The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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СКАЧАТЬ last assured. So—”

      “But I—I tell you—”

      “Come, come!” said T. Ashley, laying a hand on Dillingham’s arm. “Why not make a clean breast of it? Why not give me the gloves, in exchange for a Scotch verdict of ‘Not guilty but don’t do it again?’”

      Dillingham tried to moisten his lips with a dry tongue. He managed to ar­ticulate: “No man—voluntarily—runs his head into a noose.”

      T. Ashley laughed, and it was rare for him to laugh. “Tell you what I’ll do, to prove I’m on the level with you. Keep the gloves, if you want to. In fact, I rather think you’d better. There’s one su­premely good use you can make of them.”

      “And what’s that?”

      “Show them to me, and then I’ll tell you.”

      The doctor hesitated a moment, smeared his sweating brow, then got up and walked to a filing cabinet at the other side of his office. T. Ashley no­ticed how his legs shook.

      “You’re making no mistake, my friend,” he assured the doctor, “to trust me. If there’s any man in this city who hates Hanrahan and Levitsky worse than you do, that man is myself.”

      “That’s good enough for me,” re­plied the doctor. He pulled out a drawer of the cabinet, reached far into the back of it, took something, and re­turned to the desk, exclaiming, “Here!”

      He thrust into T. Ashley’s hands a pair of thin dogskin gloves, the fingers of which were covered with human skin.

      “Here,” he repeated. “You win!”

      “We both win,” corrected T. Ashley, with keen interest examining the gloves. “You win immunity, and I win another triumph for my deductive methods—though it must be a secret one. But, after all, you see how very simple it all is, when one knows the method? Here, take them back.” He tossed the gloves onto the desk. “My offer still stands. I happen to have a thousand dollars soon payable to me, for which I have no personal use. Will you accept that thou­sand, for the orthopedic?”

      “Will I? Good God!”

      “Also my suggestion as to disposing of these gloves?”

      “What—what’s that?”

      “Wrap and seal them, and include them among the articles to be deposited in the metal box that goes into the cor­ner stone of the hospital. For they are its corner stone!”

      A moment the doctor stared at him. Then his hand hesitated toward that of the investigator.

      T. Ashley shook hands with him warmly. “Agreed, then?”

      But Dillingham, choking, could find no word.

      VIII.

      Next afternoon T. Ashley called Scanlon by phone. “It’s about that mat­ter, you know,” said he.

      “Oh, you got it doped out, have you?” Scanlon queried.

      “I am very sorry to say I haven’t. In fact, I have been obliged to drop the affair.”

      “The devil!”

      “Just what I said, when I discovered that my charwoman had done a little cleaning up. The fact is, Scanlon, all the evidence in the case has disap­peared.”

      “You don’t expect me to believe nothin’ like that!”

      “I expect—and require—you to be­lieve anything I choose to tell you!” T. Ashley’s voice was decisive. “I repeat that the case is closed. You can give your employers the explanation I have just given you. Between you and me, however, I don’t mind telling you it will be very much better for all parties con­cerned if things stop right where they are. I could go further—but decline. An interesting case, but circumstances have altered—”

      “Oh, that’s the way it rides, eh? Well now, by—”

      “Yes, that’s the way, Good-by!” T. Ashley hung up the receiver and smiled.

      “They’ll never dare refuse that thou­sand,” he pondered. “I know too much. And they’ll never dare try anybody else, even if they had any evidence left. I’ve got them frightened. It’s all worked out very well. Very, very well indeed.”

      He pondered a moment, then added: “Next to handing that thousand to Dillingham, I rather think I’ll enjoy the laying of that orthopedic corner stone!”

      Then T. Ashley lighted still another cigar, and as the smoke ascended, smiled wisely to himself.

ROUGH TOSS

      Originally published in Complete Stories, May 15th, 1932.

      The telegram arrived just as Tim Spurling, diver, was at breakfast with his wife in the kitchen. A leisurely, skimpy breakfast. When a fellow’s out of work, been out of work for more than six months, why hurry? The wire said:

      CAN YOU COME IMMEDIATELY CRYSTAL LAKE RECOVER BODY STOP WIRE DECISION COLLECT URGENT

      DR SW OLIVIER

      Spurling’s lip tightened as he shoved the message over to his wife.

      “Well, job at last!” he grunted. “And we need it, somethin’ fierce!”

      “Yes, but going down after a body ain’t—”

      “Tain’t what I like, Blanche, that’s a bet. Allus gives me the crawls, handlin’ a stiff. But beggars can’t be choosers. And then, too, case like this—”

      “Well?”

      “So much a day. Tain’t like a contract job, or salvagin’ stuff that the position of it’s known. Carcasses drift round on the bottom. Ain’t nobody can tell how long it’ll take to locate one, and so—”

      Blanche Spurling shot him a quick glance. She asked:

      “You mean, even if you found a body, you could let on you hadn’t and get more pay?”

      “Well, why not?”

      “Wouldn’t that be cheating, or stealing, or getting money under false pretenses? Couldn’t they jail you for that, if it was found out?”

      “Who’s to find out anythin’, underwater?” he retorted defiantly. “And besides, the way times is— Then, too, what we just found out about Bill—”

      The diver’s wife sat brooding a moment. Not even the shaft of July sunlight slanting in through the window could make the table and kitchen other than drear and ugly. With an abstracted air the woman smoothed the hair back and away from her forehead, revealing deeper wrinkles than her thirty-six years should have graven there. Her brown eyes, studying the telegram, appeared to see through and beyond it; perhaps even away to the Arizona desert which alone, so their family doctor told them, could yet save the life of Bill, their only son.

      “Yes, it’s T.B.,” the doctor had bluntly affirmed. “But it’s СКАЧАТЬ