Scudder returned the “kite” to the table, weighted it with a whiskey glass and stood staring at it.
“Well, he sure doped out a fast one,” he admitted with a grudging admiration. “If Duncan is anywhere near human, it ought to work just the way Joe figures it — and that’s all we’ve got to worry about right now. Everything’s set at your end, Dutch?”
“All set,” Gompert said. He cleared a space on the table and spread out a road map. “The first thing is to get the lay of the land fixed in your mind.” A thick thumb hovered over the map and descended. “This is where you are now, Scudder — the puddle outside is what they call Little Moose Lake. This road here is the one where you left Bradley; hope he rots there. Gwen’s shack is about ten miles up this other pike, but you don’t need to bother your head about that; just bring the package back here, see? Gwen’s coming over and she’ll take care of it. That hide-away of hers is perfect.”
“And what’s the blue cross-mark there?” Scudder asked, looking over Gompert’s shoulder. “Duncan’s place?”
“That’s the mansion. It sits back a good half mile from the road. They say there’s more than six thousand acres to the whole estate — miles of it. But you’ll find the maim house easy enough. You keep going around the lake on this same road you came over. Then you turn left on the next cement and that leads you straight to it. I metered off the distance today, and it’s just a shade over sixteen miles to Duncan’s gate. You’ll know the place when you come to it. After that, it’s a crash-in.”
“Crash-in is right,” assented Scudder. “My idea, Duncan’s got to know what it’s all about before we leave. That’s the only way to play it — cards on the table with Duncan himself. No foolishness with notes later on, but cold turkey at the jump. He’ll keep his trap shut then — and like it.”
“Yeah! And he’ll manage to keep his people quiet. If you only make it strong enough, there’ll never be a squawk to the cops — never a line in the papers. That’s up to you.”
Scudder took a last glance at the map and walked to the door.
“I feel sorry for you, Mac,” he said. “Come on, say good-bye to four grand’s worth of roadster. Maybe the bus won’t be here when we get back.”
“It won’t — not where you can see it,” promised Gompert. “Better switch that typewriter over to the sedan. Tony — just in case!”
The sedan, as rangy and powerful as the roadster, stood in the open beside the bungalow, its bright metal work sparkling in the moonlight. The moon struck a duller gleam from the barrel of the machine gun as the swarthy artilleryman transferred it from the rumble of the red car.
“Looks like an even swap at that,” grinned the New York party’s chauffeur, settling himself behind the wheel of the sedan. He listened appreciatively to the purr of the motor, instantly alive as his foot touched the starter. “This’ll do fine.”
A moment later the sedan slid away. It skirted the lake, struck off through the hills on the continuation of the dirt road which the roadster had followed to Dutch Gompert’s poetic retreat and, after a few minutes, was on smooth concrete.
Far to the west, where tall stone posts rose beside the highway and closed gates of iron barred the entrance to a private road, the sleek machine halted. Close behind the posts stood a vine draped cottage, obviously a gate-keeper’s lodge.
The man with the flat nose, again sitting with the driver, reached across the wheel. “Let’s start it in style,” he said, and under the light pressure of his hand the sedan’s horn sounded a muted trumpet call. Almost immediately a stoop-shouldered old man appeared from the lodge in answer to the summons and swung open the gates.
Scudder had slipped from the car after sounding the horn. He was behind the nearer pillar, ready for a spring, as the gate-keeper stood blinking in a blaze of headlights that hid everything behind them.
“Are you folks expected?” the old man called out, shambling forward.
Masked now, Scudder leaped at him. A blackjack rose and fell. The gatekeeper’s knees sagged. He dropped in a heap.
“Expected?” the flat-nosed man rasped, driving a toe into the ribs of his crumpled victim. “Was that?”
Chapter IV
Bradley Hits the Road Again
Down, but not out. Almost, not quite. Flat on his face, cheek to the icy cement, Bradley snapped out of his daze as the escaping gunmen’s car darted ahead.
What a chump! The trio in the roadster had been TNT on wheels, and he’d known it. Letting down his guard, giving them that chance at him, had been just about the equivalent of suicide. Except that the stiff brim of his campaign hat had broken the blow, a fractured skull would certainly have been the reward of his lapse.
He started to get up, then went flat again. Fire suddenly was spouting from the back of the roadster to the accompaniment of a throaty rattle. The flame and the roar vindicated old Sam Witherspoon’s eyesight. They did have a machine gun in the New York car and they were using it. A bee-swarm of slugs from it passed over him with a strident buzzing.
The angle of fire had been depressed when another burst came; bouncing bullets struck fire from the concrete all about him. One bit of lead scored a hit on the motorcycle out there in the middle of the road. He heard the hard ping and saw the front wheel spinning.
When the firing ceased he saw that the roadster was at a standstill. By rising then he would have courted another burst from the machine gun, so he lay quiet and made no further movement after he had cleared his automatic of the holster.
He didn’t open fire. That would have been one more sucker play. At a hundred yards — the distance between him and the roadster must have been all of that — his pistol wouldn’t be much good. They could rip him up with the machine gun before he got fairly into action with it.
He thought they’d be coming back, one or two of them at least, to make sure that the tommy-gun had done its work. That would be the time to use the pistol; to shoot fast and straight, drop whoever came and make a sprint for the car before the rapid-fire gun opened up again. But none of them came. He heard their voices, hot in argument, and then the tail light was receding.
In a few seconds it was at the crest of the next rise; up, over — gone!
Bradley was up as the tail light vanished, weaving to the motorcycle. The lump on his head seemed to be the size of his fist. He was giddy now, but that would pass after the breeze had been slapping his face for a while. With their machine gun those murderous New Yorkers might keep him out of pistol range; nothing on earth, he grimly promised himself, would keep him off their trail. And he was going to get them! No matter where they went, he’d get them even though he had to follow them to the gates of hell itself.
He had to amend that vow no sooner than it had been made. The miracle that had saved him when the bullets were flying thick had not spared the motorcycle. A bullet had passed through the front tire and that left him with a tricky repair job to do before he went anywhere.
It took time to get the wheel off, more time to patch the two holes in the tube, and a long ten minutes beyond all that to inflate the tire with the small hand pump after the blow-out patch was in.
Haste hadn’t made for speed, and when the motorcycle was ready to go he could no longer hope to overtake the gunmen, even had there been any way of telling which branch of the road they had taken at the fork a few miles beyond. It would have to be a case, now, of getting to a telephone and spreading an alarm; at least he knew the license number and could describe the car and its passengers, and there was a reasonable chance that they would be picked up.