Ричард Деминг - The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK®

Mary studied his face with dawning understanding. “You think—you think they may be criminals hiding from the law?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ll phone the Sheriff’s office and ask somebody to come out and give them a look-see.”

The stocky Mark returned trailed by his three companions. He stopped before Ed and Mary while the other three took seats at the bar.

“You say about a dozen cars a day stop here, Mr. Jolly?”

“About,” Ed said.

“Then I think we’d better have a little rehearsal before the next customer arrives. We’re very retiring men, Mr. Jolly. We hate a lot of people around, so we prefer that no one learns we’re your guests. Understand?”

Ed was afraid he did, but he let his face assume a puzzled expression. “No.”

“I’ll make it plainer. As far as possible I want you to service your customers outside —keep them out of the store. To tourists you can just explain that the place is closed down for alterations. Anybody you happen to know well enough so that the news might surprise them, let them come in and serve them. State Troopers or Deputy Sheriffs, for instance. We’ll remain out of sight in the back, and you won’t mention our being here. All clear?”

Ed narrowed his eyes. “Why should I steer business away?”

The thick flat lips spread in a humorless smile. “Because if you cooperate, nothing will happen to your wife. While you are serving customers, Mrs. Jolly will remain with us, Mr. Jolly. If anyone inquires about her during daylight hours, just say she’s taking a nap. After dark just say she’s in bed for the night. Any attempt to pass on a message for some customer to relay to the cops will have most unfortunate results. I guarantee it.”

He turned toward the bar. “Sliver, show the Jollys your favorite plaything.”

The gaunt, emaciated Sliver dipped a hand into his coat pocket and brought it out again. There was a click and a thin razor-edged blade seven inches long sprang into view.

“Get the point?” the stocky Mark asked.

Mary’s gaze was fixed on the blade in fascination. Ed gulped.

“I get it,” he said.

“Fine. Now if you cooperate, nobody will get hurt. We’ll be here a few days, then take off. Of course we’ll have to cut your phone line and take along the distributor cap of your pickup truck so that we can get a reasonable head start before you run to the cops. But we’ll pay you generously for your trouble.”

Ed felt a sense of relief. At least the men planned no physical harm unless he and Mary attempted to cross them. He decided the safest course was to do as the man called Mark said.

The sound of a car engine came from the west.

Mark said crisply, “Sliver, take Mrs. Jolly in back. Joey, you and Puffy get out of sight too. I’ll keep watch from the window to see how the old man behaves.”

The three men herded Mary before them into the rear hallway. The stocky man drew a black automatic from beneath his arm and let his eyes glitter at Ed.

“I’ll have my eye on you when you go out there, Mr. Jolly. If whoever that is wants to come in, and it’s somebody who might get suspicious if you said the store was closed, okay. But I’ll be in that back hall, right alongside the door, listening. Just keep thinking of Sliver’s little plaything.”

“I will,” Ed assured him.

He went outside just as the approaching car pulled into the gas station. His heart began to thump when he saw it was a State Trooper’s car.

There were two uniformed men in the car, and Ed knew them both.

They were from the barracks just outside of Hooker’s Gap. The driver, a young man named Ross Miller, was a sergeant. His companion, a muscular man named Harry Forbes, was a lieutenant.

The car pulled clear of the pumps, parking near the store entrance. Both officers got out.

“Hello, Ross,” Ed said. “Hi Lieutenant.”

Both men gave him friendly greetings. The Lieutenant said, “Seen anything of a car with four men in it Mr. Jolly?”

“Today?” Ed asked.

“Uh-huh. They’d have been coming from the direction of Hooker’s Gap.”

Ed shook his head. “Only been four cars from that direction so far today, Lieutenant. Two was couples with kids, one had two women together, and the other was Burt Lacey from the Double-Bar ranch.”

“Any cars go by without stopping?”

Ed shook his head again. “Seldom happens way out here. I’d have known even if I was inside. You can hear them miles away.”

Lieutenant Forbes reached into the front seat to lift out the dashboard mike and briefly reported in that the suspects hadn’t gone by way of the road past the Jollys’ store. After hanging up the mike, he suggested to his partner that they have a cup of coffee before heading back to Hooker’s Gap.

Ed’s heart was in his throat as he led them inside. The store was empty, but the door to the rear hall was open a crack. Silently he went behind the snack counter and poured two cups of coffee.

As he set them before the State Troopers, Ross Miller asked, “Where’s Mrs. Jolly?”

“Taking a little nap,” Ed said. “What you looking for these fellows for?”

“They knocked over the bank at Hooker’s Gap just at closing time, couple of hours ago. Killed a teller and got away with forty-two thousand dollars. There was so much on hand because Friday is the day the bank makes up the payroll for the Bishop mine. We don’t know what they’re driving, because they stole a local car for the job. We found it abandoned on the north road out of town, where they apparently switched cars. Probably they headed north. It would have been dumb to head this way, because there’s no place to turn off for two hundred miles and we’ve got a roadblock set up at the far end. But we had to check it out.”

The bank robbers had been clever, Ed realized. They had deliberately taken an apparently suicidal escape route because they knew the police would pay little attention to it other than bottling up its far end. And now that the police were convinced the men had not come this way, probably the roadblock at Ripple City would be lifted and the robbers could drive on through in perfect safety.

“What these fellows look like, in case they come by here?” Ed asked.

The Lieutenant shrugged. “Just four men of assorted shapes and sizes in dark suits. Two were heavy-set, two skinny. Nobody saw their faces because they wore nylon stockings over their heads. The taller of the heavy-set men shot the teller. No reason for it either. Just because he didn’t move as fast as he was ordered to. Cut him down in cold blood. Young fellow who’d only been married three weeks.”

Ed felt a chill climb along his spine. The description of the killer fitted the leader of the gang, Mark. And if he was that callous a killer, his reassuring words about merely cutting the phone line and taking along the pickup’s distributor cap had been designed only to lull Ed and Mary into more willing cooperation.

Ed suddenly thought of something which he reproached himself for not having thought of before. Disabling the pickup and cutting the phone line wouldn’t assure the bandits any head start. A customer might appear within minutes of the fugitives’ departure, and while the nearest town was sixty-five miles away, there was a ranch house with a phone less than ten miles from the General Store.

Mark certainly would have thought of this. Ed became certain that the stocky man had no intention of leaving two live witnesses behind when the gang departed.

He was frantically searching his mind for some way to tip off the State Troopers that the fugitives were in the building without getting both police officers shot down when they simultaneously drained their cups and tossed dimes on the counter.