Лестер Дент: Honey in His Mouth

The Highway Patrol car overran the spot where the limousine had left the road. It went on about two hundred yards before it halted.

The pearl-colored sports car, ignored by everyone, went on and soon its lights were no longer discernible.

Miss Muirz brought the station wagon to a stop. It stood on the highway just about where the limousine had left to go tumbling into the adjacent field. A soft and fragrant breeze cooled their faces and around them it had become very quiet. The Highway Patrol car, which was backing up, seemed in no hurry. Harsh suppressed an urge to get out of the station wagon. Mr. Hassam was leaning back on the seat with his face upraised and his mouth wide open.

Miss Muirz’s hands moved slowly as if caressing the steering wheel rim while she stared straight ahead at nothing.

“Well, I guess we’re all in one piece.” Harsh cleared his throat. “I never thought we would make it.” He looked at the approaching police car. “You people are crazy to stay parked here, you know that don’t you?”

Mr. Hassam exhaled heavily and held out his hand again to Harsh. “Give me the gun. We must prevent El Presidente’s body from being identified.”

“Are you nuts?” Harsh pushed his hand away. “The cops got their eye on us right now. That’s why they’re backing up so slow.”

The Highway Patrol car swung sharply and came to a stop crosswise on the highway pavement a few yards ahead of the station wagon, blocking the way. There were two officers in the patrol car. One alighted, service revolver in hand, and approached carefully.

“You folks get out and lie on the ground.” The officer sounded very nervous. “Whoever’s in that car that just went off the road is armed. They were shooting at us.” There was the web-like pattern of a bullet hole in the Highway Patrol car windshield.

Harsh spoke quietly. “Okay, officer. We just stopped to see what had happened. We didn’t know what was going on.”

The patrolman stepped toward Harsh, his eyes narrowing. “Do I know you? Your face looks familiar.”

At that moment, the officer who had remained in the patrol car switched on a spotlight. It produced a long white rod of light with which he poked about in the adjacent field until he found the limousine. “Hey, Dick, look!” The wreck lay about sixty yards off the highway.

Everyone stared at the wreck. Harsh felt he would not have recognized the jumble of metal as the limousine had he not known better.

The patrolman standing beside the station wagon called out to the officer in their car. “Nobody in that thing is gonna do any more shooting.” He crossed the highway and went down into the grader ditch. He moved sidewise going down and dug his heels in so he would not slide. He jumped over some water in the bottom of the ditch and went on toward what was left of the limousine. The other officer followed him.

Harsh felt of his pockets, making sure he still had the money from the wall safe. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Before they come back.”

Mr. Hassam shook his head. “No. Not without the body of El Presidente.”

“You’re nuts, Hassam. That body is a cop. Maybe he got hold of El Presidente’s gun somehow, but it couldn’t be El Presidente. You heard the radio, El Presidente is on a gunboat in the harbor down there in South America.”

“A false scent.” Mr. Hassam’s voice was bitter. “He suspected us, and he came here to spy on us. You remember we thought a car was trailing you and Miss Muirz a few nights ago? Well, one was, evidently, and no doubt it was El Presidente.”

“How would he know where to look for you?”

“You think he couldn’t find out where Brother’s estate is? He must have been watching it for days, following us any time we went out.”

“Okay, but why would he jump on me, try to kill me? You four, sure, but me, I’m nobody to him.”

“Nobody is the last thing you were to him, Harsh—and if you’d looked in a mirror lately you’d know why. The first time he saw you he must have thought he was looking in a mirror. Even with that bandage on your face, he’d have immediately known something was up.”

Harsh frowned, then remembered something. “I know how to settle this. I took his wallet. The dead man’s. That’ll tell us who he was.” He felt hurriedly in his pockets. “I ain’t had time to look at it. Here.”

Mr. Hassam seized the billfold. “A passport case.” He ignored some paper currency. “Ah! God!” Mr. Hassam closed his eyes tightly. “It was El Presidente. It is his passport.”

“I don’t believe it!” Harsh seized the case and examined the passport. His hands began to shake. “Christ, let’s clear out of here. They find the body of an ex-president in that car, even a South American one, and there’s going to be a tall stink. What are we waiting on?”

A low mewing sound came from Miss Muirz. It startled Harsh, chilling his nerves, and he looked at her. But Miss Muirz had not moved.

The two Highway Patrolmen reached the wreckage of the limousine. They began shining their flashlight beams about in it.

Mr. Hassam started toward the spot where the limousine had careened off the road. “Come. You and I will get the body now.”

Harsh drew back. “The hell with you, buddy. I want out of here, is all I want.”

Mr. Hassam’s voice was soft, but suddenly very ugly. “Harsh, you have fifty thousand dollars in your pockets. I know, because I heard the alarm begin ringing when you opened the safe. I know that you feel you have a fortune in your pockets. But you listen to me, Harsh, listen closely. If you leave here now, you are running out on a chance to share in real money. El Presidente has nearly sixty-five million dollars on deposit in various institutions. You can impersonate him, and Miss Muirz’s handwriting has already forged his name on all the deposit documents. Can you conceive of the sum sixty-five million? You cannot, can you, Harsh? You really cannot. The piddling sum of fifty thousand made you sick at your stomach.”

One of the Highway Patrolmen got on his knees and threw his flashlight beam into the entrails of the wreck.

Harsh’s mouth had gone dry. “This is the first time anybody said anything to me about a share in sixty-five million.”

“Naturally. Why mention it when you were hysterically happy with fifty thousand?”

The Highway Patrolman put his flashlight on the ground and began to pull at something inside the wreck with his hands.

Mr. Hassam spoke grimly. “If that is El Presidente’s body he is pulling out of there, we are lost.”

“You think if we can keep the body from being identified, we can still grab everything?”

“Why not?”

The patrolman drew his hands out of the wreckage and hurriedly wiped them on the ground.

“All right.” Harsh hardly recognized his own voice. “Let’s get the body.”

Miss Muirz made the odd mewing sound again. As before, there was no indication she had moved.

“Jesus!” Alarmed, Harsh looked back at Miss Muirz, who still hadn’t gotten out of the station wagon. Her face was immobile and expressionless. The features could have been cut in glass. As he looked at her, her hands began to caress the wheel rim slowly, and he realized she had been doing that off and on since they had stopped. “What’s wrong with her, Hassam?”

“Let her alone.” Mr. Hassam leaned close to Miss Muirz. “We are going after the body, Mr. Harsh and I. Do you understand, Miss Muirz?”

A tremor went through her, but the even rhythm with which her hands stroked the steering wheel rim was not altered.

Mr. Hassam turned and crossed the pavement. “Come, Harsh.” He went down the embankment and hesitated at the bottom, frowning at the water in the ditch. “Footprints in the mud. We must be careful of them.” The ditch water was black in the moonlight.