Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories by Erle Stanley Gardner

Author:Erle Stanley Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_classic
Publisher: Davis Publications
Published: 1974-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The next thing I remembered, I was in a warm musty darkness with a sore head and an aching sensation at my wrists. I tried to move my arms, and realized my hands were tied behind my back.

From the stuffy thick blackness I heard Gabby’s voice. “How’s it coming, Jay?”

“What,” I asked, “happened?”

“The guy from behind,” Gabby explained. “The one who was with the two girls. He caught you on the head just as you went down. I smeared his nose all over his face with a straight right, and then the guy behind me hit me just over the kidneys with everything he had.”

“What about the girls?”

Gabby said, “The redhead ran away. I think she’s gone for help. The other one just stood there watching. The damn spy.”

My head was feeling a little better, although it still ached. I said, “If you ask me, it was the redhead who was the decoy. They wouldn’t have let her run away if she hadn’t been. Where are we?”

“Inside a boxcar.”

“What,” I asked, “is it all about?”

Once more Gabby was silent, but this time it was the tight-lipped silence of a man who is carefully guarding a secret.

I tried to roll over so I could take some of the pressure off my wrists. My shoulder hurt and it was hard to keep my balance.

Gabby heard me move. “Take it easy, Jay. I’m getting this knot worked loose, I think.”

After a minute or two Gabby said triumphantly, “I’ve got it, Jay. Just another minute and we’ll be loose, and then we’ll be out of here.”

I heard his feet on the planks, heard him starting toward me—

With an ominous rumble the door slid back along its tracks. The beam of a flashlight stabbed into the darkness.

Gabby flung himself flat on the floor, keeping his ankles crossed, his hands behind his back.

There was a peculiar scuffling sound from the outer darkness, then the sobbing breathing of a woman.

I got my head around to where I could see a little more of what was happening.

Lorraine Dawson was literally lifted and thrown into the car by three men.

The beam of the flashlight swung around and then suddenly stopped. “Do you,” demanded a voice, “see what I see?”

I looked along the beam of the flashlight. It was centered on the pieces of rope that Gabby had untied from his wrists and ankles.

The three men were bunched there in the doorway, the beam of the flashlight holding Gabby as a target like a helpless airplane caught in a vortex of searchlights.

Gabby made one swift leap and hit the group feet first.

I heard the thud of his heels striking against flesh. The flashlight was jerked up, looped the loop, hit the side of the boxcar, hesitated a moment at the edge of the door, then fell to the tracks. The sounds of bodies threshing around in a struggle, the thud of blows filled the night. All of a sudden there was a lull, then shouts and curses as our assailants piled out of the boxcar.

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