Yes, the boldest course usually paid. He would claim the trunk himself. And he could arrange some slight disguise, just in case of accidents. A disguise, yes. Why...
Cayley’s thoughts broke off with a jerk. He cursed. His engine had stopped.
He came to a standstill by the side of the road. The trouble was simple: he had run out of petrol. Cayley felt terribly frightened. He had filled the tank before first setting out to meet Rose; how could it have emptied so soon? It almost looked as though Providence...
It was not Providence, but a leaking feed-pipe. Feverishly Cayley screwed up the loose nut and delved into the side-car for the spare tin of petrol, pushing Rose to one side without a thought. He blessed his foresight in having put the tin there. Really, every possibility had been foreseen.
As he got back into the saddle once more, a sound struck his whole body into frozen immobility. Someone was approaching along the lonely country road. Someone with large, heavy feet. Someone who flashed a lamp. It was the millionth chance, and it had come off.
Cayley kicked in agony at his starter, but the carburetor had emptied. He kicked and kicked, but not even a splutter came from the engine. Then, as the footsteps drew abreast of him, he stopped kicking and waited, petrified.
“Hullo,” said the constable. “Breakdown?”
Cayley’s dry tongue rustled over his drier lips. “No,” he managed to mutter. “Just... just filling up... petrol.”
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Cayley. Ah! Fine night.”
“Yes. Well, I must be getting on.” Cayley prayed that his voice did not sound such a croak as he feared. The light of the constable’s lamp flickered over him, and he winced. Before he could stop himself, the words had jumped out. “Switch that light of yours off, man.”
“Sorry, Mr. Cayley, I’m sure.” The constable sounded hurt.
“It was blinding me,” Cayley muttered.
“Ah, new battery. Well, good night, Mr. Cayley. Nothing I can do?”
“Nothing, thanks.” Cayley kicked at his starter. Nothing happened.
The constable lingered. “Quite a treat to see someone, on a lonely beat like this.”
“Yes, it must be.” Cayley was still kicking. He wanted to scream at the man to go. He would scream in a minute. No, he must not scream. He must hold the edges of his nerves together like flesh over a wound, to keep the panic within from welling out. “Good night,” he said clearly.
“Well, good night, Mr. Cayley. Got a load, I see?”
“Yes,” Cayley’s head was bent. He spoke through almost closed teeth. “Some potatoes I...”
“Potatoes?”
“Yes, a sack. Look here, man, I said switch that light out.”
“Now, now, Mr. Cayley, I don’t take orders from you. I know my duty, and it’s my belief—”
“Leave that rug alone!” screamed Cayley.
The constable paused, startled. Then he spoke weightily, the corner of the rug in his great hand.
“Mr. Cayley, I must ask you to show me what you’ve got in this here side-car. It don’t look like potatoes to me, and that’s a fact. Besides—”
“All right then, damn you!” Cayley’s voice was pitched hysterically. “All right!”
The sound of the shot mingled with the sudden roar of the engine. As he twisted to fire Cayley’s foot had trodden on the starter. This time it worked. The bicycle leapt forward.
Cayley drove on, as fast as his machine would carry him. His face was stiff with terror. He knew he had not killed the policeman, for he had seen him jump aside as the bicycle plunged forward.
What had possessed him to fire like that? And what, ten times more fatal, had possessed him to fire and not to kill? Now he was done for. Cayley knew that his only chance was to go back and find the policeman: to hunt him down and kill him where he stood. That was his only chance now — and he could not do it. No, he could not. Too late Cayley realized that he was not the man for murder.
What was he going to do?
Already the constable would be giving the alarm. Policemen everywhere would be on the look-out for him soon. He must not stop. His only hope was to get as far away as possible, in the quickest time.
He sped on madly, not knowing where he was going, turning now right, now left, as the road forked, intent only on putting as long and as confused a trail as possible between himself and the constable.
He drove till his eyes were almost blind and his arms were numb with pain, and Rose drove with him.
Rose!
He could not dispossess himself of her, he dared not leave her anywhere. He dared not even stop. If he stopped, they might pounce on him. And then they would find her. And if he did not stop — just stop to bury her somewhere — then they would find her just the same in the end. But he dared not stop. His one hope was to keep flying along. So long as he was moving he was safe.
He drove on: insanely, anywhere, everywhere, so long as he was still driving. His eyes never shifted from the road ahead of him; but after a time his lips began to move. He was talking to Rose, in the side-car.
“I got it for you, Rose. You would have it, instead of riding pillion. Well, now you’ve got it. This is our last drive together, Rose, so I hope you’re enjoying it.”
What was to happen when his petrol gave out he dared not think. He could not think. His brain was numb. All he knew was that he must keep on driving: away, away, from that policeman and the alarm he had given. Where he might be he had no idea or the names of the villages and little towns through which he tore.
It did not matter so long as he kept on. One word only fixed itself in his sliding mind: Scotland. For some reason he had the idea that if he could but reach Scotland he would have a chance.
At breakneck speed he thrust on, with Rose, to Scotland.
But Cayley was not to reach Scotland that night. Whether it is that, in panic, the human animal really does move in circles, whether it was that in his numbed brain there still glowed an unconscious spark of his great plan, the fact is left that, while Cayley still thought himself headed for Scotland, he instinctively took a rough track which presented itself on the right of the road when he came to it, and that track led to the top of the same quarry in which he had meant to bury Rose.
But Cayley never knew that, any more than he recognized the wooden rails bordering the edge when they seemed to leap towards him in the beam of his headlight. Then it was too late to recognize anything, in this world.
There were other things, too, which Cayley never knew. He never knew that the constable, a motorcyclist himself, had seen his inadvertent treading on the self-starter. He did not know that the constable, highly amused, had thought that Cayley’s motor-cycle had run away with him. Above all, he did not know that the constable never had the remotest idea that a shot was ever fired at him.
Rufus King
The Patron Saint of the Impossible
It seemed, a hopeless case. All the evidence pointed to Candice’s sweetheart — he had motive, opportunity, and the hot blood of a Latin lover. So, once again, Monsignor Lavigny put his faith in Saint Jude...
The murder backdrop was the Florida room of the Hoffmann home in Halcyon, which is a small town inhabited by the modestly retired, graced by seasonal tourists and native crackers, and enlivened by a thin lunatic fringe of horse-happy railbirds, amiable bookies, and glazed divorcees. It rests, this gentle haven, on the Atlantic seaboard between the gilt splendors of Miami Beach and the ormolu patina of Fort Lauderdale.
The Hoffmann house is one of the older and more pretentious of Halcyon’s estates, being surrounded with lush masses of semi-tropical shrubbery and flowering trees that afford a screening of privacy from all neighboring houses.