Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

There was a crash as the heavy, railroad-iron bumper did its stuff and the light roadster crumpled like an eggshell, glanced from the curb to a telephone post, and the men pitched out to the cement sidewalk.

I did not look back. They may have escaped unhurt. They may have been seriously injured. They may have been killed. This was no picnic. This was war with no quarter given or asked.

Once more we entered the traffic of the business district. At my side the girl with the mole on her hand sat and watched me with a queer look upon her face. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes almost starry, and they seldom left my face. Shut in there in that armored truck we were safe from attack of everything except a cannon or a bomb. Perchance, emissaries of the gang who had engineered the great robbery watched us as we thundered past. If so they were helpless.

I swung up to the curb of the place where the exhibit was to be held. There was a great crowd of excited people milling about. A squad of police held back the crowd. I saw old Redfern running about, frantic with excitement, his eyes bulging, hands waving... and then he caught sight of the truck backing up to the curb, and his eyes did bulge. Somewhere a police whistle shrilled, and there came the screech of a siren. Policemen began to cluster about the truck.

“Keep your face closed and start checking the stuff as it goes out,” I told the girl with the mole, and flung open the doors.

“Get ready to handle this stuff,” I yelled at the excited officer who thrust his head in at the door, and slammed a tray of choice platinum jewelry at him.

Mechanically, he took it, stood there, mouth open, eyes wide, seeking to interrogate me, and I slammed out another tray.

Watchmen and guards ran up, police officers milled about, and I had no words for any of them. I simply answered their questions by slamming out trays of choice jewelry, and the very apparent value of those goods was such that they mechanically turned and bore them into the place where the exhibit had been arranged.

I took the last tray in myself.

“Here’s the list,” said the girl with the mole, thrusting it into my hands; “and, oh, Ed! I had so hoped you would do just that!”

With that she was gone. A hell of a way for a member of a gang to congratulate the crook who had just outsmarted her of God knew how many thousand dollars.

I pattered on in with the tray, and an escort of cops clustered behind me. They didn’t know exactly what it was all about, but this was once they figured they had Ed Jenkins dead to rights, and they didn’t intend to let him live up to his reputation as a phantom crook by slipping through their fingers.

From somewhere behind me I caught the tail end of a hoarse whisper.

“...too deep for me; but we’ll make the pinch as soon as he starts for the door. With his record he’s sunk. He can’t alibi nothin’.”

Up ahead there was a crowd of jewelry men and customers milling around, asking questions, gabbling away like a bunch of geese. I had the cops behind me and knew I’d be pinched when I started for the door. That meant I had to keep going straight ahead; and it meant I had to think fast. However, thinking fast is the thing that’s kept me out of lots of jails.

I sat the tray down and climbed up on a chair.

“Silence, please!” I bellowed.

Everyone turned to rubber at me, and then I started my speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “I am a crook!”

That got ’em. If I’d started to make an address of welcome or tell ’em a story they’d all have been buzzing with whispers of their own and I wouldn’t have got their attention, but that single sentence made ’em stand stock still, and then I went on.

“But I am an honest crook, a man who has sought to make an honest living, to show that it is possible for a crook to go straight.

“I planned out this vast jewelry exhibition because I knew that it was a move in the right direction. The jewelry stores need an opportunity to exhibit to the select trade. The potential customers need to have a chance to study the latest styles in settings, to get up-to-the-minute information.

“Unfortunately, my assistant, the man upon whom I relied to sell space, to explain the idea to the merchants, turned out to be a crook. Knowing my record, he thought he could get away with the truckload of gems, and have the police blame it on to me. However, I managed to outwit this criminal and recover the entire truckload, and here it is, safe and sound, ready for the approval of the prospective purchasers.”

I made a bow and stood there, watching the maps of the cops, wondering if I was going to make it stick.

“I think I shall purchase my season’s supply of gems right now,” said a woman whose voice carried to the farthest ends of the room. “I think this is a wonderful idea, but, really, we don’t need the police here now, do we? Mr. Redfern, I wonder if you’d mind asking them to withdraw. It makes me feel sort of nervous and interferes with my purchasing.”

It was Edith Jewett Kemper, and she was playing a trump card in the nick of time. I think I had the cops buffaloed at that, but when old Redfern charged down on them, waving his hands, sputtering, expostulating, it was a rout. The cops thinned out that door like mosquitoes before a smudge.

Redfern came back to me, his eyes shining, his hands outstretched.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Did you hear that Mrs. Kemper is going to purchase her season’s supply of jewels? It’s a great success. Everyone will follow suit. In fact, we will have to make her a little present, something to remember the occasion by.”

I grabbed his arm.

“Yeah, in the meantime you’d better make out your check for the space. I’m goin’ to get collected up right now so I won’t have any books to keep.”

Without a whimper he pulled out his checkbook.

“Payable to...?” he asked.

“Just make it payable to Ed Jenkins,” I told him. “ ‘The Down Town Merchants’ Exhibit’ was just a trade name.”

He nodded and made out the check, dazed and happy.

A sergeant of police elbowed his way over, but he was smiling.

“Jenkins, you’re all right!” he said. “I’ve had an anonymous tip these last two weeks to get you on suspicion of a big gem robbery, and here you were actually on the square. Bringing back that truckload was a wonderful thing. How did you do it?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Just by bein’ honest, Sergeant, an’ never lettin’ that crook Schwartz get a chance. I was watchin’ him like a hawk. Next time don’t be so anxious to believe evil of me.”

He shook his head as though he were in the middle of a dream and walked away, and, as he walked, I saw him pinch himself to find out whether he was really awake.

Helen Chadwick was over in a corner, away from the crowd, waiting.

“Ed, you won’t be such a stranger, now that you’ve got this thing over with, will you?”

There was a wistful something in her voice, and I suddenly came down to earth, realized that in spite of any brilliant tricks I might play on the police or on other crooks, that I was, after all, a crook, myself. I realized also that no good could come to this girl from knowing me, and I cared so much for her that I wanted to protect her, even from myself.

“I’m going to get that other paper for you, Helen,” I temporized, “and then we’ll have a chance to sit down and talk other things over.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You’re the most obstinate brute I ever was engaged to,” she said, and instantly became all vivacious chatter, all social small talk.

I grinned at her.

“Do I get any reward for that last paper, young lady?” I asked her.