car line.

Slicker took her hand, bowed over it.

“Give me a ring some time. Ruth Mowbrae, Kenmore Apartments, and...”

A figure stepped out of the shadows.

Slicker knew the meaning of the broad shoulders, the bull neck, the square-toed heavy-soled shoes. He braced himself. The old formula came to the tip of his tongue: “You ain’t got anything on me,” he started to say.

But he didn’t say it.

The detective’s business was with the woman.

“You’re Ruth Mowbrae?”

She stared at him.

“Why yes. Why?”

“Work for The Stanwood Construction Company?”

“Yes.”

“I want to take a look in that brief case, sister. I’m from headquarters.”

And the heavy thumb flipped back the lapel of the coat to show the gleam of the star.

The girl seemed stupefied.

“Why... why... I have some home work that Mr. Stanwood wanted me to take with me...”

Slicker Williams was ignored.

“That’s all right, sister,” said the detective, reaching over and taking the brief case from the girl’s hand. “This is okay with Mr. Stanwood. He’s the one that rang us up and told us to get in touch with you... Hey, Bill!”

Another hulking shadow, similar to the first as two peas from the same pod, came out from the entrance to the apartment house.

“Let’s take a look. Got the description of them bonds?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

They snapped open the brief case. The flashlight reflected whitely from the interior. One of the men whistled.

“What are these?” he asked.

He fished out a packet of papers, folded, fastened together with elastic. The backs were lithographed in two colors.

“Why,” said the girl, “those are the Investment Bonds.”

“Yeah,” said the detective. “What’re they doing here?”

Ruth Mowbrae’s hands were white as she clenched them together.

“That’s what I don’t know.”

One of the men took another sheaf of papers from an inside pocket.

“What are these?”

The girl’s exclamation was one of dismay

“You got those out of my room!” she said.

“Yeah. That’s where they were, eh?”

“Yes. Those are some other bonds. I saw Mr. Neil Stanwood taking those out of the safe and putting them in his desk. I couldn’t understand it. I intended to speak to Mr. H. W. Stanwood about it... I felt there was something wrong, and I took the bonds out of Neil’s desk and then telephoned H. W. and told him I must see him at my apartment, and he promised to come, but he was called out of town by a wire... and so I kept them there. I hid them so no one would find them.”