LITMIR.BIZ

      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY A. A. GLYNN

      Case of the Dixie Ghosts: An Historical Mystery

      A Gunman Close Behind: A Mike Lantry Classic Crime Novel

      Mystery in Moon Lane: Supernatural Mystery Stories

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1957 by A. A. Glynn

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      To the Memory of Ted Tubb

      CHAPTER ONE

      Ever hear that old saying about massive oaks starting out as tiny acorns?

      There’s a lot in it. I know.

      I once brought a big ruckus down on my head simply because I gave a girl a ride during a rainstorm.

      I was bringing back a neat line in suntan from Florida. Three weeks of lying on the beaches were at my back; I had been away from it all while another hand steered World Wide Investigations from its headquarters on Madison Avenue, New York City.

      Now I was heading back in a roundabout way, driving through Indiana to pay a surprise call on an old buddy, Jack Kay, up in South Bend.

      I remember the way I felt. Glowing and newly charged with energy. The coupe hummed along the highway as though in tune to the brassy swing number blaring out of the car radio.

      The world seemed all right.

      The southland, with the motels where I spent the last couple of nights, was behind me, as were the Indiana towns of Indianapolis, Westfield, Kokomo, and Peru.

      The sudden summer shower started somewhere between Peru and Plymouth. There was a white flimmer of lightning off on the flat horizon. A cluster of black clouds boiled up over the highway and big drops of rain came slashing down in a deluge. I wound up the hood of the coupe quickly.

      It was growing dark fast.

      Twenty minutes of driving through the downpour, and I saw the girl.

      She was walking towards Plymouth, humping a grip, a slight figure out on the rain-slicked highway. As I drew nearer, I could see she wore only a light summer costume, clinging to her, as sodden as if she had been capering fully clothed in the nearby swamps.

      I hit the brakes a little way past her and called back through the rain:

      “Want a ride?”

      She came forward cautiously, and I saw her face, heart-shaped, elfin and with strands of short-cut black hair rain-plastered around it. She was somewhere around twenty-four.

      I sat with the door of the coupe held open, turned about to face her.

      The engine thrummed and the big drops of rain hit the car like wet bullets.

      Maybe it was the scar on my face; sometimes I catch sight of myself in a mirror and realise how like a bad guy in a “B” movie it makes me appear. She came gingerly through the curtain of rain, as though I was a Grimm goblin. Then she hastened her pace and hefted the grip into the car.

      “I’m going to South Bend,” I said. “Where are you making for?”

      “South Bend,” she answered. Her voice was breathless and held an odd mixture of fear and thankfulness.

      In my racket you get to sizing up people by their speech and actions almost by instinct. There was something on this girl’s mind for sure.

      She settled herself into the seat beside me, with the grip on the floor. Before I kicked the car forward, she turned her head for a long look at the gloomy, rain-swept highway behind. I could see the scared look on her face. It was as if she expected the devil himself to come whooping along from the direction of Peru.

      I wondered what she was running from, but that was no concern of mine, I was just a guy giving her a ride to South Bend.

      Sneaking a look at her in the imperfect light, I saw definite signs of strain on her pretty, rain-wet features. She looked like somebody’s kid sister from anywhere at all: wet, shivery, and, above all, scared.

      We made the usual, meaningless small talk about the weather as the headlights picked out a path on the glistening highway.

      At one point the sound of a vehicle came purring upon us from the rear. The girl turned hastily, half ducked behind the back of the seat and looked out of the rear window. I saw fear written clear across her face as she watched the rain-distorted lights gain on us.

      It was merely a bus heading for Plymouth. As she turned about again, the girl threw me a self-conscious glance which I saw but pretended not to notice. The fear, almost terror, in her face had me worried.

      The bus rocketed by, its lighted windows dwindling before us in the watery darkness. A little world of people passing in the night.

      I thought it was a smart idea to get to know her name, in case I heard of a young woman missing from somewhere or other, so I said:

      “My name’s Mike Lantry, by the way.” I tried to make it casual.

      She looked at me quickly and said: “The Investigator?” There was a tone to her voice that gave me a premonition of something other than the driving rain being in the wind.

      I nodded.

      “I’m Joanne Kilvert,” she said.

      Right then, just as I was about to take a sudden bend in the road, she turned to look out of the rear window. I heard her give a little squeak and saw her duck down in the seat.

      “It’s them,” she said urgently and huskily. “Put your foot down—they mustn’t see me!”

      I could see her face, white and terror-stricken, in the glow of the dashboard. She was as scared as a kitten, and it was catching.

      Automatically, without any questions, I gave the car the gun as we approached the bend. I took a quick glance over my shoulder to see a big sedan whirring along about a hundred and fifty yards behind, slashing the curtain of rain with powerful headlamps.

      We took the bend almost on two wheels. The headlights picked out a stand of trees to our left; splitting their dark bulk was a dirt road. Without hesitation, I put the coupe into a screeching turn and headed up the dirt road. The big sedan had yet to make the turn in the highway, but it would be in sight any second.

      Going up that dirt road may have been a fool thing to do, but it was the most immediate way of avoiding that sedan, and the stark terror on Joanne Kilvert’s face prompted me to make use of this one chance of keeping whoever followed us from seeing her.

      I stopped over a hump in the dirt road and switched off the engine and lights. We were deep in the trees. We sat waiting, panting as though we had just run clear from Peru.

      Through the trees we saw the sedan come into view. It went flashing past, a black streak on the highway, the white spears of its headlights slithering off the rain-polished boles of the trees.

      Then it was gone.

      “Who’s in that car?” I asked.

      “Some men I want to avoid.”

      I boiled over at that.

      “That’s as obvious as hell,” I told her, “or have you taken it on the lam from some happy hatch?”

      She made no reply but grabbed my arm.

      “They’re coming back!” She breathed the words urgently, and I could just see her wide eyes in the darkness.

      Back from the direction in which it had originally travelled rocketed the black sedan. The headlamps flashed almost angrily through the interstices of the trees down by the highway. It came to a sudden stop close to the opening of the dirt road, its brakes keening on a high

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