The Black Dog Mystery (19 page)

“Well, it was rainin’,” muttered Joe. “All afternoon it was rainin’. You coulda drowned a duck in it.”

“It cleared up before six o’clock,” Mr. Morrison reminded him, sternly. “But by that time you were all drunk. I was a fool to depend on a bunch of sapheads like you! I might have known you’d mess it up some way. Why you didn’t get yourselves caught at Clinton, I don’t know. If it had been anybody else but that dumb cop Crackle, you would have. I’d be better off if you had!”

“Yeah, is dat so?” jeered Scar-Thumb. “An’ us ridin’ in your car! They ain’t so dumb! They’d ha’ pinched
you
, boss, soon’s they see it was yours.”

“Or as soon as you squealed, you mean,” sneered Morrison.

The two men half-rose from their chairs, but a slight motion of Morrison’s hand toward the guitar checked them. They dropped back, with smothered snarls. Les’ Sedd’s eyes were almost starting from his head.

“You couldn’t take the trouble to make sure that the big money was in the bank,” Morrison resumed bitterly after a pause. “But if you had had sense enough to ask anyone you met on the street in Riverton, he could have told you that the Government checks had been delayed, and that the Clinton bank wouldn’t need the cash to meet them with. But, no, you had to stay indoors for fear of getting a little wet. You don’t send me any word. So of course I thought everything was going according to schedule and I drove around to pick you up. And you with your pockets full of pennies and dimes! Smart lads, you birds! Are you sure it wasn’t some kid’s bank that you robbed?”

The two men reddened under the lash of his tongue and twisted uneasily in their chairs. But they stared at the floor and were silent.

“Furthermore, a dog happens to get in your way and you kill it!” exclaimed Mr. Morrison. “I don’t like dogs myself, but I don’t go out of my way to kick one of them just when I’m trying to make a getaway. All you had to do was to walk around it. But, no, you have to let loose with both hands. It’s a wonder that you remembered to drive off, instead of staying to play marbles!”

“Well, how was we to know?” muttered Torn-Pants angrily.

“You’re right; I expected too much of you,” Morrison answered, with icy scorn. “I was dumb enough to leave everything to you, and of course you bungled it. But as you may remember, gentlemen, my friend Mr. Sedd and I had other important business on hand. Or have you forgotten? Mr. Sedd will be glad to freshen your memories, I’m sure, if you wish.”

He glanced toward Les’ Sedd as he spoke. Sedd cowered away from him, as if Morrison had threatened him with a whip. Morrison gave a short laugh.

“Mr. Sedd remembers perfectly, you see,” he resumed, with a malicious chuckle. “I’m sure we’re all grateful to him. If Mr. Sedd hadn’t suggested that this good neighbor of his could supply us with the necessary paint for my car, it might have been difficult to get it elsewhere. I hadn’t the least desire, I assure you, to enter a store and purchase it. Nor, for that matter, to send Mr. Sedd for it. That might have caused any number of unpleasant complications. It occurred to me—you’ll forgive me for mentioning this, Mr. Sedd—that until my arrival at this charming home of yours, you hadn’t had a nickel to buy a can of beans with, much less a can of paint. And a dozen cans! Why, it would have been sure to arouse comment, and only too certainly attract attention to myself. Dear, dear, it was certainly fortunate that you thought of your friend the house-painter!”

He chuckled again, and Djuna leaned against the wall in the darkness and closed his eyes, feeling faint. When he peered in again, Mr. Morrison seemed to be examining his finger-tips.

“So, gentlemen,” he was saying, “while you were pleasantly spending that rainy afternoon indoors, Mr. Sedd and I called upon this amiable fossil, Mr. Boots, and endeavored to purchase some paint from him. He refused. He refused rudely, I might add. But, fortunately, in the course of his abusive remarks, he happened to observe that he was going to Riverton that evening and would not return that night. Mr. Sedd was good enough to lend me his truck, later that night, and while you gentlemen were happily snoring in your alcoholic slumbers, I was risking my health and my reputation in a visit to our friend Mr. Boots’s shop. Has it ever occurred to your massive intellects that I stood a remarkably good chance of being shot, if any of his neighbors had happened to wake up? That truck of Mr. Sedd’s made a most horrible racket when I tried to start it up!”

“Ya could ha’ bumped off any hick that stuck his nose in!” growled Scar-Thumb.

“Yes, my dear Al,” said Mr. Morrison gently, “and then where would we have all been? But no one did see me. And judge of my surprise, when I got back here, to find Mr. Sedd’s truck loaded with just the amount of paint cans we needed!”

Scar-Thumb and Torn-Pants grinned, but Les’ Sedd dropped in his seat and moaned.

“Okay, boss,” grunted Scar-Thumb. “Okay, we gummed it. So what? How about tomorrow? Are you dead sure the dough is there in the bank, boss?”

Mr. Morrison continued to examine his finger-tips. “Dear me,” he sighed, “I am beginning to believe that I shall never be able to get that paint out from under my nails! Yes, Al, the money is there. This time, I do not depend upon reports from others. I took pains to see for myself. It’s there.”

“Chrissmuss!” exclaimed Al, in an awed voice. “Did ya go intuh the bank?”

“Well, hardly,” replied Mr. Morrison, smiling. “But I saw it as it was carried in. It was at a little after six o’clock this afternoon. The bank was closed. There was scarcely anyone on the streets, or, I should say,
the
street. The good citizens of Clinton were all at home, enjoying their dinners, no doubt. There was no one at all to be seen in the neighborhood of the bank except a disreputably ragged old colored gentleman, who was sitting beside the road, hugging his guitar, and resting his tired old bones. He wasn’t worth noticing.”

“Chee!” snickered Torn-Pants, admiringly. “Yuh was in yer blackface act, huh?”

“Yes, it was the old man’s final appearance in Clinton, I assure you. ‘No more work for poor old Uncle Ned.’ He sat there and watched a car drive up to the alley-way of the bank, and saw three gentlemen with their hands in their pockets get out and escort the cashier, who was carrying a heavy suitcase, safely into the bank. Does that satisfy you? And then he hobbled home here, through the cornfields and, with the help of his friend Mr. Lester Sedd, who supplied the soap and hot water, he vanished. Vanished, I devoutly hope, forever. If there’s anything that I loathe, it’s blackface.”

The men laughed—all but Les’ Sedd, who sat twisting one hand nervously over the other.

Djuna, with his face glued to the window, shivered in the darkness. He remembered how he had met that old Negro on the lonely road and had pitied his blindness. He wanted to run now, wanted to get away to safety. But something held him rooted to the spot.

“Yes, the money waits for us, gentlemen,” repeated Mr. Morrison, grinning. “We have only to drop in there tomorrow morning and collect it. With your permission, we will now rehearse our parts. All my training as an actor makes me insist that you do not stumble over your lines—or over any more dogs.”

“Aw, cut the comedy, boss!” snarled Torn-Pants. “Give us the dope, and let’s get movin’. I wanna cork off. I ain’t slep’ for a week!”

“Your conscience been troubling you, Joe?” asked Morrison sarcastically. “Surely not! Well, you’ll have plenty of sleep tonight—we’re not making an early start.”

“What time do we push off?” growled Al.

“We will start at precisely ten minutes to ten,” said Morrison. “Mr. Sedd will serve breakfast at nine sharp. As that will be the last occasion on which we will enjoy his hospitality, I’m sure he will provide us with an especially good one. Won’t you, Lester?”

Les’ Sedd gave a smothered groan, but said nothing. His Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat, as if he had swallowed something the wrong way. But Djuna had no desire to laugh.

“Mr. Sedd will oblige,” chuckled Morrison. “Very well. At ten minutes to ten, we start. You, Joe, will do the driving, of course. Al, you will occupy the seat next to Joe. There will be no necessity for you, this time, to ask directions as to the road. I will seat myself in the rear seat. Remember, of course, I shall have my banjo on my knee.” He grinned wickedly. “And I think we can make room for Mr. Sedd on the floor, with a little crowding. You know, you are to ride with us, don’t you, Lester? For a part of the way, at least.”

Les’ Sedd uttered a strangled sob, and buried his face in his hands.

“Aw, whadda we want to waste time wit’ th’ guy for, boss?” inquired Scar-Thumb, angrily. “We can give him th’ works before we scram, huh?”

“A very good suggestion, my boy,” said Morrison quietly. “But we’ll wait till he has got breakfast ready, naturally.”

Les’ Sedd pitched forward to his knees and began to babble hysterically.

“Take him, Al,” snapped Morrison impatiently. “But don’t hurt him. Just calm him down.”

Scar-Thumb jerked Sedd to his feet. His open palm struck Les’ under the chin. Sedd’s head snapped back, and he fell backwards, moaning, on the cot.

“Shut yer jaw, boob!” growled Scar-Thumb, bending over him. The moans ceased. The gangster went back to his chair.

“To resume,” said Morrison, smiling: “You will time your driving, Joseph, so that we come to a stop in front of the bank at precisely one minute past ten. You will turn the corner just after the church clock strikes ten.”

“You’re tellin’ me?” muttered Torn-Pants. “Ain’t that what I did th’ udda time?”

“Exactly,” observed Mr. Morrison pleasantly. “Just repeat the same delightful accuracy, my boy. But don’t get out of the car, this time, to kick at stray curs. Not unless you want to have the other trouser-leg made to match. Just keep your seat and keep your engine idling.”

“Aw, nuts!” said Torn-Pants angrily. “Forget it!”

“Okay, boss,” mumbled Al. “What’s the roo-teen? Same as before?”

“The same,” said Morrison. “Except that I’ll be with you this time. You and the Weeper put on your masks when the car stops. You get out first. You two go in first. I follow you. I go in last and I come out last. I get into the car last. If there’s a move from anybody, I spray them. Is that clear?”

The two men nodded.

Djuna was listening in an agony of concentration. “The Weeper,” Morrison said. Who was “the Weeper?” And his knees suddenly felt weak beneath him as he remembered. There had been three men in the car!
Where was the third man now?
He tried to crane his head so that he could see into comers of the room which were beyond his line of vision. Was the third man, “the Weeper,” sitting there in an unseen corner? He must be!

“Very well, then,” Morrison was saying. “We’ll go over this once more, before we start. There’s just one thing I want to mention right now.”

“What’s that, boss?” croaked Al. He stared at Morrison uneasily.

Morrison’s fingers slid gently along the strings of his guitar. He seemed to be caressing it. “The division,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” said Joe. He hunched forward in his chair. “That’s easy. We cut it four ways.”

Morrison shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no, we don’t. We’ll split it
five
ways. That’s why I want this settled right here and now. We’re not going to waste time arguing, as you did on Tuesday. We’ll divide it into five equal parts, I say. Each of you three will get one. I’ll take two.”

The two gangsters facing him sat ominously quiet for a moment, hatred in their eyes. Then Scar-Thumb spoke.

“Yuh rat!” he snarled. “Yuh tellin’ us there’s fifty grand in the lay an’ yer goin’ to grab off half of it? Where d’yuh get that stuff? Yuh crazy?”

“Not half of it,” Morrison corrected him, smiling cheerfully. “Merely two-fifths. A perfectly reasonable division. If
you
had planned this job, Al, l should certainly not object to your taking the larger share. But you didn’t. Is it asking too much of your brain—assuming, of course, that you have one—to understand that?”

“Well, yuh ain’t gettin’ away with it!” said Torn-Pants hoarsely. “Yuh ain’t runnin’ this split!”

“And what makes you think I’m not?” inquired Morrison softly, his eyes cold and hard as steel. “Listen, and try to get this through your thick skulls once and for all: The three of you couldn’t have got to first base, without me. Who staked you in the first place? Who got the information about this neck of the woods? If I hadn’t stopped you, you would have bumped off your friend Eddie and never have learned a thing from him. You’d be sitting in the cell right now, waiting to go to the chair. You boobs!”

“Eddie!” As that name reached Djuna’s ears, the boy felt his heart jump. Eddie! Eddie Stricker was safe, but where was Mr. Boots? Unseen in the darkness, Djuna gazed at Morrison with a fresh horror clutching him in its cold fingers. His eyes widened as he stared. He felt that if Morrison had only turned his head to look in his direction he would have shrieked.

But Morrison’s eyes remained fixed upon the angry gangsters who faced him.

“Yes, it was I, and nobody else, who got the information,” he went on, his voice icy with scorn. “But what did you three brilliant half-wits do then? You let him get away from you, let him slip through your fingers the moment you got out of my sight! You nitwits! You ought to be in an asylum!”

“Aw, skip it!” muttered Scar-Thumb. “He beat it, so what? He ain’t got the guts to open his trap! Don’t worry none about
that
punk.”

“After all, you may have removed him yourselves,” said Morrison, his eyes narrowing. “I hope so. I don’t want to know. He’s your worry, not mine. I’m merely pointing out that you gentlemen never would have dreamed of tapping this small-town gold mine if it hadn’t been for me. And who was it that came up here, and who studied the ground, and worked out every detail of the plan? Who provided the car? Who made it vanish into thin air? Who found this delightfully fool-proof hide-out for you and gave you this thoroughly enjoyable vacation in this sylvan beauty-spot? Why, you’ve been living in the ease of millionaires! You’ll go back to your filthy haunts in the city refreshed, invigorated, bronzed by the sun—but, alas! I’m only too sure that you are already panting to waste your health and your money in riotous living!”