Fredrick Brown - Night of the Jabberwock

I stopped short and tried not to do a double-take when I recognized him. My attention to the wanted circulars on the post office bulletin board was about to pay off — although from the expression on his face, the payoff wasn't going to be the kind I'd want.

The man coming toward me and only two steps away when I stopped was Bat Masters, whose picture had been posted only last week and was still there on the board. I couldn't be wrong about his face, and I remembered the name clearly because of its similarity to the name of Bat Masterson, the famous gunman of the old West. I'd thought of it as a coincidence at first and then I realized that the similarity of Masters to Masterson had made the nickname "Bat" a natural.

He was a big man with a long, horselike face, eyes wide apart and a mouth that was a narrow straight line separating a lantern jaw from a wide upper lip; on the latter there was a two-day stubble of hair that indicated he was starting a mustache. But it would have taken plastic surgery and a full beard to disguise that face from anyone who had recently, however casually, studied a picture of it. Bat Masters, bank robber and killer.

I had a gun in my pocket, but I didn't remember it at the time. It's probably just as well; if I'd remembered, I might have been frightened into reaching for it. And that probably would not have been a healthful thing to do. He was coming at me with his fists balled but no gun in either of them. He didn't intend to kill me — although one of those fists might do it quite easily and unintentionally. I weigh a hundred and forty wringing wet, and he weighed almost twice that and had shoulders that bulged out his suit coat.

There wasn't even time to turn and run. His left hand came out and caught the front of my coat and pulled me toward him, almost lifting me off the sidewalk.

He said, "Listen, Pop, I don't want any lip. I asked you a question."

"Carmel City," I said. "Carmel City, Illinois."

The voice of the other man, still in the car, came back to us. "Hey, Bill, don't hurt the guy. We don't want to—" He didn't finish the sentence, of course; to say you don't want to attract attention is the best way of drawing it.

Masters looked past me right over my head — to see if anybody or anything was coming that way and then, still keeping his grip on the front of my coat, turned and looked the other way. He wasn't afraid of my swinging at him enough to bother keeping his eyes on me, and I didn't blame him for feeling that way about it.

A car was coming now, about a block away. And two men came out of the drugstore on the opposite side of the street, only a few buildings down. Then behind me I could hear the sound of another car turning into Oak Street.

Masters turned back to me and let go, so we were just two men standing there face to face if anyone noticed us. He said, "Okay, Pop. Next time somebody asks you a question, don't be so God damn fresh."

He still glared at me as though he hadn't yet completely given up the idea of giving me something to remember him by — maybe just a light open-handed slap that wouldn't do anything worse than crack my jawbone and drive my dentures down my throat.

I said, "Sure, sorry," and let my voice sound afraid, but tried not to sound quite as afraid as I really was — because if he even remotely suspected that I might have recognized him, I wasn't going to get out of it at all.

He swung around and walked back to the ear, got in and drove off. I suppose I should have got the license number, but it would have been a stolen car anyway — and besides I didn't think of it. I didn't even watch the car as it drove away; if either of them looked back I didn't want them to think I was giving them what criminals call the big-eye. I didn't want to give them any possible reason to change their minds about going on.

I started walking again, keeping to the middle of the sidewalk and trying to look like a man minding his own business. Also trying to keep my knees from shaking so hard that I couldn't walk at all. It had been a narrow squeak all right. If the street had been completely empty—

I could have notified the sheriff's office about a minute quicker by turning around and going back that way, but I didn't take a chance. If someone was watching me out of the back window of the car, a change in direction wouldn't be a good idea. There was a difference of only a block anyway; I was half a block past the courthouse and a block and a half from Smiley's and the Clarion office across the street from it. >From either one I could phone in the big news that Bat Masters and a companion had just driven through Carmel City heading north, probably toward Chicago. And Hank Ganzer, in the sheriff's office, would relay the story to the state police and there was probably better than an even chance that they'd be caught within an hour or two.

And if they were, I might even get a slice of the reward for giving the tip — but I didn't care as much about that as about the story I was going to have. Why, it was a story, even if they weren't caught, and if they were, it would be a really big one. And a local story — if the tip came from Carmel City — even if they were actually caught several counties north. Maybe there'd even be a gun battle — from my all too close look at Masters I had a hunch that there would be.

Perfect timing, too, I thought. For once something was happening on a Thursday night. For once I'd beat the Chicago papers. They'd have the story, too, of course, and a lot of Carmel City people take Chicago dailies, but they don't come in until the late afternoon train and the Clarion would be out hours before that.

Yes, for once I was going to have a newspaper with news in it. Even if Masters and his pal weren't caught, the fact that they'd passed through town made a story. And besides that, there was the escaped maniac, and Carl Trenholm—

Thinking about Carl again made me walk faster. It was safe by now; I'd gone a quarter of a block since the Buick had driven off. It wasn't anywhere in sight and again the street was quiet; thank God it hadn't been this quiet while Masters had been making up his mind whether or not to slug me.

I was past Deak's Music Store, dark. Past the supermarket, ditto. The bank—

I had passed the bank, too, when I stopped as suddenly as though I'd run into a wall. The bank had been dark too. And it shouldn't have been; there's a small night light that always burns over the safe. I'd passed the bank thousands of times after dark and never before had that light been off.

For a moment the wild thought went through my head that Bat and his companion must have just burglarized the bank — although robbery, not burglary, was Masters' trade — and then I saw how ridiculous that thought had been. They'd been driving toward the bank and a quarter of a block away from it when they'd stopped to ask me what town they were in. True, they could have burglarized the bank and then circled the block in their car, but if they had they'd have been intent on their getaway. Criminals do pretty silly things sometimes but not quite so silly as to stop a getaway car within spitting distance of the scene of the crime to ask what town they're in, and then to top it by getting out of the car to slug a random pedestrian because they don't like his answer to their question.

No, Masters and company couldn't have robbed the bank. And they couldn't be burglarizing it now, either. Their car had gone on past; I hadn't watched it, but my ears had told me that it had kept on going. And even if it hadn't, I had. My encounter with them had been only seconds ago; there wasn't possibly time for them to have broken in there, even if they'd stopped.

I went back a few steps and looked into the window of the bank.

At first I saw nothing except the vague silhouette of a window at the back — the top half of the window, that is, which was visible above the counter. Then the silhouette became less vague and I could see that the window had been opened; the top bar of the lower sash showed clearly, only a few inches from the top of the frame.