off the rain-polished boles of the trees.
Then it was gone.
“Who’s in that car?” I asked.
“Some men I want to avoid.”
I boiled over at that.
“That’s as obvious as hell,” I told her, “or have you taken it on the lam from some happy hatch?”
She made no reply but grabbed my arm.
“They’re coming back!” She breathed the words urgently, and I could just see her wide eyes in the darkness.
Back from the direction in which it had originally travelled rocketed the black sedan. The headlamps flashed almost angrily through the interstices of the trees down by the highway. It came to a sudden stop close to the opening of the dirt road, its brakes keening on a high note.
“They’ll come up here!” Joanne Kilvert’s voice was a panic-edged whisper.
“No they won’t,” I told her. “Get out and stay put.”
I flung the door of the coupe open and almost pushed her out of the car. A sharp needle of impatience jabbed at me as she began to lug the grip after her.
“Don’t bother with that.”
“I must—they mustn’t get it.”
When she was clear of the car, I slammed the engine into life, whirled the vehicle about in the narrow confines of the tree-fringed dirt road and went jouncing down towards the highway. In making the turn, my headlights picked out a picture of the girl standing up against a tree. She looked lost and frightened, and I suddenly felt desperately sorry for her.
Down at the highway, three men had issued from the sedan and were in the act of entering the dark corridor of the dirt road.
They were all of medium size and had a sameness about them, like cops—or crooks. In my headlights I saw they all wore black overcoats and fedoras.
I braked.
“Lookin’ for someone?” I called over the mingled purring of my motor and that of the sedan parked on the far side of the wet-glossed highway. I tried to make my voice sound like that of an Indiana hick.
One of the trio walked towards my coupe. Under the brim of the snappy fedora, I saw a lean, high-cheekboned face with a carefully clipped moustache curving under an Italian nose. His eyes were dark and had an odd flatness. The high contours of his face glistened wetly.
He stood close to the rolled-down window of the coupe, looking at me. The engines purred and the rain spattered on the leaves high above our heads.
“You had a girl in your car,” he said. I didn’t know whether it was a statement or a question. His two friends stood around in the background with their hands deep in their coat pockets, looking like characters in a circa 1930 gangster movie.
“Yeah, sure. My girl Beaulah,” I replied in my hick voice, jerking my thumb over my shoulder at the dirt road. I had a notion these characters weren’t fooled by the hick accent; it didn’t go well with my lightweight sharkskin suit, my car, or my general appearance. But I persevered. “She lives at a farm back up the road a piece. We just been to a movie in Peru—”
“We thought,” said the man with the moustache, cutting me off in the middle of my hick act, “that you might have picked up a girl who was walking along the highway—a girl with a grip.”
“No, we didn’t pick anybody up.”
“You put on some speed when we came behind you.”
“Yep, I guess I did at that. I had to put my foot down somewhat with it gettin’ late an’ my girl’s folks bein’ so strict on her. You fellas cops? Is somethin’ wrong?”
“Not cops. We just wondered if you saw the girl.”
The guy with the clipped moustache spoke coldly and watched me with those flat eyes. I still had a feeling he wasn’t fooled by my hick talk. I remembered passing a smaller road branching off the highway shortly before I met up with the girl, and I recalled the name painted on a signboard close to it.
“She could’ve gotten a ride on a car or truck that turned off on the Logansport road, or maybe took the bus into Plymouth,” I offered.
“Maybe she did at that.”
As though that was the curtain-line at the close of some play, they turned on their heels and walked towards the sedan. I sat there in the purring coupe, watched the sedan start up and move off around the bend in the direction of Peru. Maybe they were going to scout along that Logansport road.
That, it seemed, was that; so I climbed out and hoofed it up the dirt road, leaving the motor of the coupe running.
Joanne Kilvert was still standing against the tree. The darkness and the rain made her only half-distinguishable, but I could see she held the grip, clinging to it as if it was her rich uncle.
I’m a hard man: the life I’ve led has made me so. Kicking around with a gun in one pocket and a dollar to keep you from the poorhouse in the other—the way I was before the agency got to be a big thing—and Mike Lantry was just another shamus with a shiny pants’ seat. It’s a good way to acquire a hard shell. But there are chinks in the armour. I still have feelings, and I felt sorry as hell for the lost kid standing against that tree.
I began to regret that crack about her being an escapee from a happy hatch; though, for all I knew, she could have been.
“They’ve gone,” I said. “I’m sorry I lost my temper there a couple of minutes ago.”
“Have they really gone? Are you sure?”
My grudging apology seemed to go unheeded. The fear of the men in the sedan was uppermost in her mind.
“Sure. Let’s get back to the car.”
The rain slackened as we walked down the dirt road to the highway. Joanne Kilvert kept close to me as we approached the wet banner of asphalt. Belatedly, I took the grip from her to hump it down to the coupe.
We made no conversation as I kicked the car into action and swung out of the side-road, turning for Plymouth.
The snort of an engine sounded behind us, and the sedan reappeared, humming around the bend again like a beast lunging out of ambush.
Joanne Kilvert turned about in her seat, terror mirrored on her face, and her mouth quivering.
“They’re coming after us,” she gasped. “They didn’t go away, they only went around the bend and waited for a glimpse of me. They saw me get into the car.” She seemed almost paralysed with fear. Whoever the guys in the black coats and fedoras were, they had the dark-haired girl about as scared as any human being I had seen—and frightened people were no novelty to me.
I hit the accelerator hard enough to come within a fraction of slamming the pedal through the floor. The car zoomed up the wet highway, running from the sedan like an alley-cat beating it from the toughest dog in the neighbourhood. The premonition I felt a short time before
