LITMIR.BIZ

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made his money. I was only concerned with what he had done to people near to me.”

      “And hundreds of other people, all of them near to somebody,” I said.

      “He began to trust me with a great deal of work out of the usual run of a secretary’s job. Pretty soon, I had the run of his office and the keys to his safe. I only saw the business side of Shelmerdine’s life, of course, and he was always the perfect gentleman. Once in a while, men he called ‘business associates’ would call and he’d have private conversations with them. They always looked like businessmen on the surface, but I could sense what they were under the business suits.”

      I smiled to myself. I would have used the word “smell.”

      “I got my chance when Shelmerdine was off on one of his business trips,” she continued. “I was alone in the office and I searched the safe. There was a compartment which I never had occasion to open, but I found the key to it on the key-ring and found it chock-full of papers. They concerned Shelmerdine’s other business deals—his real business. They touched on everything: dope, drugs, vice, trade union protection; there were names and dates that would pull down Shelmerdine and a lot of other people if I could only give those papers to the Crime Commission. I had the means of wrecking Shelmerdine and his whole organisation in my hands. I locked the papers up again. I had to think it out and plan my moves.

      “I knew Shelmerdine would soon be back, but he was to go on a longer trip later today, that is—if I waited, I would stand a better chance of getting clear. I packed my grip a full week before—perhaps I betrayed myself in some way, I don’t know. Anyway, Ike Tescachelli, the senior chauffeur, began to watch me in a way I didn’t like. I thought perhaps he had found out about my true identity and was suspicious; then again, he might simply have been looking out for a chance to get fresh when the big boss was away.”

      I remembered the Italian-looking hood who spoke to me at the mouth of the dirt road.

      “Ike Tescachelli, is he the one with the small moustache?” I asked.

      “Yes. He usually stays close to Shelmerdine and drives him around, but Greg Cortines, the second chauffeur, went with him on this trip. Tescachelli had his eye on me for two or three days and I was worried. As soon as Shelmerdine set off on his trip, I opened the safe and took the papers. I stuffed them into my grip and I was ready to run for it. I had already checked the bus timetable and knew I could get a bus into South Bend once I was on the main highway, and I could take a train or bus to Chicago from South Bend.

      “I had a story ready in case anyone questioned me, and I slipped out of a side door. I was about to leave the grounds of the house by a small gate leading into a back road when one of the gardeners appeared and asked me where I was going. I told him I was taking a walk into Rollinsville to have the clasp of my grip repaired and he seemed to believe me. I was clear of the house when I realised the awful mistake I had made. In my haste, I left the key in the lock of the safe after locking it. It might go unnoticed until Shelmerdine returned, but it was sure to give away the fact that I had tampered with the safe—and I’d been seen leaving with a grip.”

      She paused for a moment to catch her breath, as though at the recollection of that chilling moment when she realised how she had betrayed herself.

      The coupe passed a South Bend city limits sign; the glare of the city was closer now and it brought a certain warmth. It was like coming to a place of friendly men after being in the dark outlands for too long.

      “I panicked, Mr. Lantry,” went on the girl. “I ran for it, trying to get to the highway as quickly as I could. I didn’t know my way around very well and I took a couple of wrong turnings. By the time I did reach the highway, I was just in time to see the bus I wanted sailing away into the distance. I was terribly scared. I just kept walking. Then an old farmer in an old-fashioned truck picked me up and gave me a lift to the other side of Peru and I kept on walking after that, even when the rain started.”

      “Then I picked you up, huh,” I grunted, “and you still have those documents in the grip? No, that’s a silly question. It’s obvious that you have; you’ve been clinging to your baggage as though it’ll leave you a fortune when it dies.”

      I watched South Bend growing bigger before us and I was worried.

      I couldn’t leave this little chick to run about the countryside with Athelstan Shelmerdine’s strong-arms on her tail.

      “You intend to hand the papers to the Crime Commission in Chicago?” I asked. She nodded and I fell to musing out loud. “And Shelmerdine pulls almost every string that’s pullable in Chicago; if his outfit knows you’re in the Windy City, they’ll serve up the table d’hôtel pretty damn quick—with you as the dish. Where will you go, once you’ve succeeded in putting the papers in the hands of the crime-chasers, I mean?”

      “Why, home. My parents live out at Woodstock.”

      I thought about that for a while. Woodstock was close to Chicago and Shelmerdine’s hired hands might track the girl out there.

      “Does Shelmerdine and his crowd know you hail from the Chicago area?”

      “Yes, but nobody at Shelmerdine’s country house knows my home address and they think my name is Maybelle Jones.”

      “But they’ll probably figure you’ll head for Chicago, since that’s your hometown.

      “It’s my guess that our friends who had the mishap in the sedan were chasing you because they realised you’d blown with something out of the safe, and they wanted you back—and whatever you’d taken—before Shelmerdine got back from his trip. It was desperate and ham-fisted. That business of opening fire on a state highway proves it. Shelmerdine left that sort of stuff behind him with prohibition. When he wants shooting done in public, he hires gutter-rats like those who killed your brother to do it; his kind of smooth mobster doesn’t allow those who are close to him to charge around the country blasting away with heaters—it’s bringing the dirt too close to his own doorstep. The real chase, girlie, the top-shelf subtle stuff, will come when big shot Athelstan gets back and finds out just what’s missing from the safe.”

      She tried to stifle a sneeze by pressing a slender forefinger to her top lip. It escaped her clutches.

      The sneeze decided me on a half-formed plan that had been floating about my mind.

      “Listen,” I told her. “You’ve been soaked to the skin and you’ve had a rough time. You need rest and dry clothing. I’m on my way to visit some old friends in South Bend and you stay right with me. These folk are great—an old army pal and his wife—they’ll fix you a place for the night and the strong-arm hoodlums will never think of looking for you in South Bend. Tomorrow, we’ll push on to Chicago. Meantime, I’ll get in touch with my branch in Chicago to stand by for some action. World Wide Investigations will back you up, girlie. You deserve somebody on your side and, besides, I have an interest in this fight—those bums fired bullets into my car. Deal?”

      She nodded her approval while stifling another sneeze.

      So, we drove into South Bend and into the realisation that it was Saturday night. I jockeyed the car along the wide sweep of Michigan Street with its bright sky-signs and its trees. The movies were disgorging their patrons at that hour. There was a bustle of activity on the street, still glossed by recent rain.

      I drove steadily through the mass of cars. It was my first time in South Bend for some years, but I remembered my way around. On the way up from the south, I had reflected pleasantly on how surprised Jack and Beth Kay would be at my unexpected visit. Now I was calling on them with a total stranger but, what the heck, Jack and Beth were friendly, happy-go-lucky people, they’d make us both welcome.

      I could book a couple of rooms at a hotel, but the Kays would be highly insulted if I stayed in South Bend without making use of their high, wide, and handsome hospitality. That’s the kind of folk Jack and Beth were. Good folk.

      It’s comforting to think that the world holds more of their kind than the other species.

      Cautiously,

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