But after today, all that would be changed. He’d have to wait a cautious time, of course, and then he could leave the stink of the feed store and the town far behind, and the young man in the sharp clothes and the red sports car with the beautiful girl on the seat beside him would be none other than Earl Munger.
This afternoon, he had rushed his deliveries so that he would have a full hour to kill and rob Charlie Tate before his boss at the feed store would begin to wonder where he was. He had hidden the small panel truck in the woods back of Charlie’s place and then approached the house by a zigzag course through brush and trees, certain that no one had seen him, and that he could return to the truck the same way.
He wondered now why he hadn’t robbed Charlie before, why he’d waited so long. And yet, with another part of his mind, he knew why. To rob Charlie, it would be necessary to kill him. The only way to get into his house was to have Charlie unlock the door, and Charlie couldn’t be left alive to tell what had happened.
Then he heard the muffled slam of Charlie’s front door, and a few moments later the sudden cough and roar of a car engine on the street out in front, and he knew that Sheriff Stratton had left.
Now! Earl thought as he left the bushes and moved swiftly to the back door. I can still do it and be back at the store before anybody starts getting his suspicions up. Once again he closed one hand over the automatic in his pocket and raised the other to knock.
Charlie Tate’s footsteps shuffled slowly across the floor, and a moment later his seamed, rheumy-eyed face peered out at Earl through the barred opening in the upper half of the door.
“Hello, Earl,” he said. “What is it?”
“The boss asked me to bring you something, Mr. Tate,” Earl said, glancing down as if at something beyond Charlie’s angle of vision.
“That so?” Charlie said. “What?”
“I don’t know,” Earl said. “It’s wrapped up.”
“I didn’t order anything,” Charlie said.
“It’s too big to stick through those bars, Mr. Tate,” Earl said. “If you’ll open the door, I’ll just shove it inside.”
Charlie’s eyes studied Earl unblinkingly for a full ten seconds; then there was a grating sound from inside, and the door opened slowly, and not very far.
But it was far enough. Earl put his hip against it, forced it back another foot, and slipped inside, the gun out of his pocket now and held up high enough for Charlie to see it at once.
There was surprise on Charlie’s face, but no fear. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“I’m taking your money,” Earl said. “Wherever it is, get it, and get it now.”
Charlie took a slow step backward. “Don’t be a fool, son,” he said.
“Don’t you,” Earl said. “It’s your money or your life, Charlie. Which’ll it be?”
“Son, I—”
Earl raised the gun a little higher. “Get it,” he said softly. “You understand me, Charlie? I’m not asking you again.”
Charlie hesitated for a moment, then turned and moved on uncertain feet to the dining room table. “It’s in there,” he said, his breathy, old-man’s voice almost inaudible. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table, but no glasses.
“In the table?” Earl said. “I’m telling you, Charlie. Don’t try to pull—”
“Under the extra leaves,” Charlie said. “But listen, son—”
“Shut up,”.Earl said, lifting one of the two extra leaves from the middle of the table. “I’ll be damned.”
There were two flat steel document cases wedged into the shallow opening formed by the framework beneath the leaves.
Earl pulled the other leaf away and nodded to Charlie. “Open them,” he said.
“You can still change your mind,” Charlie said. “You can walk out of here right now, and I’ll never say any—”
“Open them, I said!”
Charlie sighed heavily, fumbled two small keys from his pocket, and opened the document cases.
It was there, all right, all in neat, banded packages of 20’s and 50’s, each of the packages a little over two inches thick.
The size of his haul stunned him, and it was several seconds before he could take his eyes from it. Then he remembered what else had to be done and he looked questioningly at the wall just over Charlie Tate’s left shoulder.
“What’s that?” he asked. “What’ve you got there, Charlie?”
His face puzzled, Charlie turned to look. “What are you talking...?” he began, and then broke off with an explosive gasp as the butt of Earl’s automatic, with the full strength of Earl’s muscular arm and shoulder behind it, crashed against his skull just two inches behind his right ear.
He fell to the floor without a sound, all of a piece, the way a bag of old clothes held at arm’s length would fall, in a limp heap.
Earl knelt down beside him, raising the gun again. Then he lowered it and shoved it back into his pocket. Nobody would ever have to hit Charlie Tate again.
He started to rise, then sank back, the sudden nervous tightening of the muscles across his stomach so painful that he winced. It was all he could do to drag himself to the table. He uncapped the bottle of whiskey and raised it to his lips, shaking so badly that a little of the liquor sloshed out onto the table. It was a big drink, and it seemed to help almost at once. He took another one, just as big, and put the bottle back down on the table.
It was then that he heard the car door slam shut out front, and saw, above the sill of the front window, the dome light and roof-mounted antenna of Sheriff Fred Stratton’s cruiser.
A moment before, Earl Munger would have sworn he could not move at all, but he would have been wrong. He moved too quickly to think, too quickly to feel. It took him less than five seconds to close the document cases and shove them under his arm, and it took him even less time than that to reach the back door and close it soundlessly behind him. Returning to the truck by the roundabout route that would prevent his being seen took the better part of ten minutes, every second of it a desperate fight against an almost overpowering urge simply to cut and run.
He’d left the truck on an incline, so that he would be able to get it under way again without using the starter. Now he pushed the shift lever into the slot for second gear, shoved in the clutch, released the hand brake, waited until the truck had rolled almost to the bottom of the incline, and then let the clutch out. The engine caught, stuttered, died, then caught again, and he drove away as slowly, and therefore as quietly, as he could without stalling the engine again.
Half a mile farther on, he turned off onto a rutted side road that led to a small but deep lake known locally as Hobbs Pond. There he shoved the gun and the packages of money into a half-empty feed sack, making sure they were well covered with feed, and then sent the metal document cases arcing as far toward the center of the lake as he could throw them.
Then, after burying the bag under half a dozen other bags of feed and fertilizer in the truck, he started back toward the store. The money would probably be safe in the truck for as long as he wanted to leave it there, but there was no sense in taking any chances. Tonight or tomorrow he would bury it somewhere, and then leave it there until the day when he could pick a fight with his boss, quit his job, and leave the area for good without raising any questions.