The Mindwarpers Page 8

  That much decided, he saw no reason for further delay and departed, making sure that both his suitcase and his door were securely locked. He turned and walked swiftly along the carpeted corridor, and came abreast of Room 13 just as its door opened and Rear-don started out.

  Without a flicker of surprise, Reardon said, “Well, fancy meet—”

  He didn’t get any further. Bransome slugged him right in the teeth, a vicious blow born of a mixture of fear and fury. Reardon staggered through the still open door and back into his room.

  Filled with fierce desperation, Bransome leaped after him and let him have it again, this time smack on the chin. It was a weighty, well-aimed punch that could have knocked out many a man bigger and heavier than the other. But for all his lengthy leanness Reardon was a tough customer. Though taken completely unaware, he refused to go down. He reeled, waved his arms around and tried to regain his balance.

  Pressing his advantage to the full, Bransome gave him no chance to recover. Anger lent him strength such as he had never known. Brushing aside a groggy swing from the other, he planted a haymaker into his gullet. Reardon let out a harsh, choking cough and appeared about to fall. He raised a hand in the air, strove to shout but was unable to give voice.

  Bransome landed three more in quick succession before Reardon toppled, not with a clumsy thud but with a quiet folding motion like that of a suddenly emptied suit of clothes. He was a hard egg all right: he could take plenty of punishment. Bransome bent over him, breathing heavily. Glancing behind, he saw that the door was wide open. He went to it and looked along the corridor. Not a soul in sight. Nobody had heard the brief fracas, nobody had raised the alarm. Carefully he closed the door and returned to his opponent.

  Standing over Reardon, he rubbed his knuckles as he gazed thoughtfully down. His nerves were taut and his insides still simmering with excitement. This fellow, he decided, was far too smart and persistent a tracker for his comfort. It would be sheer folly not to exploit the present situation and remove the hound-dog from the trail for long enough to make him lose the scent.

  Right now he was in a good position to get rid of Reardon once and for all. A man cannot be executed twice for two murders. Yet he couldn’t bring himself seriously to consider the idea of killing Reardon there and then. He couldn’t have committed so cold-blooded a slaying even for a million dollars. If this had been the right time for useful introspection—which it was not—he’d have perceived the obvious incongruity of a killer balking at a killing and, perhaps, found significance in it.

  Despite the fact that the means was ready to hand, he could not have slaughtered Reardon even to gain his own salvation. Reardon lay sprawled partly on his back and partly on one side, his eyes closed, lips bleeding, his jacket open and revealing a small shoulder-holster containing a tiny blued-steel automatic. Bransome eyed the gun speculatively but did not touch it.

  Going to the other’s luggage-case, Bransome opened it, found therein a dozen handkerchiefs, a couple of ties and all the usual necessities of travel. He used the ties and handkerchiefs to fasten Reardon’s wrists and ankles and fix a wad over his crimson mouth. By the time he’d finished Reardon was emitting snuffling noises and showing signs of soon regaining his senses.

  Swiftly searching him, Bransome found his wallet and looked through it. Paper money, two or three letters of no special interest, a couple of receipted bills, a folded insurance certificate for a car. One inner flap held postage stamps. The opposite one contained a long, narrow, cellophane-encased card. Bransome studied the card and found his back hairs rising. It bore an embossed eagle, a serial number and some lettering.

  Federal Government of the United States of America.

  Department of Military Intelligence. Joseph Reardon.

  In the name of all that’s holy what had Military Intelligence to do with a plain, sordid murder? It baffled him. The only possible explanation he could think up was that perhaps they took jurisdiction from the police when the homicide involved someone employed on top secret work. But that didn’t seem likely. So far as he knew the police administered the law with bland indifference to all other considerations and would march the world’s greatest scientist to the death-chamber if justice so ordered.

  Anyway, this bloodhound was stalled for the time being. For how much time depended upon how fast he, Bransome, hustled to some place out of reach. Replacing the wallet in the other’s pocket, he shoved Reardon behind the bed, sneaked a look out of the door, found nobody in sight. Reardon was now starting to jerk around and emit mumbling noises. Bransome left Room 13, heard the door-latch click behind him.

  Dashing to his own room he grabbed his suitcase, had a hasty glance around to make sure nothing was left, went down to the lobby and paid his bill. The clerk was lackadaisical, slow-moving, as if spitefully determined to try Bransome’s patience to the limit. While he was detained at the counter Bransome’s eyes could not stop looking warily around, seeking a prospective tracker in the loboy, half-expecting an angry rush down the stairs. Snatching his receipted bill, he hurried to the bus station and found no bus due to leave within the next fifty minutes. He then tried the railroad station. No train for an hour and a half.

  This meant unwanted and dangerous delay. The instinct of the hunted warned him not to remain in Hanbury a minute longer than could be helped. Temporarily he had abandoned the idea of phoning the police. One could call them from anywhere, even from a thousand miles away. Indeed, when making such a call, distance would lend considerable enchantment to the view.

  The main thing was to get out before Reardon broke loose and the powers-that-be sealed the town. He decided to walk along the route of the first bus due to depart; it would pick him up four or five miles out and that might be sufficient to evade the search if in the next fifty minutes Reardon managed to raise the hue and cry. The first things the authorities would do would be to cover the bus and railroad stations, chase all the taxis and question the car rental offices.

  So he trudged out of town, maintaining a good, fast pace and thinking only that he would phone Dorothy before this day was through and find out how she and the children were getting along; Also he’d ask whether anyone had pestered her as to his whereabouts. Once more he was unconsciously displaying his lack of criminal expertness: it had not crossed his mind to steal a car, make a quick getaway, ditch the machine in some big town and confuse the issue by stealing another. He had stolen only once in his life, at age six, the loot being a large apple that had given him the father of all bellyaches.

  On the other hand, this touch of the raw novice could have given him a slight advantage had the chase taken the shape he expected of it From the police viewpoint hardened criminals are predictable within limits; they react thus and so, according to their shadowland logic. The beginner is unpredictable. The old pro just naturally thinks of swift escape in terms of a hot car. The first-timer might do anything, anything at all, even make himself conspicuous by walking on his own two feet. So Bransome walked.

  He was lucky at the outset. When he had been twenty minutes on his way, a badly dented and wheezy sedan overtook him, stopped and offered a ride. He accepted, sat himself next to a red-faced, bald, garrulous man and told him truthfully that he’d been ambling along while waiting for the bus to catch up.

  “Where ya making for?” asked Redface.

  “Any big town.” Bransome tapped his case to draw attention to it. “I go from door to door.”

  “Whatcha selling?”

  “Insurance.”

  Would there never be an end to situations and questions calling for spur-of-the-moment lies?

  “What a racket!” declared Redface with complete lack of tact. “My wife nearly got talked into buying a heavy one on me. Like hell you will, I told her. Whyja want me worth more to you dead than alive? Lousy racket, I say. Gives a woman a vested interest in a corpse. That ain’t right. There’s trouble enough in this world without inviting someone to hit the jackpot by getting a feller into his box.”


  “Mine’s fire and robbery insurance,” offered Bransome, soothingly.

  “Well, that’s a lot different, mister. There’s some sense in it. Now my uncle over in Decatur, he had a haybarn go up like a volcano. And him being too stingy even to give at the knees, he lost plenty. I’ve always said—”

  He rambled on and on while the sedan creaked and thumped and burped and knocked off the miles. He listed and described in full detail every major fire for forty years back, and ended by opining that fire-cover was a good bet but the robbery part of it wasn’t any bargain because in this part of the country there were few prowlers.

  “Easier pickings elsewhere, I guess,” he said. “Even a crook won’t go a long way just to make it harder for himself.”

  “Must be nice to have little need of bolts and bars,” Bransome commented. “How about murders? Get any of those?”

  “Had a few in my time. All of them brought on by booze or women. Only one never got solved.”

  “Which one was that?” asked Bransome, hoping at long last to hear something worth hearing.

  “It was eight or maybe ten years ago,” answered Redface, casually. “Old Jeff Watkins got beaten up something awful and died without speaking. The police went looking for a transient who’d been doing odd jobs round and about. They never found him.”

  “How about that girl they discovered buried under a tree?”

  Redface removed his attention from the road long enough to throw him a surprised stare. “Which girl?”

  “Maybe it’s only a rumor,” said Bransome. “A few days ago I overheard someone talking about the bones of a girl being found under a tree outside of Burleston.”

  “When was this supposed to have happened?”

  “I don’t know. At least a week ago. Perhaps a few months ago. The fellow didn’t seem to be talking about something very old.”

  “He was talking out of the back of his neck,” said Redface, positively.

  “Could be.”

  “If there was anything to it, that story would run like a grass fire for a hundred miles around,” asserted Redface. “In these parts they’ve got to have something to talk about and they talk plenty. I’d be sure to have heard about it.”

  “But you haven’t?”

  “No, mister. You must have misunderstood what that fellow was saying.” The car rolled into a country town smaller than Hanbury but bigger than Burleston. Redface gave his passenger an inquiring look. “How about here?”

  “Suits me—if you’re going no farther.”

  “I can take you another forty miles. After that you’ll have twelve more to go to reach the city.”

  “I’d like that better. I’ll take a chance on getting another ride.”

  “Want to go a good long way, don’t you? Think you can’t drum up much business in this town?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m a bit tired of small places. I think I’d do better in a big one.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” commented Redface. “Doesn’t your outfit fix you up with a car?”

  “Yes—I left it at home with the wife.”

  “She got insurance on you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Women,” said Redface, scowling ahead. “Bunch of grab-alls. Take-every thing a man’s got.”

  He fell silent, gnawing steadily at his bottom lip as the car trundled straight through the town and out the other side. The increasing mileage suited Bransome, who felt that the more of it the better. The driver continued to hold his peace, apparently irritated by the iniquities of the female sex.

  They came to a point about thirty miles from the last town and ten from Redface’s destination. Here they joined a wide, straight artery on which two cars were stalled. The sedan rattled nearer and nearer. A uniformed figure broke away from the group by the two cars and stood in the middle of the road. It was a state trooper holding up a forbidding hand.

  One of the halted cars started up and purred away just as Redface said, “What now?” and braked to a stop. A second trooper appeared beside the first. The pair cautiously approached the sedan, one on either side. Their manner showed them to be more interested in the passengers than the car.

  Looking inside, the taller of the two said to Redface, “Why, hello Wilmer! How’s tricks?”

  “So-so,” growled Redface, not overjoyed. “Whatcha want to bitch about this time?”

  “Take it easy, Wilmer,” advised the other. “We’re looking for someone.” He gestured toward Bransome. “Know this fellow?”

  “Should I?”

  “He’s riding with you, isn’t he?”

  “Sure is. You want to make something of it?”

  “Now look, Wilmer, let’s be sensible about this, shall we? I’m not married to you and I don’t have to take any of your lip. So let’s have a few straight answers. Where’d you find this character?”

  “Picked him up outside Hanbury,” Redface admitted.

  “You did, did you?” The trooper studied Bransome with care. So did his partner. “You correspond more or less with the description of our man.”

  “That grieves me,” said Bransome.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carter.”

  “And what d’you do for a living?”

  “I’m an insurance salesman.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Redface, maliciously glad to give some support. “We’ve been talking about it. I told him about the time that gabby greaseball tried to get Maisie to make a wad outa my body and—”

  “Carter, eh?” said the first trooper, taking no notice of Redface. “What’s your first name?”

  “Lucius,” informed Bransome, digging it up from God only knew where and handing it out fast.

  This promptness made the questioners a mite uncertain. They glanced at each other and examined Bransome again, obviously making mental comparisons with a description given over the radio.

  “What were you doing in Hanbury?” asked one.

  “Selling insurance.” Bransome put on a wry smile. “Or trying to.”

  He flattered himself that he was getting pretty good at this falsehood business. All one needed was plenty of practice and excellent control of the nerves. Nevertheless, he inwardly regretted his newfound aptitude. By nature he detested lies and liars.

  “Got any proof of your identity?” asked the shorter trooper.

  “I don’t think so. Not with me, I leave most of my personal documents at home.”

  “Nothing in your case or wallet? No letters, cards or anything like that?”

  “Sorry, I haven’t.”

  “Strange for an insurance salesman to roam around without a single thing to show who he really is, isn’t it?” The shorter trooper thinned his lips, threw his partner a warning look. “I think you’d better get out of this dilapidated hearse, Mr. Lucius Carter.” Jerking open the door, he gestured authoritatively. “We’d like a closer look at you and what you’ve got.”

  Bransome dismounted with something in his mind saying, “This is it! This is it!” Back of him Redface sat behind the wheel and looked embittered. The shorter trooper reached into the car, pulled out the suitcase and dumped it on the road. The other trooper posed warily a few yards away, hand on gun-butt. No use running for it. The trooper standing at the ready could put a slug in his back before he’d covered ten yards.

  “Your wallet and keys, please.”

  Bransome handed them over.

  The other looked carefully through the evidence, grunted with satisfaction, said to his partner, “Lucius Carter in a pig’s eye! This is the fellow, Richard Bransome.” He gave Redface a wave of dismissal. On your way, Happy.”

  Redface reached out an arm, violently slammed the open door and yelled through the window, “Dilapidated hearse my foot! I bought this heap myself, with my own money. And as a taxpayer I bought yours as—”

  The taller trooper put his face close to Redface’s and said very quietly and slowly, “You’re a big boy now, Wil
mer. You heard what the nice man said. Get going!”

  Wilmer savagely revved up, favored Bransome and the troopers with a defiant glare, jerked the car forward with a bang and a cloud of oily gas.

  “Get in, mister,” said the shorter trooper to Bransome. He signed to the patrol car.

  “Why should I? What am I supposed to have done? If you’ve anything against me, say so.”

  “You’ll hear all about it at headquarters,” snapped the trooper. “We can hold you for twenty-four hours on suspicion of anything. So quit the back-chat and get in.”

  Dropping further argument, Bransome entered the patrol car. Shorty piled into the back and sprawled beside him. The other trooper took the driver’s seat, flipped a switch and spoke into a hand-microphone.

  “Car Nine, Healy and Gregg. We’ve just picked up Bransome and are bringing him in.”

  SIX:

  AT HEADQUARTERS their attitude toward him was peculiar to say the least. They treated him offhandedly but without any of the toughness usually shown to a major suspect. It seemed as though they were far from sure of his real status, did not know if he had blown up the U.S. Treasury or was a missing candidate for the Congressional Medal. After making further check on his identity, they gave him a meal, put him in a cell and asked no questions.

  All he got in reply to his own queries was the curt order, “Shut up and wait.”

  Reardon arrived three hours later. A couple of blobs of medicated plastic sealed the splits in his lips, otherwise he showed no visible damage. They gave him a. small office where he sat and waited patiently until they brought Bransome in.

  Left alone, the two faced each other blank-faced and without emotion and Reardon said, “I guess you know you’ve laid yourself wide open to a charge of common assault?”

  “Go ahead with it then,” answered Bransome, shrugging.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you go for me like that?”

  “To teach you to mind your own damn business.”

  “I see. You objected to me being around?”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t?”

  “Most people wouldn’t,” Reardon declared. “Why should they? They’ve nothing to conceal. What are you trying to hide?”