Eric Russell: Three to Conquer

“Thanks,” said Harper glumly. “So that’s another wrong tree up which I’ve barked. Oh, well, press on regardless.”

“To where?”

“That girl in the Thunderbug. Did you learn any more about her?”

“Yes. Her boy friend is in the armed forces and serving overseas. She has no relative with a police record, no bad egg in the family. Helps us a lot, doesn’t it?”

“How about her protecting a girl friend who, perhaps, is afflicted with a trigger-happy lover?”

“How about pigs taking wings? The follow-up has been good and thorough. Her entire circle of relatives, neighbors and friends is in the clear.”

“All right, keep your hair on. I’m only a major suspect trying to establish my pristine purity.”

Ledsom let go a loud snort and cut off. Evidently lack of progress was trying his patience.

The second address was that of the central house in an old-fashioned but still imposing terrace of substantially built property. The road was wide, quiet, tree-lined and had an air of stuffy respectability. Harper went up six steps and rang the doorbell.

A tall, good-looking youth of about eighteen answered the door, eyed him quizzically.

“Miss Jocelyn Whittingham in?” Harper asked, trying to sound official or at least semi-official.

“No.” The other’s mind confirmed the truth of that, but went on to whisper to itself, “ Joyce doesn’t want to see anybody. Who is this muscle-bound ape? Another nosy cop? Or a reporter? Joyce is fed up answering questions. Why don’t they leave her alone?”

“Any idea when she’ll be back?”

“No.”

That was a lie; the girl had promised to return by six.

“H’m!” Harper glanced up and down the road in the manner of one idly wondering what to do next. In deceptively casual tones, he asked, “Ever plug a state trooper?”

No alarm-bell rang in the opposing brain. The. youth’s thoughts swirled confusedly while he doubted his own ears.

“Have I ever what?”

“Sorry,” said Harper. “I was thinking out loud about something else. When do you suppose I could see Miss Whittingham?”

“I don’t know.”

Same lie again.

“Too bad.” Harper registered indecision.

“What d’you want to see her about?” inquired the youth.

“A personal matter.”

“Well, she isn’t in and I don’t know when she’ll be in.”

“Suppose I call back between six and seven?”

“Please yourself.” He showed facial indifference while his mind nursed the notion that the visitor could go jump in the lake.

“All right, I’ll try again later.”

The youth nodded, shut the door. He was not sufficiently interested even to ask Harper’s name. He was devoid of guilt and bored by the affairs of his sister, Miss Jocelyn Whittingham.

Harper spent an hour strolling aimlessly around the town, while his car was greased and serviced in a central garage. At twenty to six he returned on foot to the road, stationed himself by a bus stop fifty yards from the house and kept watch for the girl’s homecoming.

He had only a rough description of his quarry but needed no more than that. One question would serve to stimulate self-identification voluntarily or involuntarily. There is no way of preventing the brain from registering its negatives or affirmatives, no matter how great the desire to distort it.

Once the girl got inside that house, the puzzle would be how to gain an interview contrary to her wishes. If she flatly refused to see him, he had no power to compel her to do so.

A face-to-face interview was imperative. If she were indoors, he could stand there all night picking up her thoughts, and sorting them out from other nearby thoughts, with no difficulty whatsoever. He. could, if he wished, spy upon her mind for a week.

It would do him not the slightest bit of good so long as her mind, and its thinking processes, moved only in channels having nothing to do with the case in hand. Questions were necessary to force her brain onto the case and make it reveal any cogent evidence it might be hiding. A vocal stimulus was required. To provide it, he must ask her about this and that, drawing useful conclusions from all points where her thoughts contradicted her words.

Twice, while he waited, a girl walked past and momentarily captured his attention. So long as they did not mount the steps to the house, he made no attempt to identify them mentally. He merely watched those girls until they had gone beyond the house, out of sight.

A bus pulled up at the stop, discharged four passengers and rolled away. One of them, a tall, sallow man, eyed him curiously.

“It’ll be half an hour before there’s another.”

“Yes, I know,” Harper said.

The other shrugged, crossed the road, entered the house facing the stop. Harper moved some distance down the road, where he could keep watch without being snooped upon from the windows by the sallow man.

At five to six a girl entered the road from the end nearest his former post, walked hurriedly along with a sharp click-click of high heels. She was of medium height, fresh-featured, plump and about twenty. Without glancing around, or noticing Harper, she climbed the steps to the house and felt in her handbag for a key.

From seventy yards away Harper probed at her, seeking confirmation of her identity. The result was shocking. The precise instant his mind touched, hers, she became aware of the contact; he, in his turn, knew that she was aware. She dropped the handbag in her flurry, bent and grabbed for it as he started to run toward her.

Getting the bag, she fumbled inside it with frantic haste while his feet pounded heavily along the sidewalk. Her eyes’ held a luminous glare as she found the key, stabbed it at the door. Perspiration beaded the running Harper’s broad features, while his right hand pawed under his left arm and his legs continued to race.

The key slid in and turned. Harper stopped at ten yards’ distance, levelled his gun and squeezed its butt. The thing went spat-spat-spat with such swiftness that it sounded like somebody tearing a foot of canvas. The noise was not loud. A stream of matchhead sized steel balls hit the target dead center.

Miss Jocelyn Whittingham let go the key, sank to her knees without a sound and Keeled over, her head against the door. Harper stood sweating, watched the blood run out of her hair and listened to her brain packing up for keeps.

He stared around, saw no onlookers, no witnesses. The gunfire had attracted nobody’s attention. He left her lying there and paced swiftly up the road. His face was strained and wet as he retrieved his car and raced out of town.

The police must have moved fast, and skillfully. Harper had covered a mere three hundred miles before he was advertised on the air and in the newspapers. He was having supper in a cheap hashery when he got an evening paper carrying the news. WANTED FOR MURDER, it said. There followed a fairly accurate description of himself and of his car, complete with tag number; he cursed under his breath as he read it. There were twenty customers in the place, most of them long-distance truckers. Half of them had read, or were reading, the same sheet. Some were unaware of his existence; the others glanced at him casually. He knew their lack of suspicion with absolute certainty, and that was about the only advantage he possessed.

Outside, in plain view, stood the car. Its numbers seemed to swell and grow enormous, even as he looked at them. Three big men in denims lumbered past its rear end, without giving it so much as a second look, got into an adjacent machine and pulled away. His luck might hold out like that for some time, but it just couldn’t last forever.