He sat very still and quiet for several minutes, and so did I. After a while I heard a soft hiss, a bare whisper of a hiss, and then I recognized it as the vacuum stop on the apartment building's front door. Then a figure grew out of the darkness, heading toward the limousine.
“Remember, Humphrey.”
He whimpered a little. A very small whimper.
Then suddenly the night was alive with noise. The twin air horns on that limousine exploded a steady stream of sound into the darkness. I jerked my pistol out of Humphrey's neck and clubbed him with the barrel. I hit him again and again, and finally the noise of the horns stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I jumped out of the car and almost ran over Burton.
“Listen,” I said, jamming the revolver hard into his gut, “you make one sound and you're dead! You understand that?”
“What... What's going on here! Where's Robert!”
“If Robert's your chauffeur he's nursing a fractured skull. Now get in under the wheel and do it quick!”
“No!” His eyes were wild. He was completely panic stricken. He tried to shove himself away from me, and I knew immediately that it would have to be done here and now.
To muffle the sound I jammed the muzzle hard into his soft stomach—still the noise sounded like a TNT plant going up when I pulled the trigger. Burton's mouth flew open. He started clawing at his middle, but that action was pure reflex. Alex Burton had died almost instantly.
His body was a hell of a thing to handle. He had weighed almost two hundred pounds and there didn't seem to be any place to grab hold. However, I did manage to get him in the back seat and close the door. Then I got under the wheel of the limousine, after shoving Humphrey down to the floorboards, and got away from there. It seemed incredible to me that the street wasn't filled with people—horns blasting, guns exploding!
The noise, I guess, hadn't been nearly as loud as it had seemed to me, but it had been plenty loud enough.
For a moment all I could think of was getting away from that neighborhood as fast as possible, but soon I began to settle down. The excitement and wildness, the exhilaration born of sudden violence, began to cool in my brain and I thought: Hold it, Surratt! This is no time to risk a reckless driving charge, not with a dead man in the car, an ex-governor at that! Maybe a dead ex-governor and a dead chauffeur as well.
Traffic was pretty thin on the side streets at that time of night, and I kept going south and east, not knowing where I was going, but knowing that I had to get that limousine and the bodies as far away from the apartment as possible. Pretty soon we were, in the factory district again, not far from Burton's own plant, and I decided that this would be as good a place as any. This part of town was drab, dead and lifeless at this time of night; the buildings standing gaunt and empty-eyed. I turned into a narrow brick paved street, a private one-way street that would be jammed in the daytime with trucks loading and unloading at one of the factories, but now it was empty.
I stopped the limousine and listened. There was no sound at all in the immediate neighborhood. Only then did I examine the chauffeur. He was dead.
With my handkerchief I wiped the steering wheel, the dash, the doors, the windows, everything I might have touched. Then I wiped Humphrey's automatic and left it on the front seat—I had no use for automatics, and it wouldn't have been smart to keep it if I had.
I had one good look at Burton before I left. He didn't look like much. His mouth was open, as though he were trying to yell, and his eyes were open, very wide. He looked like the most surprised bastard in the world.
I felt pretty good.
It had come off very nicely. The one man in Lake City who had had the power and brains to buck John Venci was dead. It was clear sailing now; the single danger had been eliminated. I said aloud, “Sweet dreams, boys,” and walked away.
I turned west and saw a bar at the end of the block. Up ahead, in the middle of the next block there was an all night eating place—I went in and ordered a glass of milk and a piece of pie. Later I called a taxi, and when he arrived I gave the driver an address down town. Downtown I took another cab and went to an address south-east, and from there I took still another cab to within a couple of blocks of my apartment. It took some time, but it would be worth it when the cops went to work.
It was about one o'clock when I finally walked into my apartment. I had company. It was Dorris Venci.
I said, “Well, for a woman who never wanted to see me again, you pop up in some pretty strange places.”
“I had to know!” she said quickly. “Did you...?”
“I did.”
“... Oh.”
I closed the door, walked into the room and dropped into a chair. She sat on the sofa with her hands clasped in her lap, every muscle in her body as rigid as steel. “Are... Are you sure?” she said nervously.
“I give you my personal guarantee; you can stop worrying about Burton's hoodlums coming in your windows and you can stop worrying about being killed.
“Relax, now. You're going to fly all to pieces one of these days if you don't learn how to relax.” I was tired. It had been a very successful day, but it had also been a wearing one. “Why don't you go home,” I said, “and try to get some sleep?”
She stared at her hands. “Yes... I suppose I should.”
But she didn't move.
“Well,” I said, “you might as well come out with it.”
“What?”
“You didn't come here just to find out about Burton. All you had to do was lift the phone; I would have told you. No, you came here because you've got something on your mind, so what is it?”
She looked at me. “Don't you know?”
Suddenly I wasn't as tired as I thought I was. Still, there was caution in the back of my brain and it kept nudging me.
“Yes,” she said flatly, “You know. And John. The only two people in the world who knew, or guessed, or could... satisfy... this awful sickness in my soul.”
“It's not as monstrous as you think,” I said. “Matter of fact, it is fairly common.”
More than anything in the world she wanted to run. She wanted to run from the apartment, from me, from herself most of all, but she couldn't move.
I knew what the end of this was going to be. I didn't know if it was smart, and at that moment I didn't care, but the longer I looked at Dorris Venci the more desirable she became. She was really a hell of a woman, especially at a time like this.
I stared at her and could think of nothing else. The vision of Pat Kelso was swept from my brain completely and a bright blue flame took its place. I grabbed her arm, just below the wrist joint, and began to squeeze. I dug my fingers in the most sensitive area, between the two flexon tendons, and applied sharp pressure to the median nerve.
Her reaction was instant and violent. The shock went through her, shook her. She came off the couch and threw herself at me. “Now! Now!”
CHAPTER TEN
THE NEWSPAPERS made a hell of a racket about the Burton killing. I had expected headlines, and maybe even a front page editorial, but I hadn't expected anything like what really happened. For a whole week there was nothing but Alex Burton.
According to newspaper editorialists and radio commentators, St. Francis of Assisi had been an outright scoundrel, compared to Alex Burton. A feature story on Burton's life ran to twelve installments. Preachers made him a martyr, used him as a subject for a number of sermons. A song writer composed something called Alex Burton, Friend Of The Common Man. A citizens' committee was formed and issued an ultimatum to the police department: get Alex Burton's murderer, or else!
The craziest thing about the whole affair, though, was that every man, woman and child in Lake City believed every word they read or heard concerning the late Alex Burton. They thought of him as a kindly man who loved children, headed charity organizations, gave Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets to the needy; they thought of him as a tower of righteousness and strength. They thought of him as being on just one small step below God Himself!