Erle Gardner - The Danger Zone and Other Stories

“Yeah,” said the detective, and took her arm in a most efficiently business like grasp. “And how did it happen these investment bonds were in your brief case?”

“I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. Mr. Neil Stanwood might have put them there. He’s been drinking pretty heavily lately, and...”

“Yeah, sure,” said the detective.

“Say, listen, guy,” interjected Slicker Williams, “this could be a frame-up so easy it wouldn’t even be funny. This guy she tells about could have seen her lifting the bonds he’d swiped, and knowing she was going to tell his father.”

“His uncle,” corrected the girl.

“All right then, his uncle, and—”

One of the detectives stretched out a powerful arm, took Slicker Williams by the shoulder and pulled him around.

“Well, well,” he said, “see who’s here. Who are you, little buttinsky? And do you want to take a nice little ride in a big black automobile with mesh screen all around the sides?”

Slicker Williams clenched an indignant fist.

The girl’s tongue tripped into speech.

“No, no. He’s just a man I met on the car. He reminded me of some one I knew, and he was seeing me home, and—”

“Oh,” said the detective, “I see!”

And the sneer of his tone told more than the words themselves.

“Let’s see,” commented the other, amiably, “you got a brother in the pen, ain’t you, Miss Mowbrae?”

“He’s been discharged!” she snapped.

“Oh yes, that’s so. And he wired you for money a little while back, and you sent him two thousand bucks, didn’t you? He had to square a little job in Philadelphia, didn’t he?”

She drew herself up, regal, dignified, silent.

“Where did you get that two thousand bucks?” asked the officer.

“I got it from my savings.”

“Oh yes, and an audit shows that there’s been a bunch of securities missing from the company. Ain’t that funny! A real funny coincidence, just another one of those sort of things that will happen!”

The detective marched over to Slicker Williams, joined the one who had grasped Slicker’s shoulder.

“Okay, guy. You got ten seconds to beat it, and don’t make any more wise cracks. I have a hunch we’d oughta run you down to headquarters, but we’ll give you a break. On your way.”

“Say,” protested Slicker, “ain’t you guys got sense enough to know a frame-up when you see one?”

“She admitted she took the first batch of bonds up to her apartment and hid ’em, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. But what does that prove?”

A brawny fist was brandished under Slicker’s nose.

“Goin’ to get smart, eh? Well, guy, you either make tracks, an’ make ’em right now, or you take a ride in the nice black wagon. Which you go’nna do?”

And Slicker knew which he was going to do. With his record, he had just one thing to do.

He looked back over his shoulder at the corner.

The men were taking her away.

Slicker had been able to think circles around the police. Warden Bogger had called the turn. Slicker was one of the boys who wanted to match wits with the law and come out on top. He was the kind of man who could hide behind a corkscrew, and, figuratively speaking, he’d done that very thing, times without number.

He wasn’t done yet — not by a long shot.

The sad-eyed girl had given him a break. He’d be a poor excuse not to do as much for her. He’d walked off because he knew he had to, not only because he couldn’t keep out of a jam if he’d stayed, but because being in jail would have interfered with the plan he bad in mind.

He remembered that the girl had got on at a suburban town. He remembered she was carrying work to do at home. He remembered she worked at The Stanwood Construction Company.

He consulted a telephone directory and looked up the suburban telephones. He found The Stanwood Construction Company, and he found a telephone listed under the name of H. W. Stanwood, “residence”; and one listed under the name of Neil Stanwood, “residence,” and both telephones had the same number.

Slicker Williams knew a place in the city where he would be welcome. He went there.

There was a pawnshop downstairs, and a man who sat upstairs, behind a grimy door, in a little room that was littered with old papers and cobwebs. The man was abnormally fat and restless. He had restless eyes, restless hands, restless lips.

Like a spider in a web, Sam Felixburg sat and waited, and his waiting was very, very restless, and very, very productive.

He let his restless eyes slither over Slicker Williams, and his lips mouthed a greeting.

“Whatcha want, Slicker?”

“I want some cash for get-by money, a set of tools, and some soup.”

Felix ran an uneasy tongue over flabby lips and raised his head back, washboarding the rolls of fat at the back of his neck.

“What d’yuh want soup for? You never was a soup man. The safe you can’t spring with your two hands, ain’t a safe, it’s an invention.”

Slicker shook his head doggedly.

“Do I get ’em?”

“Sure, sure you get ’em. You know what I have, you can have. Ain’t we been like brothers?”

“Yeah. I make the profits and take the jolt. You take the profits from me and leave the jolt for me to keep, all for my very own.”

The big man waved his restless hands. “Now don’t you go talking like that, don’t do it I say. I been on the up and up with you. You give old Felix a square deal, and he’ll give you one. Whatcha goin’ to spring?”

“Nothing you get a percentage on. This is a grudge job. You owe me the stake in return for the stretch.”

The humid, brown eyes watched out from under fat brows with expressionless concern, then the head nodded in oily affirmation.

“That’s right, that’s right, that’s right. You always been a square shooter by me. You get the stake.”

He turned in a creaky swivel chair that protested unceasingly at the tax that was put upon it. He pawed at a pile of musty old papers, pulled them to one side, fumbled with a section of the wainscoting.

The wainscoting swung back, disclosing a series of well stocked shelves. Felix pulled several articles from the shelves. He opened a wallet and took out money. He paused with the second bill, raised his restless eyes to encounter the steady gaze of Slicker Williams, and hurriedly added two more to the pile. He raised his eyes questioningly once more, shrugged at what he read in Slicker’s expression and added a reluctant fifth bill to the pile on the table.

He pushed the pile across.

“When you start workin’ for profit, Slicker, you ain’t goin’ to forget Uncle Felix, are you?”

Slicker shook his head moodily.

“I never forget,” he said, and walked out of the door.

When Slicker got to the suburbs he realized why the telephones of Neil Stanwood and his uncle were listed under the same number. The address was a pretentious house that frowned darkly somber from well kept grounds.

Darkly somber, pretentious houses were Slicker’s meat.

He vaulted a fence, went to the side of the house, found a trellis and an open window on the second floor. He ascertained there were no burglar alarms, and slid into the warm interior of the house.

He used a flash to guide him to the stairs, went down them, and found a wide window on the ground floor. He opened that window, wide. But first he found and disconnected the burglar alarm that ran along the side of the window.

The ground floor of the house was wired for alarms, and that gave Slicker a thrill of relief. Houses that were wired for burglar alarms usually had something worthwhile in them.

His first plans had been more nebulous. They involved bringing pressure to bear for the getting of what he wanted. But when he saw a highly modern safe in the corner of the library, he changed his plans. He would see what that safe had to offer.