I almost didn’t go myself. I stepped out the back, and I could see by the moon and the clouds what kind of a night this was going to be. The wind, too: it was the very whistle of the Death Coach wheels. But I looked around and said to myself, how’s the Death Coach going to get through all this snow, I’d like to know? The coachman’s after someone in town, I have no doubt, and he won’t be out this way until spring.
I could see her fresh tracks, and I followed those, saying to myself some things I was going to say to Robynn when I found her. Now and then I saw long drags where she’d been doing some sliding, and I wondered how long she’d been out. I walked faster. The wind was whipping the trees around, and she’d had that old winter coat three years now. It needed patching where some old patches had come off and I’d never got around to it.
The shadows were looking red as I went along, and the icicles like blood dripping off the big limbs of the trees. And there was this crow calling, loud and late. I knew what that was a sign of, and what I was saying now wasn’t to Robynn but about Robynn. I was telling the Dear Lord I was ready to take what came my way, but oh Lord, if it didn’t come, who’d be hurt?
I got to the windbreak, where there was branches down and the snow was patchier. The dark patches all around me, I nearly walked right past. She’d curled up to rest and gone right to sleep. I scooped her up and went running for the house. She was cold, but she moved a little, so I knew I wasn’t late yet.
It was a long way to run, and I’d already walked it once. My feet seemed to stick in things under the snow, and catch under every branch. I didn’t drop Robynn, but it was mighty slow getting up. It didn’t hurt my feet, either; I figured they’d frozen up already. I could take that. It meant I could run faster.
But I wasn’t faster than the sound I heard. I looked back at it and saw this big shadow coming at us from out of the shadows of the windbreak, gliding along over the snow. A sleigh, of course: stupid me, to think a little snow would stop Death.
That was no civilized sleigh at all. It glowed cold, and the sound I’d heard was a clink of bones. I thought I saw skeletons dancing over the heads of the horses, grinning to be catching up to us.
I moved faster, but not that much faster. The sleigh was up to us and this big deep voice calls out, “Keshleen! Robynn!”
There was only one person in that county who would have a sleigh and know my name. If it hadn’t been for that, I still would have known by his voice that he was no mortal man.
When he calls your name, you’ve got to go. “I can take what comes my way,” I said, “but let my Robynn go. She’s been working so long on her spelling, and she deserves that gold medal.”
He laughed, and he put down these arms I could never break free of. “I have found you both,” he said, “so tonight you ride with me!” His voice bounced across the fields and it was like he shook the snow off all the trees because the world went white before me. Then I could see he’d pulled up in front of the house.
“Haven’t you got enough?” I said to him. “Do you have to take Milton as well?”
That laugh again, only this time the arms were setting me down out of the sleigh. “I do not take, good Keshleen! That has never been my profession!”
I looked up into that face for the first time. And I figured out that there was never any clink of bones, or grinning skeletons. I knew what they’d really been, just as I could see what I’d been thinking was a skull was a pure white beard.
“Surely,” I said, “you could take some milk and cookies while you fill the stockings.”
“Good Keshleen,” he said, stepping down. “In that case, I believe I can take what comes my way.”
A Policy for Murder
by Dick Stodghill
After a busy morning on the police beat and a greasy sandwich at the Buckeye Lunch, I was watching the passing parade on Main Street when a dandy straight from the pages of Esquire came sauntering by. His gray borsalino was set at a rakish tilt, the shine on his Florsheim wing-tips dazzled the eyes. A red carnation graced the lapel of his blue serge suit, and his neatly trimmed mustache would have looked at home on the upper lip of actor William Powell.
A dude of the first order, a type rarely encountered in the stout and hardy Industrial Valley. With studied casualness he flipped his cigarette toward the curb and turned in at the Mayflower, Akron’s finest hotel.
Sartorially speaking, the man was everything I was not. Sometime soon I would have to visit a shoeshine stand, then have my pants pressed. In truth they were more in need of cleaning than a hot iron, thanks to the snow and slush of an uncommonly cold December. Now with the temperature up to forty it seemed springlike until the jingling of a Salvation Army bell in front of Polsky’s department store served as a reminder that winter was in its infancy.
I forgot the weather and the dapper stranger when Jack Eddy came bounding across State Street against the light. After sidestepping one car and deftly dodging another, he gave a one-finger salute to the driver of a boxy relic from the 1920’s when its horn blared “guh-doo-gah.”
As he hurried past I called, “Hey, fella, gotta match?”
He didn’t break stride or even glance my way. I swung into step beside him and said, “Where’s the fire?”
“Robbery at a jewelry store, buddy. Just came over the teletype from the JPA.”
Jack Eddy, an assistant manager at the Akron branch of Wellington’s National Detective Agency that winter of 1937-38, had told me months earlier that the agency was on contract with the Jewelers Protective Association to investigate all jewel robberies in the country. Even the G-men consulted Wellington’s extensive files on jewel thieves.
“You’re late,” I said. “The cops beat you by a few hours.” I mimicked the downtown newsboys: “R-e-e-ad all about it in the Times-Press.” Then normally again: “My story’s in the first edition.”
“No need to read about it, friend. The JPA report was all I needed to know it’s another Anderson Spangler job.”
“Anderson Spangler? Sounds like a stockbroker or vice-president at Firestone, not an outlaw.”
“Don’t let the monicker fool you, buddy. Spangler’s the sharpest case man in the country. He knows a good stone from a bad one, but that’s only the half of it. What sets him apart is his ability to judge distance down to the fraction of an inch. When it comes to working through an alarm system network, nobody can touch him.” He took a photo from a jacket pocket and handed it to me. “That’s the bugger.”
I glanced at the picture, then pulled up short. “Hold on, Jack, you’re headed the wrong way. I saw this guy go into the Mayflower not five minutes ago.”
“Not a chance, sport. Spangler never shows his face within a hundred miles of a job once it’s set up. And always has a few unimpeachable witnesses to back up his alibi.”
“Don’t tell me, Jack. That’s the guy as sure as you’re born.”
He saw I was serious. For a long moment he stood tugging on an ear, then started back toward the hotel. “Won’t hurt to check, I guess, but I still say you’re whistling Dixie.”
Jack Eddy came to a halt just inside the door. Anderson Spangler was seated in a lobby armchair reading an early edition of the Beacon Journal, the other paper in town. After pushing his workaday black fedora far back on his head Jack murmured, “If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.” He gave me a light poke on the arm. “I owe you one, buddy.”
Jack straightened his hat and adjusted his necktie before walking over to where the out-of-town dandy was seated. Sensing his presence, Spangler glanced up from his paper, did a doubletake, then sprang up from the overstuffed chair, right hand extended, a big smile on his face. “Jack Eddy! What brings you to this burg, my friend?”