“Why don’t you try it and find out?”
She placed a hand over one of his on the wheel and gave it a light squeeze to denote acquiescence. “I’m ready for orders!”
Once determined to trust her he spent ten minutes telling her his plans. Her occasional questions were intelligent and to the point, and he elaborated fully on each move he wanted her to make. They were far out on South West 8th Street, west of Red Road, and the city lights were getting further apart, when he noticed she was not listening. He interrupted himself to ask: “What’s the matter?”
“Have you a gun?” She asked without noticeable excitement. “My first official act is to tell you we’re in for trouble. We’re being followed.”
“I have a gun all right,” Stan assured her with marked approval, “but we won’t need to use it. LeRoy has a couple of unwanted bodyguards trailing me all over town. I’ll grade you a hundred per cent for observation.”
“But you’ll have to do better. We lost the police car when you turned south on Grapeland Boulevard. They probably figured we were headed for the Alligator Inn and went on out Flagler. The car in back of us was tailing them—but it’s on us now and coming like hell. You better step on it. I know the tactics. It’s going to shove us over to the curb and give us a broadside. Let me take your gun. I have my own and I can shoot two handed.”
She was cool as a General taking his tub, and Stan awarded himself orchids for enlisting her help, hoping they would not turn into tuberoses before their ride was finished. As he handed Millie his blue .38 he caught a glimpse of the pursuing car in the rearview mirror. It flashed under a street lamp, and showed up as a powerful roadster with top and curtains in place. Millie was right! The Miami police department boasted no imported roadsters among their official cars.
“They’ll have to do over ninety to catch us!” Stan shoved the Buick wide open. “Hang on!”
“Don’t worry,” said Millie. “That boat can do a hundred in a pinch!”
A sliver of glass flew from the rear window of the car and drew blood from Stan’s right ear. The Buick swerved and jumped to seventy-five, rocking violently.
“Are you hit?” she asked anxiously. “They’ve started shooting with a silencer. Keep down over the wheel.” Stan’s .38 went off deafeningly close to his ear. The car in back jerked to the right, getting out of Millie’s range. She laughed contagiously.
“My God!” Stan exclaimed. “I believe you like this sort of thing!”
The side window went down and the .38 blazed again, followed immediately by the spiteful crack of the pearl-handled automatic. The roaster, drawing up on the right, fell back. “Like it?” breathed Millie. “Boy, I love it!”
“Well sit tight!” Stan warned. “We’re about to take a corner!”
He reached for the dash and pushed a switch. The wail of the Buick’s police siren rose eerily, applying icicles to Millie’s spine. Ahead on the right a light marked Flagami Boulevard, a short road winding along close by the Tamiami Canal. The Buick hit at seventy, and the tires smoked on the wet road as Stan used the brakes and skidded into the turn.
The speeding car in back missed them by three feet, but fast as it was going Millie gave it a couple from the automatic as it passed. Stan slammed the sturdy Buick, wide open, around two more right hand turns into Tamiami Boulevard, which carried them back to South West 8th Street. There he made a left turn at slightly less speed.
Police sirens were screaming madly from two directions. The roadster had disappeared, but Stan ran the Buick six blocks back toward town before he stopped with a motorcycle on one side and a police cruiser on the other.
The motorcycle policeman, Officer Taggart, recognized Stan, and pointed with concern at the red stained handkerchief with which Millie was mopping Stan’s ear. “Shall I get an ambulance, Mr. Rice?” he asked.
“Get a move on, Barney Oldfield!” Millie yelled at him excitedly. “I’ll clean his ear! You start a drag for an Hispano-Suiza roadster with New York plates double ‘Y’ six-four-nine-three! That car just shot at us and it belonged to Edward Fowler!” She threw two delectable arms around Stan’s neck and kissed him full on the lips. “I’ve never had so much fun in my life, Stan Rice!”
“Umm, Lord!” he said, with both eyes dosed. “Are you telling me!”
Chapter XX
The Alligator Inn was located far enough out on the Tamiami Trail so that late strains of swing music disturbed no one but a few nesting birds in neighboring trees. It was a rambling two story combination of pseudologs, and Dutch dormer windows, incongruously shielded from the road by a screen of tropical palms. To offset the inconvenience of an overly long drive from Miami, it offered until dawn: smoking music from an insane colored orchestra led by the dusky Tennessee Johnson; food, touched by the magic hand of a three hundred pound Negress, affectionately known as “Aunty Trollop”; and a bored thirteen foot alligator, called Jake.
Jake lived in a barred tank at the rear of the diningroom, and vied heavily with Tennessee Johnson, and Aunty Trollop, as a drawing card. His existence was normally very peaceful, for he was a morose old fellow, anxious to be let alone. The minor annoyances of being poked and made to hiss, for the edification of startled young ladies, and the pollution of his water with cocktails presented by solicitous drunks, he took in his phlegmatic way, maintaining a great silence.
Millie pulled Stan from the dance floor in the middle of their second dance, and stopped in front
