The Lookout Man by B. M. Bower (good books to read for adults .txt) 📗

While the last man was clawing in through the door, Jack let in the clutch, slamming the gear-lever from low to high and skipping altogether the intermediate. The big car leaped forward and Hen bit his tongue so that it bled. Behind them was confused shouting.

"Better go back and help—what? You hit one," Jack suggested over his shoulder, slowing down as reason cooled his first hot impulse for flight.

"Go back nothing! And let 'em get our number? Nothing doing!"

"Aw, that mark that was with him took it. I saw him give it the once-over when he came back."

"He did not!" some one contradicted hotly. "He was too scared."

"Well, do we go back?" Jack was already edging the car to the right so that he would have room for a turn.

"No! Step on 'er! Let 'er out, why don't yuh? Damn it, what yuh killin' time for? Yuh trying to throw us down? Want that guy to call a cop and pinch the outfit? Fine pal you are! We've got to beat it while the beatin's good. Go on, Jack—that's a good boy. Step on 'er!"

With all that tumult of urging, Jack went on, panic again growing within him as the car picked up speed. The faster he went the faster he wanted to go. His foot pressed harder and harder on the accelerator. He glanced at the speedometer, saw it flirting with the figures forty-five, and sent that number off the dial and forced fifty and then sixty into sight. He rode the wheel, holding the great car true as a bullet down the black streak of boulevard that came sliding to meet him like a wide belt between whirring wheels.

The solemn voice that had croaked "S-o-m-e time!" so frequently, took to monotonous, recriminating speech. "No-body home! No-body home! Had to spill the beans, you simps! Nobody home a-tall! Had to shoot a man—got us all in wrong, you simps! Nobody home!" He waggled his head and flapped his hands in drunken self-righteousness, because he had not possessed a gun and therefore could not have committed the blunder of shooting the man.

"Aw, can that stuff! You're as much to blame as anybody," snapped the man nearest him, and gave the croaker a vicious jab with his elbow.

"Don't believe that guy got hep to our number! Didn't have time," an optimist found courage to declare.

"What darn fool was it that shot first? Oughta be crowned for that!"

"Aw, the boob started it himself! He fired on us—and we were only joshing!"

"He got his, all right!"

"Don't believe we killed him—sure, he was more scared than hurt," put in the optimist dubiously.

"No-body home," croaked the solemn one again, having recovered his breath.

They wrangled dismally and unconvincingly together, but no one put into speech the fear that rode them hard. Fast as Jack drove, they kept urging him to "Step on 'er!" A bottle that had been circulating intermittently among the crowd was drained and thrown out on the boulevard, there to menace the tires of other travelers. The keen wind whipped their hot faces and cleared a little their fuddled senses, now that the bottle was empty. A glimmer of caution prompted Jack to drive around through Beverly Hills and into Sunset Boulevard, when he might have taken a shorter course home. It would be better, he thought, to come into town from another direction, even if it took them longer to reach home. He was careful to keep on a quiet residence street when he passed through. Hollywood, and he turned at Vermont Avenue and drove out into Griffith Park, swung into a crossroad and came out on a road from Glendale. He made another turn or two, and finally slid into Los Angeles on the main road from Pasadena, well within the speed limit and with his heart beating a little nearer to normal.

"We've been to Mount Wilson, fellows. Don't forget that," he warned his passengers. "Stick to it. If they got our number back there we can bluff them into thinking they got it wrong. I'll let yuh out here and you can walk home. Mum's the word—get that?"

He had taken only a passive part in the egregious folly of their play, but they climbed out now without protest, subdued and willing to own his leadership. Perhaps they realized suddenly that he was the soberest man of the lot. Only once had he drunk on the way home, and that sparingly, when the bottle had made the rounds. Like whipped schoolboys the six slunk off to their homes, and as they disappeared, Jack felt as though the full burden of the senseless crime had been dropped crushingly upon his shoulders.

He drove the big car quietly up the palm-shaded street to where his mother's wide-porched bungalow sprawled across two lots. He was sober now, for the tragedy had shocked him into clear thinking. He shivered when he turned in across the cement walk and slid slowly down the driveway to the garage. He climbed stiffly out, rolled the big doors shut, turned on the electric lights and then methodically switched off the lights of the car. He looked at the clock imbedded in the instrument board and saw that it lacked twenty minutes of three. It would soon be daylight. It seemed to him that there was a good deal to be done before daylight.

Preoccupiedly he took a big handful of waste and began to polish the hood and fenders of the car. His mother would want to drive, and she always made a fuss if he left any dust to dim its glossy splendor. He walked around behind and contemplated the number plate, wondering if the man who was said to be "hep" would remember that there were three ciphers together. He might see only two—being in a hurry and excited. He rubbed the plate thoughtfully, trying to guess just how that number, 170007, would look to a stranger who was excited by being shot at.

No use doctoring the number now. If the man had it, he had it—and it was easy enough to find the car that carried it. Easy enough, too, to prove who was in the car. Jack had named every one of the fellows who were to make up the party. He had to, before his mother would let him take the car. The names were just names to her—since she believed that they were Christian young men!—but she had insisted upon knowing who was going, and she would remember them. She had a memory like glue. She would also give the names to any officer that asked. Jack knew that well enough. For, besides having a memory that would never let go, Mrs. Singleton Corey had a conscience that was inexorable toward the faults of others. She would consider it her duty as a Christian woman and the president of the Purity League to hand those six young men over to the law. That she had been deceived as to their morals would add fire to her fervor.

Whether she would hand Jack over with them was a detail which did not greatly concern her son. He believed she would