“Naturally you would be suspicious. But the very fact that I know about your phone call would indicate that I’m what I say I am, wouldn’t it?”
That seemed logical, on the surface at least. Doris started to pick up her bag and did not protest when he picked it up instead.
“I think,” he said, “I’d better escort you to New York. You’re in danger. You wouldn’t have called Mr. Benson, otherwise. So, I’ll be guard for you.”
“All right. I was going to take the plane. We can get a cab—”
“I have my own car out here. Two friends of mine are with me. I’ll tell them to get out, and we’ll drive to the airport. Meanwhile, you can tell me what’s on your mind.”
He laughed a little at her expression, and the little vein on his forehead squirmed.
“I can see by your expression that you’d rather talk only to Mr. Benson,” he said. “That’s all right with me. Here we are.”
They passed through the revolving door, and he put a hand under her elbow and steered her to a four-passenger coupé. She vaguely saw two men in the narrow rear seat, and then felt herself getting in as the “associate” of Mr. Benson opened the right-hand door.
He climbed behind the wheel and the car started. It started down the street — away from the airport! At first, Doris thought the man merely meant to turn around a block instead of making a U turn on crowded Woodward Avenue. But he kept on going.
“Say—” she began.
Then she stopped, cold all over. Because he was grinning a little, and it was not pleasant at all. She turned and really looked at the two behind, then, and saw what a little fool she had been.
They were two of the three who had been in that sedan on the other side of the State early that morning!
“Hi, toots,” said one. The other said nothing; he just flexed his hand a very little on the butt of the automatic he held across his knees.
Doris swallowed hard. She knew, now, what had happened. The man who had approached her in the lobby had been near enough to the switchboard to hear calls, or else had bribed the operator. Then he had acted to keep her from ever talking — to Benson or anybody else!
She had been a fool and it looked as if she were going to pay for it with her life!
“How did you get wise to the fact that something was going to happen on the dunes road this morning?” the man at the wheel asked, the vein in his forehead writhing as if it had life of its own.
Doris said nothing.
“Yeah, and just what are you wise to?” snapped one of the men in the back seat.
Doris made the same answer; in other words, no answer at all.
“O. K.,” grinned the man at the wheel. “Don’t talk if you don’t feel like it. It doesn’t make any real difference if we find out what you know. We just want to be sure nobody else does.”
The car was going as fast as the man could wheel it and not get unwelcome attentions from the police. It neared the vast expanse of the Marr automobile plant, one of the motor city’s biggest.
The car they were in was not a very expensive one, but it was a deluxe model of its make. There were two windshield wipers, two sunshades, two rear-view mirrors.
In the rear-view mirrow provided for the passenger on the front seat, Doris noticed that a car was coming after them pretty closely. It was a coupé. She couldn’t see who was in it and didn’t care very much who it was. It was the proximity of the coupé, itself, that interested her.
Doris had her feet straight out in front of her, under the dash. With her right foot she began tapping gently and rapidly against the side of the car.
It sounded amazingly like something the matter with a wheel. Something serious.
“Hey! What’s that?” said one of the two in the rear.
“Must be a wheel bearing,” scowled the man at the wheel. “Aw, let it go. We’ve got no time for—”
Doris was tapping her foot more loudly and was slowing the rhythm of it just a little as the man instinctively slowed speed.
“We can’t go along sounding like a snare drum,” he snarled. “Of all the rotten—”
He was going quite a little slower, now, and Doris’s left hand shot out.
The gearshift was on the steering column. She grabbed it with her palm braced hard against it, and with all her strength she shoved!
The bedlam made by shoving a car into reverse while it’s going ahead about twenty miles an hour is something that must be heard to be believed. Maybe a tooth or two went, probably not, the way they make cars, now. But everything locked from the fan at the front to the wheels in the rear.
The men raved curses and tried to recover their balance. The coupé behind honked loudly, and then plowed into their rear. A crowd started gathering at once; a couple of cops began running from far places. And one of the men in the rear swung his gun viciously to club Doris down!
But Doris wasn’t waiting for the blow to land. The driver already had the car in first again and was stepping on it. And Doris got the door open. She jerked far to the right to escape the downward arc of the gun barrel, and the jerk carried her out the door to land in the street on the back of her pretty neck.
For just an instant the car hesitated; then one of the men in back yelled: “Step on it!” There were two vengeful shots, which missed the girl by a couple of inches.
Then the car sped on, with the two cops racing futilely after it and waving guns as they tried for shots at the rear tires. But they had to give up the notion because of the people around.
The man was out of the coupé, which had a twisted bumper but was otherwise undamaged.
“In here. I’ll get you away.”
It was the young fellow with the hair growing high on his forehead, and with the vital black eyes. The fellow she had met that dawn across the State. Cole Wilson.
“Cole—”
He had her in the coupé as if she’d weighed about a pound and a half and was sending the car toward the next side street. It swooped left and doubled back around the block.
“Cole! What were you doing back there?”
“I saw you leave your hotel,” Cole said, black eyes like polished onyx. “It looked fishy, so I followed you. Lucky I did.”
“Yes, I suppose it was — lucky,” murmured Doris, staring at him with her lip caught between her teeth.
“You sound as if you weren’t quite sure,” he said.
“I’m… I’m not. I can’t figure out your position in all this.”
“It ought to be easy,” said Cole. “You’ve known me a long time.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t know you at all!”
“Where were you bound for when those guys picked you up?” said Cole. “The airport?”
Doris said nothing.
“You mentioned once that you thought you might see this man, Benson, in New York. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.”
“Maybe not,” said Doris. She was beginning to shiver and feel hysterical from her recent escape. But she controlled it.
“You’d better just go to another hotel and wait,” said Cole.
Doris looked as if she were, by nature, frank and unconcealing. But if that were so, something seemed to have taught her a few lessons recently. For she said:
“Maybe you’re right, Cole. You’d better let me out here, just in case you’re being followed. I’ll get a cab.”
So he let her out, and she got a cab—
But first she went to a phone booth with a handful of change and phoned New York again. This time to get in touch with a man named Robert Mantis.
“Bob, this is Doris.”
“Darling!” came a vibrant voice. “As if you had to tell me! But what’s up? Any news?”
“Some,” said Doris wearily. “But not the kind we are interested in. Bob, I’m coming to New York to see Mr. Benson. Will you tell him that? I couldn’t get him on the phone. Then you can meet me at the station and go there with me.”