He reached over and picked up the cup and took a long drink of coffee, smiled into the phone, said: “Sure — I’m all right — I got a little scratch on my head but I’m all right... Sure... Sure — we were right... All right, Honey — I’ll be waiting for you. Hurry up... G’bye...”
He hung up, curved his mouth to a wide grin, finished his coffee, lit a cigarette and waited.
Pigeon Blood
The woman was bent far forward over the steering wheel of the open roadster. Her eyes, narrowed to long black-fringed slits, moved regularly down and up, from the glistening road ahead, to the small rear view mirror above the windshield. The two circles of white light in the mirror grew steadily larger. She pressed the throttle slowly, steadily downward; there was no sound but the roar of the wind and the deep purr of the powerful engine.
There was a sudden sharp crack; a little frosted circle appeared on the windshield. The woman pressed the throttle to the floor. She was pale; her eyes were suddenly large and dark and afraid, her lips were pressed tightly together. The tires screeched on the wet pavement as the car roared around a long, shallow curve. The headlights of the pursuing car grew larger.
The second and third shots were wild, or buried themselves harmlessly in the body of the car; the fourth struck the left rear tire and the car swerved crazily, skidded halfway across the road. Very suddenly there was bright yellow light right ahead, at the side of the road. The woman jammed on the brakes, jerked the wheel hard over; the tires slid, screamed raggedly over the gravel in front of the gas station, the car stopped. The other car went by at seventy-five miles an hour. One last shot thudded into the back of the seat beside the woman and then the other car had disappeared into the darkness.
Two men ran out of the gas station. Another man stood in the doorway. The woman was leaning back straight in the seat and her eyes were very wide; she was breathing hard, unevenly.
One of the men put his hand on her shoulder, asked: “Are you all right, lady?”
She nodded.
The other man asked: “Holdups?” He was a short, middle-aged man and his eyes were bright, interested.
The woman opened her bag and took out a cigarette. She said shakily: “I guess so.” She pulled out the dashboard lighter, waited until it glowed red and held it to her cigarette.
The younger man was inspecting the back of the car. He said: “They punctured the tank. It’s a good thing you stopped — you couldn’t have gone much farther.”
“Yes — I guess it’s a very good thing I stopped,” she said, mechanically. She took a deep drag of her cigarette.
The other man said: “That’s the third holdup out here this week.”
The woman spoke to the younger man. “Can you get me a cab?”
He said: “Sure.” Then he knelt beside the blown-out tire, said: “Look, Ed — they almost cut it in two.”
The man in the doorway called to her: “You want a cab, lady?”
She smiled, nodded, and the man disappeared into the gas station; he came back to the doorway in a minute, over to the car. “There’ll be a cab here in a little while, lady,” he said.
She thanked him.
“This is one of the worst stretches of road on Long Island — for highwaymen.” He leaned on the door of the car. “Did they try to nudge you off the road — or did they just start shooting?”
“They just started shooting.”
He said: “We got a repair service here — do you want us to fix up your car?”
She nodded. “How long will it take?”
“Couple days. We’ll have to get a new windshield from the branch factory in Queens — an’ take off that tank...”
She took a card out of her bag and gave it to him, said: “Call me up when it’s finished.”
After a little while, a cab came out of the darkness of a side street, turned into the station. The woman got out of the car and went over to the cab, spoke to the driver: “Do you know any shortcuts into Manhattan? Somebody tried to hold me up on the main road a little while ago, and maybe they’re still laying for me. I don’t want any more of it — I want to go home.” She was very emphatic.
The driver was a big red-faced Irishman. He grinned, said: “Lady — I know a million of ‘em. You’ll be as safe with me as you’d be in your own home.”
She raised her hand in a gesture of farewell to the three men around her car and got into the cab. After the cab had disappeared, the man to whom she had given the card took it out of his pocket and squinted at it, read aloud: “Mrs Dale Hanan — Five-eighty Park Avenue.”
The short, middle-aged man bobbed his head knowingly. “Sure,” he said — “I knew she was class. She’s Hanan’s wife — the millionaire. Made his dough in oil — Oklahoma. His chauffeur told me how he got his start — didn’t have a shoestring or a place to put it, so he shot off his big toe and collected ten grand on an accident policy — grubstake on his first well. Bright boy. He’s got a big estate down at Roslyn.”
The man with the card nodded. He said: “That’s swell. We can soak him plenty.” He put the card back into his pocket.
When the cab stopped near the corner of Sixty-third and Park Avenue the woman got out, paid the driver and hurried into the apartment house. In her apartment, she put in a long-distance call to Roslyn, Long Island; when the connection had been made, she said: “Dale — it’s in the open, now. I was followed, driving back to town — shot at — the car was nearly wrecked... I don’t know what to do. Even if I call Crandall, now, and tell him I won’t go through with it — won’t go to the police — he’ll probably have me killed, just to make sure... Yes, I’m going to stay in — I’m scared... All right, dear. ‘Bye.”
She hung up, went to a wide center table and poured whiskey into a tall glass, sat down and stared vacantly at the glass — her hand was shaking a little. She smiled suddenly, crookedly, lifted the glass to her mouth and drained it. Then she put the glass on the floor and leaned back and glanced at the tiny watch at her wrist. It was ten minutes after nine.
At a few minutes after ten a black Packard town car stopped in front of a narrow building of gray stone on East Fifty-fourth Street; a tall man got out, crossed the sidewalk and rang the bell. The car went on. When the door swung open, the tall man went into a long, brightly lighted hallway, gave his hat and stick to the checkroom attendant, went swiftly up two flights of narrow stairs to the third floor. He glanced around the big, crowded room, then crossed to one corner near a window on the Fifty-fourth Street side and sat down at a small table, smiled wanly at the man across from him, said: “Mister Druse, I believe.”
The other man was about fifty, well set up, well-groomed in the way of good living. His thick gray hair was combed sharply, evenly back. He lowered his folded newspaper to the table, stared thoughtfully at the tall man.
He said: “Mister Hanan,” and his voice was very deep, metallic.
The tall man nodded shortly, leaned back and folded his arms across his narrow chest. He was ageless, perhaps thirty-five, forty-five; his thin, colorless hair was close-clipped, his long, bony face deeply tanned, a sharp and angular setting for large seal-brown eyes. His mouth was curved, mobile.
He asked: “Do you know Jeffrey Crandall?”
Druse regarded him evenly, expressionlessly for a moment, raised his head and beckoned a waiter. Hanan ordered a whiskey sour.
Druse said: “I know Mister Crandall casually. Why?”
“A little more than an hour ago Crandall, or Crandall’s men, tried to murder Mrs Hanan, as she was driving back from my place at Roslyn.” Hanan leaned forward; his eyes were wide, worried.