As they started from the hill above Garrison, the Dropper and his taciturn chauffeur reached Peekskill. They drew up the car before a drowsing all night lunch, its nose pointed toward New York. They sat waiting quietly. It was still night, but something in the air said that day was near.
“He’s startin’ now,” Kid muttered smilelessly. “We’ll tail in behind him, an’ when he reaches the first likely space on the road—”
“Yeah,” Abe Beck nodded in grim joy. “That lob won’t have a chanct in the worl’!”
A solitary policeman owled out of the Peekskill dimness, took one look at the peaceful pair parked before the restaurant, then thumped hollowly away into the dimness. No one else was in sight; there was no traffic stirring on the Post Road. The last night revellers had started homeward, the morning traffic had not commenced.
The Dropper carefully went over the plans again, in a low voice.
“There!” he suddenly interrupted himself, holding up a warning finger.
Abe heard it now, a low heavy rumble from the distance far behind him. It might be anything heavy — furniture moving down the Hudson, farm produce from upstate trucking down, a legitimate milk load, or the “Meadow Dairy” truck from Aiken’s’ Folly.
They leaned out in stiff expectancy.
Louder and louder, in the crisp air, the noise grew.
Abe set the engine going. The Kid stood at ease in the shadows behind the car, to make sure that he read the name right.
The flicker of lights at the turn three blocks away, and the heavy truck swung into sight, coasting with easy power. The Dropper tensed himself, although it was not yet necessary. He felt the presence of an enemy, even before the truck came close enough for him to spell out its name.
A block away — half a block—
“Watch it, Abe!”
The truck slithered swiftly by.
“ ‘Meadow Dairy — Best Milk’!”
“That’s her,” he whispered savagely to the driver, as he swung himself noiselessly into the back seat. “Drive like all everything, Abe — keep her in sight!”
’Round great curves the truck swept ahead of them, the car hugging the trail of its small red light a block and a half behind.
As they thundered through the hush of sleeping Oscawanna, the Dropper had his car begin to cut down the distance. After the pale lights of Tumble Inn had slashed into the gray murk and faded behind them, he told Abe to put on more juice.
The truck shot swiftly down the reversed curve of Soap Hill, and through the echoing stillness of Croton. The car gained constantly, until at the bottom of the rise to Harmon it was within a hundred feet of the flying goal.
“Now,” ordered the Kid with terrible intentness.
On this hill, the loaded truck faltered a trifle. The pursuer took it on high, and at the crest, was side by side with the other vehicle.
“Get your nose in front,” whispered the Kid harshly.
The car slid smoothly ahead; and side by side, the taxi’s nose ahead of the truck’s snub front, they raced along. The truck might have thought that the car was merely trying to pass.
The Dropper’s pistol was out; he hung over the car door, his gun trained on the driver of the truck. His voice boomed startlingly above the mechanical purr of the two powerful motors. “Stop her — an’ stick ’em up!”
Spadoni, who had been expecting this, slowed down at once. “Don’t shoot, mister,” he whined, as if frightened.
Before the truck had stopped the Dropper was aboard it, crowding over the two men on the driver’s bench, as he held two guns boring upon their chests.
“Drive on — an’ do jus’ what I say; get me? Or I’ll pump you so full of lead you’ll bust the truck springs!” he gloated in savage warning.
Across the level height of Harmon, down toward the crossing that led to Ossining, the captured truck continued. The game was in his hands, the Dropper thought exultantly. The two men beside him, the two gangsters crouching out of sight in the truck’s hidden interior just at his back, thought otherwise.
Abe Beck, as directed, took it easy about a block behind.
Suddenly the Kid stiffened, as he heard a sound behind him.
It was not the sound he should have heard — the sound of the two Fein boys aiming their guns through the two holes bored in the truck, which opened directly just where the Dropper’s heart was bound to be, with three men crowded on the front seat... Oh, Little Goldie had it all planned out.
It wasn’t this the Kid heard — it was a sound from farther behind, like a tire blowing out, or the engine missing fire... A single hollow pop borne faintly to him by the rushing wind — one, and then another.
Oh, well, Abe could look out for himself. Everything was swimming in gravy.
Behind him, if he could have seen, a car still followed the truck. But the car held Little Goldie and his gang. The taxi the Dropper had come in, at this very moment was plunging and veering wildly down the steep hill fields, with a dead man at the wheel. The car was not found until two days later, lying overturned in a black arm of the brackish swamp, where Croton River emptied its delta into the Hudson. The man beneath it was not found until the car was pulled off him.
The Kid guessed none of this. But he lifted his head suspiciously, as he felt, somehow, danger in the lightening air. A minute later, and he would have stopped the truck to investigate. It was thundering now across the new bridge over the Croton River. As soon as they crossed it, he decided, he would stop her and investigate—
“Now,” whispered Sollie Fern, a tense, terrible whisper in the hidden darkness just behind the Dropper. Out of the two holes in the truck right behind his back there was a double spurt of flame, the sudden thunder of two shots together, the acrid spread of smoke.
After a moment’s silence, Mike Spadoni stopped his engine. The brakes ground to a standstill. Engel, crouched between the chauffeur and the enemy gang leader, slid his hand down toward his gun.
The truck stopped entirely. Only then they dared look at the still, white face of the gangster beside them. It stared sightlessly ahead. With a strange, convulsive movement, the Dropper’s body tumbled over the running board, upon the roadway beneath.
“Got him!” breathed Engel unbelievingly. “Bumped the lob off!”
The two Fein boys were craw ling toward the back of the truck, over the boxes of contraband. Sollie reached the back door and clawed for the catch. “Get ’Em” Engel swung himself out on the river side, Spadoni following close after him. As they reached the ground they looked down for the dead body of the gangster.
It was not there!
Unbelievingly they stared at each other. The Dropper had gone, after all — nobody would drop him! Hard common sense swung back — of course the truck had moved forward a trifle, and the body had rolled back. They fell on their knees, peering toward the rear.
The car following them knew differently. Goldie, eyes tense on the slowing truck ahead, was the first who had seen the figure that rolled out from under its wheels thirty seconds later, and started running uncertainly toward the base of the hill. The first gray of dawn was triumphant in the sky now: the man was plainly visible, running more confidently with every step.
“Hey, cut round him, Angie,” he ordered fiercely.
At this place, as Goldie remembered, there was a wide, flat, grassy circle, the beginning of an intended park. Round this the earshot, and, having gotten the man between it and the truck, swung skillfully toward the west again, catching him in the full glare of its headlights, which died away beyond him against the milk truck and the distant river mists.
“Abe,” called out the Dropper exultantly, “we’ll shoot ’em up yet—”