Тэлмидж Пауэлл: The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

“I — uh — this doesn’t make sense,” Percy managed. “People steal drugs from hospitals, not money.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” the nightmare image said. “You have just one more tick of the clock to move it.”

Percy flinched back from his desk, tottering to his feet. “Hospitals do most of their business in paper,” he said, struggling for courage. “Medicare and Medicaid checks, checks from insurance companies and patients. Wouldn’t it be better to rob some other—”

“Can’t rob but one place at a time,” the old woman croaked. “And I’m here now. You do plenty of cash business. Everybody don’t pay by check. And there’s the cash flow from your cafeteria, snack bar, gift shop, parking lot, florist concession. I’m sure the safe is stuffed with more than enough for the likes of me.” The muzzle of the gun inched up. “Your time has run out, fella.”

Kittridge jumped. “Be careful with that thing! I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying!”

The horrid old woman used her free hand to pull a shopping bag from under her coat. “Put the money in this. I want it all, including the silver. The checks you can keep.”

A few minutes later, she was shuffling across one of the broad parking lots adjacent to the huge medical complex and Mr. Kittridge was on the floor of the anteroom next to his office, slumped beside the empty vault, a lump on his crown from a tap of the gun barrel.

The old woman paused beside a pickup truck with a camper cover. There were acres of cars but few people on the parking lot. Satisfied that she was unnoticed, the old woman disappeared.

Under the camper cover the crone worked quickly. And, stripping off the thickly padded coat, gloves, hat, wig, and rubberoid face mask, she was transformed into a nice-looking young man, dark-haired and clean-cut, in jeans and a knitted shirt He stuffed the accoutrements of his disguise into a foot locker. He would burn the items a little later, in a place even more private than the camper.

Snapping open the stuffed shopping bag, he dipped his hands into the money. He’d estimated it as the finance director had taken it from the safe — twenty thousand at least. Not an earth-shaking haul, but a nice return on the execution of a carefully structured plan.

Slightly short of breath, the young man fashioned a stack of bills from the bag — twenties, fifties, and hundreds. He stuffed the roll into the pocket of his jeans, then he added the bulky shopping bag to the contents of the foot locker and closed and locked it. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he drove the camper carefully from the parking lot to the drive-in window of a nearby branch bank, where he deposited the money from his jeans pocket. Tucking the deposit slip into his wallet, he smiled a good afternoon to the teller and drove back to the hospital. The automatic barricade at the parking lot swung up, admitting the camper as the young man dropped quarters into the parking-fee slot. The camper wended about and finally slipped into a vacant space reasonably close to the main hospital building.

When the young man walked into the business office, he felt the residue of excitement. Employees had vacated desks and frosted-glass cubicles, clustering at the water cooler to exchange strained murmurs. A middle-aged woman spotted him and came over to the counter.

“It’s been quite an afternoon,” she said. “We had a robbery.”

“No!”

“Yes. An old woman, would you believe it? She walked into Mr. Kittridge’s office and forced him to open the vault at gunpoint, then cracked him on the head and disappeared. Mr. Kittridge sounded the alarm when he regained consciousness. He gave the police a full description, but I don’t know — you know how it is these days. So many unsolved crimes. But an old woman — would you believe it?” The young man commiserated with a shake of his head.

The cashier drew a steadying breath. “But that’s our problem, isn’t it? What can I do for you?”

“I came to take my wife home,” the young man said. “The doctor said she could leave as soon as I settle the bill. So I guess we can say goodbye and thanks for everything. It’s been a long five weeks.”

“And after five weeks,” the cashier said in sympathy, “quite a bill.”

“No sweat,” the young man said. “My private hospitalization plan should be adequate. But I’ll need to borrow a pen to write the check.”

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine , April 1981.

I was very fond of my Uncle Dudley Gillam. Not for any singular reason. He was my only blood relation, but that didn’t account entirely for my feeling. I’ve heard other people speak of their relatives with shuddering distaste, but my recollections of Uncle Dudley were pleasurable. He found joy in living; he was agreeable, kind, and thoughtful. He was an all-around likeable individual, and I liked him. That’s all there was to it And the regard was mutual. He never put it into words, but he left no doubt in my mind that I was at the top of his list of favorite people.

After he retired from the railroad we saw little of each other. He was an engineer until age forced him out of the big diesels. Not a strapping Casey Jones, but a wiry, tough little guy who ramrodded the long trains through the nights like a runty cowboy forking a dinosaur.

His years of motion had conditioned him to be restless. He was always on the go. He would wander down to Florida, up to big-game country in Wyoming, out to California. He would hit Vegas now and then for a splurge and, broke and hungover, amble down to Corpus Christi to dry out.

We always kept in touch. He pecked out letters on a portable typewriter with broken type and an always-grey ribbon, signing them with his bold flourish. The grammar was questionable but the details were colorful. When he wrote about the rupture of a radiator hose while he was driving across the Painted Desert you could hear the water sizzle.

He enjoyed sending picture postcards and wild greeting cards from various locales. On my birthday a zany card would enclose a twenty-dollar bill for the purpose of “oiling up a sweet patootie in a cozy bar, courtesy your Unc Dud.”

I always responded, jazzing up the details of my dreary bachelor existence as much as possible. Each Christmas I would try to send him something special — not expensive, necessarily, but something I had shopped carefully for. The kind of Wellington pipe he smoked or one of the baggy sweaters he favored.

Since he was a gregarious extrovert, it didn’t surprise me he was a soft touch. He always had a dollar for the panhandling wino with the seared eyes and burning throat. He never passed up a Salvation Army kettle or the poor box on his infrequent trips to church. And now and then some down-and-outer would hang onto his shirttails for a while. A busted madam, a kid just out of jail, or an itinerant worker stranded in Salinas. Or someone like Odus Calhoun, dubbed “Hardtimes” by Uncle Dudley.

“A born loser,” Uncle Dudley wrote. “One of those birds who gets all the frowns of fate — that’s Odus Calhoun. Worked hard all his life, paid his taxes, and never broke a law. And what did it get Hardtimes? Rat busted in Dallas where I met him, for one thing. Wife dead, and three kids grown up and scattered who’d rather forget him.

“If Hardtimes crosses a street, the drivers nearly run him down. A stray dog follows him home and the first time Hardtimes lets the mutt out the dog catcher is cruising by. The last jalopy he managed to buy turned out to be stolen. He cashed a welfare check and was robbed in sight of a police station. I reckon if Hardtimes inherited a gold mine an earthquake would dump the vein to the boiling center of the earth.”