Mechanically Ace obeyed. Things happened with Gatling gun rapidity. A blue uniformed figure hurled grotesquely through the rain. Steel crashed into steel. Mike’s automatic barked three times. Then a terrible scream — a woman’s scream — rang out.
A sickening sensation turned Ace’s stomach as he realized that the other car was fast entangled with their own. In spite of his best efforts, the motor of the sedan labored — stalled. A frightful oath came from between his clenched teeth. He was out of the car like a shot. Quick as he was, Mike was quicker. They saw the sturdy steel bumper of the other car between the spokes of their rear wheels.
The superhuman strength of madmen was behind each tug at that cold, twisted bit of steel. With the help of the slippery clay, they did succeed in dragging the front of the lighter car aside sufficiently to free their own. They then turned their excited attention to their front left mudguard which the impact had forced down upon the tire. Together they grunted and groaned as they remedied that condition. Meanwhile the rain had abruptly ceased.
Ace was behind the wheel again with the agility of a trained acrobat. He cursed the leisurely moving Mike who was coming around the front of the car.
Mike suddenly froze in his tracks. A queer sound came from his mouth as he swooped upon something laying in the sticky clay of the road; something that Ace could not see.
“Holy mackerel! What a streak of dumb luck that I stepped on this,” Mike laughed and held their front license plate for Ace’s inspection. “Our goose would be well-cooked if we left this here!”
“Put it on! Stop chinnin’! Come on!” Ace commanded with the anxiety of a man eager to be moving from a ghastly scene.
“Hold your horses — I’m goin’ to see if they’re both dead—”
“Then by God yuh’ll stay here alone!” Ace fired with white hot heat, immediately pressing the accelerator.
With a catlike leap, Mike reached safety, swung to the running board. Momentum fairly hurled him into the seat. If Ace had been low in Mike’s regard before, he was at sea-bottom level now. Mike was burning with rage, thoroughly disgusted with his confederate. Yet he eased the pressure on the trigger of the automatic in his right hand. It would not do to kill Ace while the car was traveling at 35 miles an hour over the bumpy road — time enough for that minor detail later.
“Later” arrived when they were again on the smooth concrete, and Ace stopped the car with a whimpering, “You take it — I’m half blind.”
“With fright,” Mike exclaimed emphatically and stepped out gingerly.
Ace squirmed past the gear shifting lever into the seat Mike had vacated. Even before he could voice a protest against the just accusation, there came the terrifying realization that the business end of the automatic in Mike’s steady hand was aimed at his heart. Ace saw the flash, felt the cruel stabbing pain of death.
The sole survivor of the crimson expedition leaped to the car door. A few minutes sufficed to unload the remains of the last barrier between him and the twenty-five thousand dollars. With a fiendish chuckle, Mike carried the inert form to a nearby clump of underbrush, unceremoniously dumped it from his shoulder. He dashed for the car. In a twinkling he was on his way again.
“Twenty-five thousand! Twenty-five thousand!” he gloated with unadulterated joy. “A good night’s work — damned if it ain’t! And to think how it would have all been spoiled if I hadn’t stepped on that damned license plate!”
He was in an entirely too jovial mood to give even a moment’s serious thought to his chances of getting through to Fu Wang; entirely too busy, erecting rosy air castles of the future, to think that perhaps somewhere on this road of death was the slight accusing thread that often winds about the necks of his kind and draws them relentlessly toward the chair.
It was evening of the following day when Mike sought a conference with the wily, hard-bargaining Fu Wang. With light footsteps, highest hopes, he followed the sandaled yellow servant into the gorgeously furnished room where Wang usually discussed important business.
The Oriental master bowed low, his face as blank as a poker player’s.
“That stuff you wanted ‘Mad’ Reddel to get for yuh from Canadian friends is in town,” Mike fired straight from the shoulder.
“And my friend Reddel?”
“Is gone on a long journey! That shouldn’t cut any ice—”
“None — except perhaps that he would not take unkindly to this humble person’s regretful saying that the need for the stuff has passed,” the clever Wang drawled as he read the meaning of long journey; knew that here was a splendid opportunity for securing contraband at a great bargain. “You see, my friend, the police have grown weary of watching my other sources of supply — I have plenty on hand. However, since you have no doubt risked life and liberty in my humble behalf, I will—”
“Take the stuff off my hands for about half what it’s worth, hey?” Mike rasped. “Well, the price stands at what you offered Reddel — take it for that, and take it quick or the market’s going up! Twenty-five thousand in cash. If that hurts your ears, Soy Ling will be glad to see me.”
Mere mention of his most formidable competitor in narcotics gave Wang a tremor. An offer rose to his tongue. He gulped it as Mike already turned toward the door.
“Never be it said that this humble party retracted an offer — I pay you the set price, pay you gladly — when you deliver the goods here!”
“Nix! You come with me to where the goods are; you give me the cash and bring the men to lug the stuff away!”
Wang shrugged his stooped shoulders. “It is well. I most humbly agree. The address?”
“Oh, no you don’t, Wang! You pulled that stunt on Jenks — got the address and hijacked him out of the stuff. Fer this deal you pay cash and then carry. And until you’re safely on your way, just about a dozen gats will be ready to spit lead at the first sign of a double-cross.”
“We will go—”
“Now!” Mike ejaculated decisively.
“My friend does not reckon with the hour — nor my own caution. Banks are closed and I do not have twenty-five thousand dollars at my unworthy fingertips.”
“Then at nine thirty in the morning—”
“Be of good cheer, my friend, the drug it does not require great haste. It does not evaporate. In the morning I am busy. I will await your pleasure after the hour of four tomorrow afternoon,” Wang declared with convincing finality.
“No — aw, all right then. Four o’clock and with twenty-five thousand in your jeans — and no schemes in your nut, either! Get me?”
Mike was bowed out as elegantly as he had entered.
Leaving the wily Fu Wang, he hastened to his rooms. Through his dirt-streaked window that opened on a filthy court, he could see the long row of tin garages, one of which housed the car and the dope. He turned to the paper he had snatched on his way from Wang’s. Its glaring headlines brought a chuckle to his lips — a chuckle and a greater sense of security. He plunged into the fine type, the story of the mysterious slaying of two State Troopers by assailants who left not a single clue.
Further down the page, in a tiny footnote, he read of the finding of the body of one readily identified via the Rogues Gallery as “Mad” Reddel. Ace Christy’s passing merited an even smaller notice, and on the next page the mysterious death of State Trooper Neldan and his fiancé were amusingly recorded as a lover’s quarrel that ended in suicide and murder.
Mike flung the paper from him, chest puffed with conceit. “If I ever get so dumb that I can’t make a living otherwise, I’ll join the police force. Of all the fatheads in the world, they’re the cream! Imagine not being able to hook those three things together,” he soliloquized while a broad smile swept his face.