“And the beginning of Corrigan’s.” He leaned forward and prodded the driver. “Good work, Joe,” he said. “I’m going to need men like you. And by the way, Joe, stop at the next drug store.”
He looked down at the girl by his side. How beautiful she was. He wished she had not belonged to somebody else. Still... The car stopped.
“Back in a minute,” he said. “I gotta phone.”
A minute later:
“Moreno? This is the Count. Frankie took a ride and so did a few of his men. The moll? She’s feeling fine. She belongs to the Count now, Moreno. Get that?”
The count grinned. Moreno got it.
The Highway to Hell
By William H. Stueber
The Dragnet Magazine, January 1930
Sputtering machine guns, high-powered death cars, double-crossing gangsters... racing down the Highway to Hell!
A sudden, keen fear smote the three hard-boiled men in the powerful automobile tearing along the broad concrete road just south of the Canadian border.
The chauffeur, a bundle of nerves perilously close to snapping, clung to the steering wheel, kept his hard, narrow eyes glued to the roadway. Silently, he cursed the torrent of rain that was making the fifty-five mile an hour pace doubly dangerous; cursed the spasmodic flashes of blinding, zigzagging lightning and the ominous peals of thunder.
“What the hell do yuh mean — step on it?” he growled aloud. “I’m givin’ her all she’s got!”
“Yeah? Then it’s curtains fer us!” “Mad” Reddel snapped as his fearful eyes continued to stare through the rear window of the sedan. “Yuh ain’t losin’ that other car unless this old wagon comes to life. Why, damn it all, she used to do sixty-five without half trying. Gripes! They’re comin’ fast! We’ve got to do somethin’, and do it quick! I think—”
“Don’t!” the fidgeting hulk on the rear seat beside him roared. “You’ll get brain fever! What a fine kettle of fish you made out of this trip. Why in hell didn’t you let Mike stop when they hailed him?”
In a less tense situation, Reddel’s retort to the insult might have been a bullet. He was too busy mapping a course through which to escape the pursuing car to pay the slightest attention to his henchman’s thrust. Escape he would! Ten to fifteen years in the penitentiary, loss of twenty thousand dollars in contraband would be the price of capture. He was frantic, insane with rage.
“Slow down easy, Mike. Get that shot gun ready. Ace, you handle the machine gun — I’ll do my share with this brace of automatics. Hole everything ’till they’re abreast of us. Don’t stop altogether, Mike — don’t take her out of high! Be ready to give her the gun as soon as I yell.”
Hopefully, quickly, Mike obeyed the commands that spelled certain death for the pursuers. He threw out the clutch, gently applied the foot-brake. When a comparatively safe speed warranted it, he dropped his huge left hand from the wheel. In less than a minute he clutched a sawed-off shot gun, cradled the business end in the crook of his other arm. A nervous finger of his left hand was on the trigger, his right hand guiding the car.
Ace Christy fondled the portable machine gun, its death dealing nozzle resting on the sill of the open left window. The overwrought Reddel had lowered the rear window. The tips of both his automatics were trained on the car now rapidly approaching.
“Easy, Mike — and ready. A hundred yards to come. Steady now,” Reddel cautioned in a death-like whisper.
The hundred yards dwindled to fifty — to ten. The radiator of the pursuing car was even with the rear wheels of the gun car. A guttural growl, like that of a tiger preparing for the killing leap, escaped Reddel’s twisted lips. He saw two regulation State Troopers’ caps, the shoulder belts of two natty uniforms.
“Pull over there!” one of the officers commanded acidly. “Be quick about—”
“Let ’em have it!” Reddel yelled.
The command was given at the precise moment when the two victims were directly under Mike’s shot gun. Two blasts, two flashes seemed to come from Mike’s elbow. As the victims dropped back a trifle, Ace raked them with the machine gun.
“Step on it, Mike!” Reddel bellowed through the staccato of shots.
The car shot forward, not a second too soon to escape being rammed by the victim’s wildly careening car. Absolutely certain that both had died instantly, Reddel nevertheless emptied both his guns at the slumped figures in the front seat, distance making all save his first shots useless. With the last of his split-second shot, he squealed with fiendish delight as he watched the progress of the driverless car.
“They’re off the road. Bang! In the ditch and up against a tree! They’ll never butt into private business again!”
“For cryin’ out loud, Mike, get that accelerator down to the floor and keep it there!” Ace Christy implored fervently as chills chased each other up and down his spine and beads of clammy perspiration rolled from his forehead. “If I get out of this jam, yuh can bet your last buck I’ll never get mixed up in snow-running again!”
Hot automatics reloaded and crammed into his coat pocket, Reddel laughed raucously. “Won’t you? That listens sweet, comin’ from a guy that’s had me bulled into believin’ he was real hard. And you, Mike? You gettin’ soft too?”
“Hell no! I’ve bumped ’em off before. Why worry? It’s over now. It was them or us. The best men always win!” Mike answered with far more relief than he felt.
“Win?” Ace ejaculated. “Yuh talk as if we were out in the clear — safe already!”
“It’ll be daylight before some hick finds the bodies,” Reddel reassuringly prophesied, “and by that time we’ll be so far away we will be safe.”
Ace found little comfort in the words, the confidence of his allies.
“Fools have too much luck,” he moaned. “Somebody’s liable to find ’em in half an hour. And suppose they ain’t dead? The cops and the troopers will burn up the telephone wires. Cripes! We ain’t got a chance!”
Reddel’s anger got beyond control. His bony fingers closed about Ace’s throat like a suddenly sprung steel trap. He blazed with venom. “You yellow-livered mutt! Another groan out of you, and you’ll be joinin’ them dead troopers!”
“Hey! Lay off him, Reddel,” Mike yelled over his shoulder. “Get out of one jam ’fore yuh lay pipes for another!”
“Aw, he gives me the willies!” Reddel exploded and released the cowering, sniveling Ace. “Burnin’ up the telephone wires — with what kind of information? If they do talk, I doubt like hell they will, all they can say is that it was a Glen-dann sedan. I had brains enough to smear the license plates with mud. Why damn it, they didn’t even know how many of us was in here!”
Neither Mike nor Ace replied. For the best part of an hour, Mike kept the sedan hurtling through the pouring rain. Suddenly he swerved the car to the white concrete guard posts at the right and halted abruptly. Beyond the ghost-like posts with the two strands of heavy cable was a stretch of thick woodland. Mike turned the spotlight affixed to the windshield toward it. He glanced back at Reddel.
“I ain’t worryin’. But just the same, we’d better unload the artillery. Ace might be right about burnin’ up telephone wires, and havin’ the guns in the car certainly ain’t goin’ to help us wiggle loose if we are stopped.”
Raging inwardly, Reddel was mute. For the first time in his miserable life he wished he could drive a car. Instead of unloading artillery, he would have unloaded two corpses!
“Well?” Mike thundered. “Do we or don’t we? If we don’t. Ace and me will be leavin’ you here and now!”