Sally's in the Alley - Norbert Davis (reading tree .txt) 📗

right on the spot that he figured I wouldn’t believe it. Aside from that, he’s a swell actor, and he’s just stupid enough to take all kinds of screwy risks without counting up the odds against him. He knew what I was going to do before I did it most of the time. He listened in on all my telephone conversations and spied on me in every other way he could find. He was in the luggage compartment again when I went to see Dust-Mouth first last night. At that time he still thought Dust-Mouth might have something. He prevented Dust-Mouth from telling me what it was. And then he tried to point the finger at you.”

“Me?” said Blue.

“Yeah. He knew you were a phony, but not what kind of a one.”

“Do you know?” said Blue. “Sure. Since you shaved.”

“What?” Harriet snapped.

“Haven’t you spotted him yet? Blue is just his nickname. His real name is Roger Laws. Blue Laws, they call him.”

“Whu-whu-whu-what?”

“How are the eyes now?” Doan asked Blue.

“Okay. I’ll be able to ditch these glasses soon.”

Harriet screamed.

Blue glanced at her with distaste. “What now?”

“You’re the ace! The fighter pilot! Tuh-twenty-five enemy planes!”

“Twenty-seven,” Doan corrected.

“You’re a huh-hero!” Harriet wailed. “You were sh-shot down in flames!”

“Three times,” Blue agreed sourly. “And don’t talk to me about German planes and pilots. I don’t fall five miles for fun. Anybody that knocks me down has to be better than I am, and I’m damned good.”

“Oh—my—yes!”

“Shut up.”

“Oh! You’re won-wonderful!”

“Oh, nuts,” said Blue.

“Why the dumbbell act?” Doan inquired.

Blue jerked his thumb at Harriet. “After this performance, you can ask?”

Harriet reached out her hand and touched his sleeve reverently with her fingertips.

“Get away,” said Blue. Harriet stared at him, shiny-eyed.

“Oh, my God!” Blue snarled. “Will you stop that? Listen. I like to fly. I like to shoot planes down. It’s very interesting work. It pays well. I even get a pension when I retire.”

“You mean—if,” said Doan. “Ooooh,” said Harriet.

“Get away from me! Damn you, I acted as dumb as I could to get rid of you, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t act one tenth as dumb as you can without trying!”

“Yes, Blue,” said Harriet, entranced.

“You’ve got no more brains than a rabbit.”

“No, Blue.”

“You make me sick.”

“Yes, Blue. I love you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Now I can die happily—with you.”

“Dying is no fun,” Blue said. “I’ve already tried it a couple times.”

MacAdoo was looking more worried now. “I wish I’d known. I wish I had.”

“What eats him?” Blue asked Doan.

“Goering,” said Doan.

“Come again.”

“You shoot down Goering’s men. MacAdoo loves you like a brother for that.”

MacAdoo nodded. “I only wish I’d known. I’d have thought of something else. Now it’s too late.”

“Maybe not,” said Doan.

MacAdoo said, “I’ll shoot if you move your hands again.”

“Edmund, dear Edmund,” said Doan, “please come home to me now.”

“Where is Edmund?” Blue inquired slowly.

“Ah,” said Doan knowingly.

Watching Doan, MacAdoo took a drink out of his flask and put it down again carefully on the floor beside him.

“Of course,” Doan said judicially, “MacAdoo wouldn’t have to wait for Edmund. He could just shoot us.”

“Could he?” said Blue.

There was a little film of sweat on MacAdoo’s forehead. “Sit still,” he said.

“I’m not moving a muscle,” said Doan. “Neither is Blue. Are you?”

“Nope,” said Blue. “I wonder if Edmund got lost.”

“Sure,” said Doan. “That’s it. He’s wandering around in the desert, with nothing to drink but a flash flood.”

“Too bad,” said Blue, “but then MacAdoo was going to kill him anyway. Why?”

“He killed Susan Sally,” said Doan. “He shouldn’t have done that. She was worth five and a quarter a week to MacAdoo.”

“Shut up,” said MacAdoo thinly.

“Why, sure,” said Doan.

The rain clattered nerve-rackingly on the tin above them and gurgled and choked under the eaves.

MacAdoo sighed a little and got up from the nail keg. He began to move toward the door, side-stepping carefully. He reached it and felt for the latch with his left hand, keeping the revolver leveled in his right.

The latch clicked, and MacAdoo pulled the door open and turned his head quickly. He didn’t have time to do anything else voluntarily. Carstairs must have been about ten feet away, waiting, and he had started to run as soon as the door moved. His chest hit MacAdoo shoulder high with the force of a battering ram, and his jaws snapped across MacAdoo’s face with an ugly, sliding squeak of teeth on bone.

MacAdoo went clear the length of the shack and hit the back wall hard enough to bulge it. He slammed down full length on the floor with both hands clapped over his face and the blood running red and thick through his fingers. He began to shriek in a high, bubbling voice, writhing around in blind circles on the floor, arching his body up in the middle.

Doan was on his feet instantly. He caught Carstairs by the collar and hauled, exerting all his strength.

“Back! Back!”

Carstairs allowed himself to go back one reluctant step.

Doan nodded to Blue and then pointed at MacAdoo. “Hold him down.”

Blue got up and then knelt with one knee on MacAdoo’s chest. MacAdoo kept right on shrieking. Doan measured carefully and then kicked. His toe caught MacAdoo in the temple. MacAdoo’s head jarred sideways, and then his body loosened and went limp. He stopped shrieking.

“He was right,” Doan said thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I don’t believe he will look the same tomorrow.”

“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” Harriet moaned.

“Shut up,” said Blue. “Did you want him yelling like that all the way back to town?”

Harriet made little gulping sounds.

Blue sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her head against his chest.

“Okay. It wasn’t nice to see. Don’t look any more.”

“I was scu-scared.”

“Hell, so was I.”

“I love you.”

“Sure,” said Blue.

There was a silence.

“Go ahead and say it,” Doan ordered. “She deserves it.”

“I love you, too,” said Blue reluctantly.

“Oh, Blue. Oh.”

“Let’s take a look at you,” Doan said to Carstairs. “Oh-oh. Too dumb to duck, huh?”

There was a deep red groove through the muscles of Carstairs’ shoulder, and blood had run down from it and formed in ugly clots on his chest and leg.

“What happened to Edmund?” Blue asked.

“They probably taught him about tracking in the spy school,” Doan said absently. “But I guess they forgot to tell him that when you’re tracking something like Carstairs, you should watch behind as well as in front. Carstairs just circled and jumped on his back when he went by. I’m afraid dear old Edmund is deader than a doornail.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“It makes Carstairs mad to be shot. Offhand I can’t think of anyone who ever did it that lived to talk about it, and Edmund wouldn’t be the exception. Hold still.”

Doan picked up MacAdoo’s flask and straddled Carstairs, one leg on either side of him.

“This’ll hurt, maybe.”

He poured from the flask carefully. Carstairs grunted and arched his back violently. Doan sat down hard on the floor, carefully holding the flask right side up.

“Okay,” he said. He sniffed once and then grinned. “Ahem. Have you been drinking, my friend?”

Very slowly Carstairs turned his head toward his shoulder and sniffed. Just as slowly he turned his head back to look at Doan.

“Aw, now,” said Doan. “I was only clowning.”

Carstairs turned around and started for the door. Doan scrooched along hurriedly, bump-bottom fashion, and grabbed him by the tail.

“Wait! Can’t you take a joke?”

Carstairs sat down with his back to him.

Doan scrooched around in front of him. “Now, look. I had to put something on that groove, or it’d have gotten infected. Would you like to go to a dog hospital and associate with a lot of curs with only ordinary pedigrees?”

Carstairs turned his head aside.

“Look, Carstairs,” Doan said. “Look.”

He tilted the flask and swallowed in big gulps. He choked and then held the flask over his head and sprinkled liquor over himself like a shower.

“See? Now if you just stay close to me everyone will think I’m drunk and they’re smelling me. Get it? I’m drunk. Whoopee. Wheee.”

Carstairs looked at him for a long time in a thoughtful, dispassionate way. Doan beamed back. Carstairs fetched a sigh from the bottom of his heart and then lay down and closed his eyes in soul-weary resignation.

THE END