“Yep, and beyond that, most likely. It’s all in a good cause,” Grampaw says. Then he adds, “You could take it out of my tip. Two dollars ought to cover it.” He looks at me and chuckles, like he’s put over a good one.
Well, business runs its usual pace, slow to stopped, till five, when we start looking for the cars coming home from Holofer. And even they aren’t much to hold a parade over. Grampaw looks up the east road to the Pass quite a bit, like he’s expecting more. But I know there won’t be much from that way.
Along about seven, while we’re rolling in the tires and locking up the pumps, Grampaw looks up the road one more time and says, “Here they come.”
By the time I can turn around and say, “Who comes?” they’re here — a State Patrol car with two husky young officers about my size and age but looking a lot better fed.
“Mr. Connelly?” one asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“That’s me,” says Grampaw.
The two patrolmen look us over and turn to Grampaw. “Turns out you were right,” the driver says. “We got ’em. The state thanks you, and the bank’ll thank you after the conviction.”
Grampaw beams. “Yessiree, I thought it might be them. And I figured couldn’t be no harm in trying, at least. Glad you got ’em.”
The other patrolman says, “We did just as you said. Came a-barreling along with the flasher on until we were close enough to be sure it was the same car. Then we turned off the flasher and just sat in behind at a steady fifty-four until they broke down. They were too smart to run for it, just held fifty-four until she boiled over and died in a big cloud of steam. We walked up while they were getting out, and checked the car. Briefcase under the seat just like you said.”
Grampaw says, “I thought it could be them. Our radio had said the bank over at Carson was robbed and everybody was searching west towards the big Coast cities. But nothing had turned up. I figured a smart bandit would go the other way. And the radio said all they knew of the license was a G and a 3 somewhere, medium-old nondescript car.”
“You pegged it,” the trooper says. “But that’s not much to go on, you know. You could have gotten into trouble.”
“Oh,” Grampaw says, “I had other evidence. Both these fellows sat still as stone — never moved, hardly spoke. Trying too hard to be inconspicuous, like a jackrabbit when he knows there’s coyotes around. And they let me talk them into rolling up the windows — in all this heat — and giving them a really long window-wash job. And never kicked when I overcharged forty cents on the gas.
“And,” he turned to me, “you saw him give me a twenty-dollar bill. Now how many people hand out cash money, and how many show a credit card and sign a slip, on an average day?” He smiled at the trooper. “I felt pretty sure. And if I was wrong, you’d be right there to help them, and nobody hurt, so that would be all right too.”
The troopers headed for their car, but one turned.
“Oh, say,” he says to Grampaw, “you know what was the funniest? While we were waiting for the county wagon to take them off our hands, one of them asked, ‘What put you onto us, anyway?’ and I said, ‘Mister, you’ve got the cleanest license plates in nine counties,’ and his partner said, ‘That old goat! I knew he was too good to be true.’ ”
“Old goat,” Grampaw repeats thoughtfully. “Old goat. Well, I thank’ee for coming back with the information. It sets my mind at ease.” He gives them a snappy little World War One salute, and they drive away grinning.
“Grampaw,” I ask while we’re jouncing home in his ’39 pickup, “you told them how you figured it might be the robbers, but how’d you know they’d be able to catch them in time? Unless there were troopers waiting right around the bend, which has never been true in my lifetime, those guys could have easily made the Pass.”
“Oh, that,” Grampaw chuckles. “I figured they’d have a breakdown somewhere up the road, and would be glad to see anybody coming, even cops. When I was fooling around under the radiator, I opened the drain-cock just a little mite.”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Newsletter
Crime Beat
by R. E. Porter
© 1981 by R. E. Porter
MYSTERY CONTEST: Prize contests sponsored by publishers were once a fairly common part of the business, and at least one publisher even held an annual contest for the best mystery novel. We haven’t seen many contests lately, and that’s why it’s a special pleasure to note the announcement of the Scribner Crime Novel Award, to be given to the best first novel by an American author or a permanent resident of the United States.
The award will be $7,500, consisting of a $2,500 cash prize and a $5,000 advance against royalties, with the winner announced early in 1982. Books may be classic detective stories, historical reconstructions, fictionalized true crime, espionage, police procedural, or private-eye novels. The only categories specifically ruled out are the supernatural and pastiches or parodies — Sherlockian or otherwise. The manuscripts submitted must be complete, and addressed to Charles Scribner’s Sons, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Envelopes should be marked for the Scribner Crime Novel Award. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 1981.
Scribners has a long history of launching successful mystery novelists, having published S. S. Van Dine, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Simon Brett, and P. D. James. The publisher hopes its contest will encourage new authors, and will offer to publish other acceptable first novels in addition to the prize winner.
LITERARY DETECTIVE WORK: Until now it was generally believed that only three novels were published by the highly regarded pulp writer Raoul Whitfield (one of whose stories was reprinted in EQMM’s April 22nd issue). Now author Bill Pronzini has engaged in some literary detective work to establish that Whitfield published two other mystery novels during his lifetime — Five (1931) and Killer’s Carnival (1932) — both under the pseudonym of “Temple Field.”
Pronzini thought the characters in a Black Mask serial, “Laughing Death” by Raoul Whitfield, sounded familiar. He compared the text with a copy of Five and found the stories were identical. Further investigation revealed that the second Temple Field novel, Killer’s Carnival, was also serialized in Black Mask as “The Skyline Murders” by Whitfield. No doubt they’ll be joining Whitfield’s previously known mystery novels, Green Ice, Death in a Bowl, and The Virgin Kills, in future bibliographies.
FATHER BROWN DISCOVERY: Speaking of discoveries, the G. K. Chesterton Society has come up with a dandy — an unknown Father Brown story written by Chesterton in collaboration with a British magazine publisher back in 1914. The publisher, Sir Max Pemberton, wrote part one of “The Donnington Mystery” for the October 1914 issue of his magazine, Premiere. Chesterton wrote part two the following month, in which Father Brown solves the mystery.
Both parts were reprinted for the first time in the February 1981 issue of The Chesterton Review. Subscription to the quarterly journal is $12.00 a year, from The Chesterton Review, 1437 College Drive, Saskatoon, Canada S7N OW6.