The Detective O'Malley MEGAPACK by William MacHarg

Author:William MacHarg [MacHarg, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, prodedural, crime
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

TOO MANY MILES

Originally published in Collier’s, April 1, 1933.

“This case,” said O’Malley, “a truck owner got knocked over. This fellow had a fleet of trucks and rented ’em, and sometimes I guess he rented some to rum-runners. Well, he was on Long Island for some reason. Then they found his car and looked up the license—Mawson his name was. Then they found him. He was in Jamaica Bay.”

“What had been done to him?” I asked.

“He had been shot. A guy’s got no chance to solve this kind of case, because he asks questions but nobody tells him the answers.”

We started asking questions. We were at police headquarters. They had a hard-eyed, well-dressed young man there, named Kizer, and O’Malley began with him.

“You a bootlegger?” he inquired. “Speak up; I’m no enforcement officer.”

“That’s what I am.”

“You rent some trucks from this dead guy the night that he got killed?”

“Not me. Some other fellows did. They delivered my part of the stuff to me all right. I don’t know their names.”

“In this case I guess nobody don’t know any names.”

Mrs. Mawson had been brought to headquarters, but had collapsed. A police surgeon had been taking care of her, and her own doctor had come there too. The doctors let us see her only a few minutes.

“What was your husband doing on Long Island that night?” O’Malley asked her.

“I have no idea. He never told me anything about his business.”

“Did he know he was on the spot?”

“If he did, he kept it from me. He knew I was always afraid something like this might happen. He was always driving around alone at night.”

“When did you see him last?”

“At dinner. The car was parked outside. After dinner he said he was going out and might be late, but I didn’t think anything of that because it happened so often.”

* * * *

Mrs. Mawson’s doctor came out of the room with us. He was young and pleasant-spoken and his name was Landol.

“Mrs. Mawson is in no condition to remember details right now,” he told us. “If she recalls anything that will be of help to you I’ll make a note of it.”

We thanked him.

“We’ll go see where they found the guy,” O’Malley decided.

We drove out to Jamaica Bay. There were marshes and innumerable inlets of the sea, and scores of small boats, some of which I did not doubt were rum-runners; and there were tire tracks in the marsh near where Mawson had been found, and O’Malley made careful note of them. We went then to look at Mawson. He didn’t look as I expected a truck owner would look. He was a dapper little man about thirty-five years old, partly bald, and he had worn hornrimmed spectacles. His spectacles were broken. He had been tightly tied with several pieces of new rope, and the police had cut the rope.

“Are those seaman’s knots, O’Malley,” I inquired, “or were they tied by bootleggers?”

He looked at them. “Them knots don’t mean a thing to me. We’ll see his car.

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