“Then my speedometer must be wrong,” he said mildly. “Closer to sixty-five is how I clock it. Come on, Barney Oldfield. Let’s see the license!”
That was routine, as familiar to the men in the roadster as to Bradley. He thought it brought an easing of the tension which he had sensed beneath their outward show of docility. So much the better. If he could persuade them to follow him along to Holtsville without fireworks by letting them believe they were in for nothing worse than a brief delay and a fine for speeding, well and good.
With Law on the short end of a three to one bet, a lonely spot like that was certainly no place to start searching for the machine-gun which old Sam Witherspoon might or might not have seen. Bradley, for more reasons than one willing to let well enough alone, put an iron clamp on his impulse to reach into the rumble and jerk out the robe. He reached instead, and reached casually, for the license card extended over the wheel.
The driver had fished out a New York motor vehicle registration form along with the card. Bradley held them in the beam of the near headlight and made a show of comparing names and registration numbers. He wasn’t looking for information; registration and driving license blanks were easily come by, and any one could fill them in. It was only in further effort to lull suspicion that he questioned a discrepancy.
“You don’t own the car?” he asked the man at the wheel.
“No. It belongs to my cousin. He gave me the loan of it for a little vacation trip to Canada. And listen — he’s particular as hell, because it ain’t hardly broke in yet. I wouldn’t drive it faster than thirty-five on a bet.”
Bradley shook his head. “You’re on the wrong road for Canada,” he said. “Should have turned right, miles back. I don’t wonder you missed Canada Pike, passing it at better than sixty.”
The driver showed a flash of dental gold and a mirthless and confident grin. “Sure it was sixty, trooper?”
“Sure enough to stop you.”
“That’s a joke. You wasn’t behind us then — not near enough to clock us. Suppose we had been stepping on it; wouldn’t we of been watching for a motorcycle light?”
“Probably.” Bradley admitted. “But I’m making this particular speeding case on a point of elapsed time. You stopped for gas a while ago, didn’t you? Well, it was exactly seventeen minutes to nine by my watch when you pulled away from the filling station. That’s allowing you two minutes before I left. When I came up with you the watch said three minutes to nine — and right on this spot where you’re standing, you’re fourteen and six-tenths miles from the pump. Get it? I’ll lend you a pencil if you can’t figure it out in your head.”
The driver leaned over the side of the car, peering. “Hell’s bells!” he grunted. “You’re the cop we seen up the line!”
“Same one,” Bradley corroborated. “Just your hard luck, that’s all, that I happened to be coming this way, coming fast. It’s been a dull day. You’re my first collar. Holtsville is right ahead on this road, so we’ll go along together and tell it to the judge.”
In the roadster there had been a swift exchange of glances. The man in the rumble seat started to stoop, and straightened again when he saw the trooper’s hand at his holster and a pair of speculative steady eyes fixed upon him. The passenger beside the driver had caught the movement, and automatically had ducked forward. Bradley didn’t miss that, either. He was playing with dynamite that might be exploding in his face any instant.
The byplay had been lost on the driver. He grinned again and shrugged.
“Oh, what t’hell!” he exclaimed. “Maybe I did let her out on a couple of wide-open stretches. But have a heart, trooper. We’re past our turn already; you just said so. Why can’t we hold court right here, friendly, and—”
“Nothing doing, brother!” Bradley cut in curtly. “I’m not the kind of cop who tries his own cases on the road.”
“I know. Sure. I can see you’re on the level, officer.” The driver’s voice was soothing as he fished out a wallet. “But you can tell just about what the fine would be. We’ll leave it with you, hey? Here’s a ten spot. That cover it?”
“No go,” said Bradley. “It could cost me my job. How do I know who you people are? You might be working under cover for the state, yourselves. I’m playing safe. Holtsville it is.”
He had made up his mind then that Holtsville was as far as the roadster would get that night. It was the biggest town of his territory, a county seat with a modern jail — half a dozen armed sheriff’s deputies there to lend a hand if it came to a gunplay when he started to search that rumble.
Direct action here and now would have suited him better, personally. He still itched to drag out the robe and bring the real issue into the open. But lately there had been state-wide agitation in the press, hard criticism by editors blind to conditions, because troopers had been allegedly too quick on the trigger. In the pocket of his tunic at that moment was a bulletin from State Police Headquarters cautioning all troopers to use their pistols only as a last resort.
The flat-nosed man had reached an arm behind the driver’s shoulder and a yellowish ball fell from his fingers to the running board. It rolled off and landed at Bradley’s feet.
“I think you dropped something, trooper,” the New Yorker said, pointing. “Looks like a hundred dollar bill from here. You ought to be careful of money like that.”
The roadster, in gear, had edged forward a foot or two. The yellow ball lay where it caught enough of the beam of the motorcycle headlight to show Bradley what it was — a wadded bill, with a dazzling “100” in the corner.
“Not mine,” he said, surer than ever that he had made a prize catch. “What’s more, I don’t want any part of it.” He looked hard at the flat-nosed man. “You dropped it, didn’t you?” That method of offering backsheesh was a standard trick among rum-runners; it had been tried on Bradley before.
A crooked smile answered his frown. “Me? Oh, well — maybe I did. Anyway, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
Bradley bent over to pick up and throw back the scorned bribe and kept on bending when his fingers had touched it. A consultation of eyes, this one unnoticed by him, had preceded the dropping of the hundred dollar note. The man in the rumble seat, directly over him as he stooped, had whipped a gun out of a shoulder belt under his coat and brought it crashing down on his head.
The roadster took wing as Bradley pitched forward, his right hand automatically closing on the grip of his pistol and then going limp there. Over the retreating rear end came sputtering flashes of red that lengthened out into a yard-long finger of flame. A staccato rattle sounded raucously over the smooth thrum of the motor; sparks sprang from the cement where the trooper lay.
A hundred yards up the road the red car came to a squealing, skidding halt.
“What the hell are you stopping for?” demanded the man with the flat nose. “Don’t be a damn fool, Mac. Tony got him all right.”
“Got him plenty,” confirmed the machine gunner in the rumble seat, looking back. “Look at him!”
The motorcycle had gone one way as Bradley went the other. It lay on its side, its headlights still going and shining full on a sprawled and motionless gray figure by the ditch.
“We ain’t going to leave him there, are we?” growled the driver. “We ought to chuck him in the brush, Scudder. That motorcycle, too.”
“Yeah?” snarled the flat-nosed Scudder. “And get ourselves all smeared up? That’s out, Mac. He’ll lay there for hours, most likely, before any other car comes along. This ain’t Forty-second and Broadway. Use your foot, fella. We’re overdue, now. Let’s get along to Dutch’s, fast!”