Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

A package under her arm , Harry repeated to himself. His thoughts touched the package slip in his inside pocket, and he knew where the ledger was. Helen had mailed it to their box.

“Why have you held out, honey?” he asked gently. “Was it worth torture?”

Her pain-racked eyes swung to him. “Dale Thompson worked ten years to break this gang’s power,” she said quietly.

Harry said thoughtfully, “Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. Suppose we made a deal so they couldn’t kill us? Suppose we insisted on getting to Des Moines first, and phoning back long distance the information about the ledger? They’d have to trust us to phone, and we’d have to trust them to send the five thousand dollars.”

John Gault said quickly, “We should have picked you up sooner. I’ll buy that one with a slight change. We’ll put your wife on a train for Des Moines, hold you as a hostage so she doesn’t get any ideas about double-crossing us, and release you with five thousand bucks the minute we get the ledger back.”

Helen had looked at Harry with disappointed shock. Looking back at her without expression, Harry slowly let one eyelid droop. Momentarily she looked startled, but she covered her understanding that Harry’s motive was other than appeared on the surface by making her eyes harden.

She said to John Gault, “And let you keep on running your gambling houses and dope shops? That’s what Mr. Thompson was fighting, and what he died for.”

“You’d rather we both die?” Harry asked reasonably.

Helen looked at him silently for a moment, then her lips trembled and she burst into tears.

It took but a few minutes to work out the details of the agreement. The two men who had brought in Harry would get Helen to the noon train, which was scheduled to arrive in Des Moines at eight that evening. Helen would phone John Gault’s unlisted number before midnight, and as soon as the ledger was recovered, Harry would be escorted by the same pair to a train for Des Moines.

She clung to Harry for a moment before she was carried out, but her face was set and emotionless as the trio disappeared through the door. Only a fleeting, final glance of worry from her at the last moment told Harry she knew he was planning something desperate.

Big John Gault rose to his feet. “Just make yourself comfortable and we’ll hope to have you out of here by midnight,” he advised Harry. “You seem like a sensible young man, but I’m sure you’ll understand I can’t taken any chances.” To the pockmarked Ripper he said, “You can handle him all right alone, can’t you?”

Ripper gave the knife in his hand an expert flip and looked at Harry with contempt. He did not bother to reply.

“Then expect us back about midnight,” Gault said. “The boys will bring you in lunch and supper.”

He motioned to Gerald Crane and the two of them left together.

Harry studied the pock-marked man reflectively. “It’s only about ten o’clock,” he said. “You going to sit with that thing in your hand for fourteen hours?”

Smoothly the pock-marked man flipped it once more, then slid it out of sight beneath his coat. In a bored tone he said, “I can get it out and sink it anywhere I want faster I than you could spit. Your limit is fifteen feet away from me. Get an inch closer and you swallow six inches of steel.”

Harry walked over and sat on the cot Helen had occupied. “Got any objection to my taking a nap?” he asked.

Ripper shrugged with indifference. Elevating his left shoe to the cot, Harry unlaced it, pulled it off and left it sitting on the cot next to him. He repeated with the right, also leaving it on the cot then put his feet flat on the floor and wriggled his toes.

“Them’s kind of beat up high shoes you got,” the pock-marked man remarked. “What are you, a farmer?”

“Shop worker. These are safety shoes.” He picked one of the heavy, high-topped shoes up by the toe. “They’ve got steel toes.”

And he sent the heavy shoe spinning end-over-end at the man.

Steel glittered in Ripper’s hand just as the shoe’s steel toe caught him in the chest. He fell backward, righted and flung the knife just as the second shoe caught him full in the face.

A streak of light slithered past Harry’s ear as he hurled himself forward. When he reached the other cot, Ripper was leaning on one elbow, groggily fumbling for the gun under his arm.

Winding his fingers into the man’s hair, Harry pulled him to a seated position and smashed his fist against the pock-marked jaw.

Sergeant Don Murphy said, “Stop jittering. They’ll be here. The train isn’t due to leave for another hour and a quarter.”

The plainclothes man Murphy had dispatched to check the waiting rooms returned and reported a woman with crutches and two men answering the descriptions of the gunmen were in one of the side waiting rooms on the mezzanine. Quickly, the sergeant issued instructions to the messenger and the two other men with him, then moved toward the stairs leading to the mezzanine without hurry. Harry fell into step beside him, and the others followed.

Harry had expected Murphy to surprise the men from behind, but the sergeant calmly walked around in front of them, stopped and flipped back his coat to disclose his badge. He did not draw a gun, but his right hand rested against his belt.

They looked back at him blankly, both started furtive movements toward their armpits, but stopped them almost immediately. Some cold assurance in the homicide man’s eyes, a waiting look which edged almost on cruelty, caused them simultaneously to reject the invitation. Slowly they raised their hands level with their shoulders.

As the two men were led away in handcuffs, Harry scooped Helen into his arms, holding her around the shoulders and under the knees as you would a baby.

“We’d have been here sooner, darling,” he said. “But Sergeant Murphy wanted to bag Big John Gault, Gerald Crane and a cop named Joe Murphree first. And since he’s a night shift cop and this is on his own time, I had to humor him.”

Helen wound her arms about his neck. “Take me back to our own apartment,” she said simply.

Originally published in Manhunt , May 1954.

After ten years as a vice-squad cop, I not only know every place in St. Louis where professional hustlers hang out, I also know all the bars where amateurs go looking for men. The Jefferson is neither sort of place.

It was a little surprising in that sedate atmosphere to have a lovely blonde slide onto the bar stool next to me and throw an inviting smile in my direction before turning her attention to the bartender. It was even more surprising when after that unmistakably inviting smile, she concentrated on ordering a drink and ignored my curious examination of her.

After a moment I decided she must have momentarily mistaken me for someone else. Wishful thinking, I told myself. Now I was beginning to imagine beautiful blondes were passing at me. Ruefully I turned from the girl to examine my reflection in the bar mirror.

Look at you, I told myself. Thirty-two, and you look forty. Why would any woman pass at you ?

Dispassionately I studied the lines of disillusionment deeply etched into my face, physical evidence of the spiritual scars I had accumulated during ten years of constant association with the seamy side of life. Why did the muck a cop encountered leave scars on some and roll off the backs of others without leaving a trace, I wondered? Why was I a misanthrope at thirty-two while my partner, Jud Harrison, remained as cheerfully full of high spirits after ten years on the vice squad as he had been as a rookie?