Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“We’ll all three go to the Clane place in mine,” I amended. “His being there might make the difference between life and death for Edie. You can have your prisoner when I’m finished with my patients.”

Still he held the gun. My thumb pressed the latch on my bag. It flipped open. My other hand reached and withdrew the pistol I always carry in the bag.

“I’m sorry, Rufe. I made a promise to Jack. If it’ll make you feel any better, let’s just say that I bagged your man first.”

His hat brim shaded his face in the moonlight, but I saw his mouth move, forming words that made no sound; then slowly, he bolstered his gun.

Once or twice during the drive to Jack’s place, I wondered if I had a dying man on my hands. He swayed and gasped in the seat beside me. Every mountain doctor has experienced times when he needed four hands, two brains; a dozen hands, half a dozen brains — for that matter. As long as Jack remained conscious, I had to close my mind to everything but Edie.

Her moans smote us as we walked in the cabin. Belle Felder was hunched in the corner of the room, staring at Edie, biting her fist, and sobbing. I sent her into the other room.

As the wave of pain subsided, Edie eased her teeth from her lip. She held out her hand to Jack. He took it, kneeling by her bed. In the light of the fire and the yellow, flickering lamp, fine drops of agony sweat shone on her forehead and cheeks. She looked at Rufe and said to Jack, “He brought you back to be with me?”

“Yes,” Jack said quietly, “Rufe brought me.”

“Then everything will be all right,” she said in a limp voice.

Another pain took possession of her. The battle began in earnest then; and in five minutes I knew we had a real fight on our hands.

Her agony was long. It took the three of us to deliver the man-child, Rufe holding her against the bed after she went half mad with pain, Jack helping as much as he was able.

Then it was over, and she sank in slumber. I wrapped the baby and tucked him in the basket she had prepared for him days ago. Rufe watched me. When I finished tucking the baby in, he had turned his gaze to her sleeping face. Then he brought his glance to Jack and said, “Are you ready?”

“He needs some patch work,” I said.

Rufe cut me short with a gesture of his hand. He and Jack looked at each other, and I suddenly felt as if they had slammed a door in my face.

“I’m ready,” Jack said.

“Then stay that way. I’ll be back to get you when Doc has dug the bullet out of your ribs. I’ve beaten you all the way through. Did you know that, Jack Clane? I whipped you as a kid just as often as I took a whipping, but I had the notion in my head that you had the edge on me. I took some bullets in Italy. You never did. I whipped you wrestling, pitching horseshoes, lifting grain in Len Abbott’s store yard. If Edie had held the feeling for me every man wants in a woman, I believe I’d have whipped you there, too. I always beat you, but I never could seem to win. Tonight I found out why.

“You refuse to take the beating. You had me fooled all these years into thinking I was the one who was getting the licking. Now that I know the real score, I don’t feel the need to try beating you any more. I don’t need Clem’s lying testimony, and I don’t need Edie’s grief.” He turned and walked from the cabin.

Jack said, “He’s a scrapper, that one.”

I walked to the cabin door. Rufe was moving down the hill before me. The air was so cold it brought mist to my eyes.

In the brittle moonlight, my boy’s shadow lay straight, tall, and clean-cut against the hillside.

Originally published in Manhunt , October 1957.

I was bone-tired when I locked the last gas pump, turned off the lights and closed the garage door. It had been a long day. One of an endless number of days.

I crossed the concrete apron, got in my jalopy and started the motor. I gave the filling station a last look. It was tired and grubby in the early night. I’d really tried to make a go of it here, but one man can only do so much.

All I wanted was to get a hot bath, food, and some sleep. I lived half a mile down the road from the station. The cottage, nestled among some pines, had looked good, like the station, when I’d first brought Helen here. Now, as the headlights swept over it the cottage looked like the station. A pitiful lot of nothing for a man to break his back over.

I parked the crate beside the cottage. When I entered the small, dark house, I got the living hell knocked out of me.

I didn’t know the blow was coming. No warning. No reason for it. It glanced off the side of my head and knocked me sprawling on the floor.

I was numb at first. I had sense enough to roll away from the direction the blow had come. Then the dime store lamp on the wicker table flicked on. A really beautiful blonde babe had turned the switch. She was tall, sheathed in a black dress that nudged the imagination to exercise. She was looking toward me. Her features combined to give her face a lazy, dreamy look. There was a kind of vacuum in her blue eyes. But if she was short on brains, it didn’t matter. She had so much of everything else, she wasn’t supposed to have brains.

I came out of my stupor enough to move my head. A man was standing over me. He was husky, but trimmed lean, like an athlete. He wore a good looking suit of some soft blue material, white shirt, silk tie. His face was square-cut, hard. A thin smile was on his lips as he looked at me.

“Hello, Joe,” he said quietly.

I watched him drop his gun in the side pocket of his suit. I hadn’t seen Greene in quite awhile. We’d been neighbors in the same slum area, gone to the same school, dated in the same crowd.

A lot alike, Greene and me. And a lot different. Both of us had hated the place where we grew up. Greene was for slugging his way out. I’d always thought different. While he cheated in school, I struggled to make decent grades. When he was out stealing hubcaps, I was shagging groceries for old man Spivak’s market.

By the time we were grown, Greene was in the habit of calling me Joe The Sucker. I was sort of glad when he drifted away from town to avoid trouble with the local law.

Now he was back; here in my house. And real trouble was not far behind him this time. I’d heard the newscasts. He had killed a big-time bookie in the state capital. The bookie had been holding his collections. Nearly two hundred thousand dollars.

So here was Greene with a beautiful babe and all that money.

I got slowly to my feet.

“Sorry, Joe The Sucker,” he grinned. “I hope I didn’t hit you too hard. But I had to impress on you that I mean business. You were always such a timid, honest little snot.”

That wasn’t exactly accurate. I’d never been timid, little, or snotty. I was as big as Greene and just as tough. But he had the gun.

The beautiful babe drifted over to his side. He slipped his arm around her and gave her a brief squeeze. She accepted the attention without batting her big, beautiful, dumb blue eyes. She was certainly a knockout for looks.

“Princess meet Joe The Sucker, the honest punk I was telling you about.”

“Hi,” Princess said. “We hate awfully much to inconvenience you.” She pronounced the words like maybe she studied a dictionary real hard.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Ain’t you interested in why we’re here?” Greene said.

“I can imagine,” I said.

“Real smart,” Greene laughed. “What do you imagine?”

“You’ve had to abandon your car someplace. You’ve needed a hole to hide in. The bookie’s boys as well as the cops would like to see the color of your blood. The usual hiding places would never do. The bookie’s boys would know about the ones the cops don’t. So you thought of Joe. The sucker from a long time back. The isolated cottage where he lives alone.”