The Collection (100 page)

Brakes screeched. A gun barked and a bullet buzzed past his
left car like an angry hornet.

Two automatics were barking now--they did not dare take
time to get out of the car and run after him, so they were firing from the
drive. But the light was uncertain, and he had presence of mind enough to
zigzag a bit.

And
then another sound, a welcome sound, came to his ears--the shrill sirens of
squad cars. They seemed to come from three directions, converging upon the
park. Two of the cars came into sight on the boulevard and swung into two
different driveways into the park.

As suddenly as they had started, the automatics ceased to
bark. The big black car roared into motion again--but a squad car blocked its
way, swinging around to block the drive, a revolver firing at the robbers' car.

The windshield shattered, and the car came to a stop with
squealing brakes. A second squad car pulled up behind it. Two detectives from
the third car were running toward it across the grass, one of them carrying a
submachine gun.

A salvo from the big car made the man with the gun go flat
on his belly, and he started firing from that position. The staccato of the gun
drowned out the short sharp barks of the pistols. A row of holes six inches
apart appeared in the side of the big car.

Only one automatic continued to bark. Then that one was
thrown out to the drive, and its owner, trying to surrender, opened the door to
climb out. But he fell out instead and sprawled gracelessly in a pool of blood
on the asphalt.

In the silence that followed, the little man with the
straggly gray hair walked over to the detective who had fired the submachine
gun.

"I can identify them," he said.

Then he realized how silly it sounded when the detective
looked at him in bewilderment and from him to the body on the drive and the car
with its two silent occupants.

"So can I," said the detective, with a grin.

"I mean," said the little man, "that I saw
the robbery happen." And he went on and told how his telescope had been
used, and the whole story. "Is there," he asked, although he knew
very well that there wasn't, "any chance of my getting a reward?"

"What for?" asked the detective, and then
grinned. "You're lucky we don't run you in as an accessory, allowing your
spyglass to be used by a lookout in a jewelry-house burglary."

The little man winced, and the detective reassured him.

"Naw." he added. "They set off an alarm as
they were leaving. We'd have got 'em anyway, a little bit down the boulevard,
even if they hadn't stopped to take a pot shot at you."

The police ambulance had driven up, and the three bodies
were loaded into it. A cop got into the riddled car and found that it could be
driven in under its own power.

The little man walked dispiritedly back to his telescope. A
crowd had gathered--the shooting had drawn one of those tremendous mobs of the
curious who always gather at the scene of an accident or crime in a city,
whether it be noon or midnight. There were hundreds milling about. Excitement
can always draw a throng.

The little man perked up. Crowds might mean business.

"The moon for a nickel," called the little man,
standing beside his telescope. "See the moon for a nickel."

But nobody much wanted to see the moon. He took in one
nickel in five minutes.

He happened to look back toward the building across the
boulevard. He saw the looted shop brightly lighted up. He focused the telescope
on the windows. As though looking through from the very window sill, he could
see the policemen, the detectives, going over the place. Back at one wall he
could see a damaged safe. A man came in who looked liked a jeweler, probably
the proprietor.

The little man had a big idea.

"See the scene of the crime!" he called.
"Half a dollar to see the scene of the crime through a telescope!"

Some one shoved a half dollar into his hand and looked
through the telescope. Another. A knot gathered about the telescope. The
little man beamed, and began to get heavy about the pockets. He hadn't known
that there
were
that many half dollars. It was hours later before he
finally went home, and sixty-one dollars jingled in his pockets.

I
waited till the train had pulled out, and still nobody had got off it. Nobody,
that is, except the funny-looking little guy with the shell-rimmed glasses and
the hat that looked like a country preacher's.

But
the great McGuire wasn't on it. I was glad, in a way, because I--well, I might
as well admit that I resented Old Man Remmel having thought I wasn't good
enough for the job and having sent for the biggest-shot private detective in
the country. Just on a matter of some threatening letters, too. Didn't even
want me to call in a postal inspector; said he'd have the best detective in the
country or none.

Well,
I decided, he'd been stood up. I grinned and turned to head back home, figuring
maybe this guy McGuire had phoned Remmel he'd be delayed and Remmel had phoned
me and I wasn't there. But this funny-looking little guy I mentioned steps up
to me and sticks out his hand. "Sheriff Clark?" he asked. And when I
admitted it, he said, "My name is--"

Yeah,
you guessed it.

I
gawped at him. "Not
the--"

He
grinned at me. "Thanks for the compliment, sheriff, if it was meant for
one. If I disappoint you, I'm sorry, but--"

I'd recovered enough by then to take his hand and to
stammer out something that was probably worse than if I'd kept my big mouth
shut and let it go at that. But honesty, not subtlety, has always been my long
suit, and the people here have elected me ten terms running, in spite of it. I
don't mean in spite of the honesty; I mean in spite of my being not much of a
diplomat.

"Well," I said, "I'm glad you're here
anyway." I saw too late that the "anyway" was putting my foot in
it farther, but a word's like a bullet in that once you've shot it you can't
get it back into the gun and pretend you didn't. A guy really ought to be as
careful about shooting off his yap as about shooting off his gun, come to think
of it. There'd be fewer murders either way.

"I'm sorry, Mr. McGuire," I told him sheepishly.
"But, gosh, you sure don't look like--"

He laughed. "Never mind the mister, sheriff. Just call
me Mac. And I'm not sensitive about my looks; they're an asset. Now about those
letters. Got them with you?"

I took his arm. "Sure," I said. "I'll show
'em to you over a drink before we drive out to see Remmel. I'll give you the
picture first, since we'll be working together. Anyway, I can say some things
better if it isn't in front of him."

"You mean he isn't on the level?"

"Nix," I said. "I don't mean that at all. If
anything, he's too much on the level. He's not only interested in his own
morals, but in everybody else's, see? He's a reformer, and he's a damn
teetotaler. You know these smug teetotalers. Pains in the neck, all of
them."

I jerked my thumb toward the building we were passing on
the other side of our main street. "That's his bank," I said,
"and if he'd stick to banking, he wouldn't have got those letters. But he
had to stick his nose into politics and get himself elected to the county
board. And with his ideas--" I shook my head.

"Such as--" McGuire prompted.

I steered him into Sam Frey's place that we'd just come to,
before I answered. If I was going out with him to see Remmel--and I had an
appointment with Remmel to do just that--we'd be in for a long, dry
conversation. A bit of prelubrication would come in handy.

I answered his question as we headed for the bar.
"Such as tavern keepers and roadhouses, mostly. I know we're not too tight
on the roadhouses down this way, but that's mostly because the people want it
that way, and it brings a lot of business and money into the county. We keep
'em closely enough supervised that there's no rough stuff, you know, or
anything really much wrong, but--"

"But what?"

"But this Remmel has a bill up before the county
board--the gosh-awfulest bill you ever heard of. It would shut up all taverns
and roadhouses at ten o'clock in the evening. Not midnight or one o'clock, mind
you, but
ten,
when their trade is just starting. Naturally, the boys are
sore. It's just the same thing, practically, as closing them up entirely."

I crooked a finger at Sam, and he came ambling down toward
us behind the bar.

"And the worst of it is," I went on, "that there's
a chance of it going through, with Remmel swinging all his influence back of
it. Now, reform's a darn good thing where it's needed, but it isn't needed
here, and it's going to play hell with things. That's the trouble with these
damn intemperate teetotalers--

"--Derryaire for mine, Sam, short beer for a wash.
Yours, Mr. McG--I mean, Mac?"

His eyes twinkled at me from behind those shell-rimmed
cheaters. He said, "I'll have coffee, if Sam has some hot. Sorry, sheriff,
but I'm a damn teetotaler."

That
was my third boner since the train had pulled in at seven p.m., which was ten
minutes ago. There wasn't anything to do
but to laugh
it off or else get down on my hands and knees and crawl for the back door. But
the corners of McGuire's mouth showed me I could laugh it off all right, and I
did.

"Make mine coffee, too, Sam," I said. "But
be sure it's got whiskers on it. Let's get back to Banker Remmel, Mac. Now, I
don't mean that he is a complete louse, even if he is a--I don't mean he is a
complete louse at all. He's got a soft side, too. He loves music, for one
thing; plays piano at the Sunday school. And once a week regular, for thirty
years, he and Dave Peters get together and jam it up."

"Jam what up?"

"I got a daughter in high school," I explained.
"That's the kind of English they teach them there. It means they play
together. Dave plays a squeak-pipe."

"A what?"

"I didn't learn that from my daughter," I told
him. "It came natural, because I hate flutes. They smell to high heaven,
and especially when Dave wheezes a high note on his. Golly!"

"Who is Dave?"

"Dave Peters, the clerk at the bank. He and Old Man
Remmel are friends from kidhood. Guess Dave couldn't hold a job anywhere else;
he's a little light in the head. Guess anybody has to be to take up playing the
flute for a hobb--Say, Mac, you don't by any chance play the flute, do
you?"

He put back his head and laughed heartily. He said,
"Sheriff, you're a wow. May I see those letters?"

I nodded and handed them over. There were three of them,
and they were the perfectly ordinary type of threatening note.

One of them read:

Remmel: Get out of
politics or get out of Crogan County.

Another one:

Remmel: Resign from the
county board or be measured for a wooden kimono.

The third one was about like the other two; I forget the
exact wording.

"You checked them for prints, I suppose?" McGuire
asked.

"Sure. Even us hicks know that much these days. Nope,
no prints, Mac. But did you notice anything about the spelling?"

"Hm-m-m. Not especially. What do you mean?"

I nodded wisely, glad of a chance to show him that even out
in Springdale we are able to give a whirl or two to the old deductive angles.
"It's the spelling of a fairly well-educated person," I pointed out.
"Makes no attempt to sound illiterate, you see. He spells words like
'resign' and 'politics' all right. But he misses an easy one, and that little
slip wouldn't have been faked. When we find a guy who spells 'kimona' with an
'o' on the end, we really got a suspect. See?"

He looked surprised. "You sure, sheriff? I've always
thought it
was
spelled with an 'o.' " He opened his brief case,
which he's put on the stool beside him, and pulls out a little pocket
dictionary and--well, when we'd looked it up, he had to admit that my deduction
would have been a good one if I'd only not known how to misspell kimono myself.

Sam brought our coffee and I put three spoonfuls of sugar
in mine before I realized what I was doing, being kind of confused. And then,
rather than make a
worse fool of myself by admitting it, I had to
pretend I'd done it on purpose and drink the sickly stuff. There's a bottom
limit to what a sheriff wants a famous detective to think of him, and I felt
two degrees below that already, even if Mac was too nice to show that he
thought it.

He
drank his coffee black and unsweetened, and he asked. "Do you think these
threats are from some roadhouse owner who'll be ruined if that bill of Remmel's
goes through?"

1 shrugged. "Could be. There's plenty of owners that
will be ruined, and some of those boys might play for keeps if they saw their
livings being yanked out from under them. There are a few that--well, they stay
within the law now because under the law they can still make a fair profit,
but--"