Double or Quits - A A Fair by Fair A. A. & Gardner Erle Stanley

Author:Fair, A. A. & Gardner, Erle Stanley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Pulp
Published: 1941-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Rurus Bayley came in after I’d been waiting about half an hour. He gave me his toothy grin.

I strolled over to the garage.

“Suppose you could get those sparklers for me?”

“Sparklers!”

“That’s right.”

“What would I be doing getting any sparklers for you?”

“Oh, I thought you might accommodate a friend.”

“Buddy, you ‘re talking a language I don’t know anything about.”

I looked up at the room over the garage and said, “Those Venetian blinds certainly are nice.’

“Uh huh.”

“Let in the wind and ventilation, and you can have sunlight when you want.”

“Uh huh.”

“And by putting them at the right angle, it’s absolutely impossible for anyone to see what’s going on in the room above.”

“Well now, ain’t you the smart boy?”

“And a new bed gets moved in about the time the Venetian blinds were put on.”

“You’re saying a lot of words.”

“Makes the place very nice and comfortable up there. Must be a lot different from Sing Sing.”

The smile came off his face. For a moment there was a hot glitter in his eyes; then the grin was back once more, and he said easily, “Oh, so you know that too, do you?”

“That’s right.”

“Been reading my mail?”

“Uh huh.”

“What do you want?”

“The sparklers.”

“Buddy, ‘m going to tell you something. I laid off the racket, see? I was pretty good at it, but what does it get you? In the first place, you’re just working for a bunch of fences. You can’t move the swag without having a hook-up with some fence. You get ten thousand dollars’ worth of ice; the victim squawks it’s a fifty-thousand-dollar job; the fence pays you about a grand for the whole works, You work your head off to make eight or ten grand a year for yourself, and get as hot as a baked potato doing it. Even then the government can pull a Capone on you, and send you to the big rock for failing to pay your income taxes. After I took that jolt, I did a lot of thinking, I like lots of things you can’t get in jail. I don’t like jails. I want food that ain’t all doped up with saltpeter. I want elbow room. i like driving cars. I like lots of things they don’t give you in jails.”

I said, “Yes. Your room gives evidences of that. I took a sample of hairs from the brush on the dressing-table. You’d be surprised at what a good criminologist can tell about human hair.”

He looked at me for nearly ten seconds before he said, “I try to get along with people, but I’m not so certain you and I are going to be real buddies.”

“I’m after just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The sparklers.”

“I tell you I ain’t got them.”

“That’s right,”

“What is?”

“That you’ve told me you haven’t got them.”

“Okay, I’ve told you I haven’t got them, and I haven’t got them. Now what?”

“How about getting them?”

“I wouldn’t know where to look.”

“Think it over, and you might.”

He turned around to study me carefully. “You sing a funny song,” he said. “Who’s writing the lyrics?”’

“I am.

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