Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

He’d had to hide the thing in such a hurry, with his eyes on the plate-glass front, that he probably wasn’t sure now just which table it had been. Or else he thought the bowls had gotten transposed during the course of the day’s hash-slinging. Right now he must be sweating blood!

But Keogh would be doing more than sweating it. He would be bleeding it from a couple of bullet punctures if he didn’t get out of here pretty fast, he knew. He’d located the bulge now, under the guy’s left arm. It was not very noticeable, but it wasn’t just made by a pack of old letters, either!

As for turning the necklace back, walking up to the guy and saying, “Here, I found this and you seem to be hunting for it. I’m hard up. Is it worth forty or fifty bucks to you—” He wasn’t that much of a fool.

He might get the fifty, sure, on loan for about five minutes. Then he’d get a couple of slugs in addition at the first dark corner he came to after leaving, just as insurance that he really kept his mouth shut. No, thanks!

The other man had finished dredging the tureen at the table where he was, and Keogh’s was the next in line. Fortunately, the counterman had showed up again, and the hunter didn’t seem to want to make the move without any excuse. It was easy to see the people in this place weren’t in on it with him, and he didn’t want to arouse their curiosity or suspicion.

By now he apparently couldn’t stomach any more of their putrid coffee, so this time for an excuse he got up and went over to the water filter. And when he came back, it was going to be to Keogh’s table.

The riskiest place to carry the diamonds would be the safest in the long run, Tom Keogh decided quickly. Pockets were a dead giveaway, and it would take too long to put them in his sock. The water ran out of that cooler into the glass awfully fast, and the outfit was some kind of polished metal that reflected the whole room behind the fellow’s back almost as well as a mirror. Keogh couldn’t make any suspicious moves. The necklace was bunched up in Keogh’s lap, and he had one hand sheltering it sidewise from observation. He gathered it into the hollow of that hand, then tucked it in and folded his fingers down over it without moving another muscle of his body.

Then he yawned, as if coming out of his lethargy. He brought his arms up, elbows out, and stretched in his chair. He kept the backs of his hands turned toward the gunman at the filter. Then he opened his clenched fingers a little, with his hands up in full sight. Not much, but enough to guide the string of jewels in the right direction.

His cuff was baggy and shapeless, as wide open as a firemen’s net. He felt the thing go wriggling down his wrist like a cold, rough-edged little snake, and his sleeve swallowed it. It fell all the way down to the crook of his arm, bringing up against his biceps.

He got a good grip on the bottom of his cuff with that same hand, doubling it back on itself and tucking it shut tight around his wrist. Then he brought his arms down again, and yawned.

The necklace dropped right back down his sleeve again, of course, but it couldn’t get out. There wasn’t any slack left in the cloth now, the way he was holding it. The jewels stayed in. The awkward position of his fingers was barely noticeable, and then only if you looked closely down at the hand. Most people carry their fingers curving loosely inward a bit anyway, not stretched out stiffly like an Egyptian bas-relief.

The hard guy was coming toward the table with his glass of water. Tom Keogh scraped his chair back, picked up his check with his free hand and sauntered aimlessly toward the cashier. He put the check down, reached in his pants and dug out his last nickel, dropping it on top of the slip of cardboard. The cashier, interrupted halfway down Walter Winchell’s column, gave him a dirty look for staying that long on a five-cent check and banged the coin into the till.

Out on the sidewalk, Keogh turned his head slightly and glanced back in. This time the guy was not messing the sugar bowl at the table Keogh had just left. Instead he was staring intently at it as if something about it seemed to show it had already been searched.

Keogh struck a quicker gait, but had hardly gotten started when the voice behind him stopped him with a sickening fear. He’d only gotten one doorway down the street, but luckily that was a good dark one.

“Just a minute, buddy! Hey, you! Take it easy!”

There was a feline softness about the voice, almost a purr, that was somehow more menacing than the loudest shout. The fellow stood revealed for a moment outside the lighted cafeteria doorway, as Keogh turned, then suddenly was standing next to him, without seeming to have moved at all.

“Trouble you for a light, buddy?” he asked, still purring.

Keogh knew better than to run for it. He tapped his pocket halfheartedly. “Didn’t they have one in there?”

“Couldn’t say, buddy, didn’t ask them,” was the answering drawl. “Lemme help you look, I’m good at finding things. Just move back a little closer to this doorway, out of the drafts.”

There was a maddening quality about that smooth, silky tone of voice. Perhaps it was intentional, to provoke men to their deaths. Keogh, goaded, would have grappled with him then and there, but the gun had come out.

“What is this, a holdup?” he asked bitterly. “I haven’t anything on me. Why don’tcha pick some one that—”

The other’s pronunciation became even slower and softer.

“Ju-ust relax, buddy. Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for. There’s nothing to get excited about.”

Keogh didn’t argue the point. The other had him now with his back pressed flat against the closed doorway behind him. The gunman held his gun hand back a little, and hidden close up against his own body. You couldn’t have noticed what was going on from a yard away.

He threw a quick look up one way, then down the other, but too quickly for Keogh to take advantage of it. Keogh wasn’t in a chancey mood, anyway. Diamonds don’t cure bullet wounds.

With his free hand the guy started in at Keogh’s outside breast pocket and worked his way all over him. He didn’t miss a seam. Keogh was holding his cuff in now by no more than three fingers, letting the others hang stiffly downward. Every second the stones felt as though they were going to come slipping out of their own weight and clash to the pavement beside him. They were bunched there right at the mouth of his cuff, held in only by the slightest of pressure.

“Hunh!” the guy laughed shortly, when not even an Indian-head penny had shown up anywhere in Keogh’s clothes. “You’re sure flat, all right!” he said, with contempt.

He backed away a step. “Now bend down, undo your kicks, and step out of them!” he ordered.

Keogh did so, desperately hanging on to his cuff and only using two fingers of that hand to do the unlacing. The other didn’t seem to notice in the darkness. He snatched up one shoe, then the other, shook them out, tossed them back.

“All right, stick your leg up against the side of the doorway and hoist up the bottom of your pants!” he snapped, crisply now.

He examined the top of Keogh’s sock, feeling for bulges. Then he repeated with the other leg. He wasn’t missing a trick. The sweat stood out on Keogh’s forehead like raindrops.

The stick-up guy stood there for a full minute, swearing deep down in his throat. He searched every spot but the right one — Keogh’s bare left hand. Keogh took a chance, just to see if the other would give himself away.

“What is it y’ think I’ve got?” he asked querulously.

But the searcher was too cagey to be tripped. “I’m an anatomy student and I just wanted to see what makes you tick!” he snarled. He was probably remembering that there were still a couple of tables in there with sugar bowls he hadn’t searched. And somebody else might walk in while he was standing out here.