road was not graveled, since it apparently led to nowhere. I traveled for maybe a quarter mile between heavy stands of trees, then turned the car around and headed toward the pavement, facing the paved street and the club. About a hundred yards from the street I pulled the Chevy on a rutted shoulder, in the long shadows, and stopped.
I would wait. I would wait and watch that road, and when the limousine came out I would follow it right to the end of the line. There was no sense beating my brains out on something I couldn't whip, it was much easier to wait. Sooner or later I would find an opening. Sooner or later Burton would relax.
I checked the .38 that Dorris Venci had left for me. I checked the double action mechanism, the cylinder rotating mechanism, and the firing pin. I took five cartridges from the sealed box, wiped the cartridges carefully with my handkerchief and slipped them into the cylinder. I rotated the cylinder until the one empty chamber was in firing position and I eased the hammer down on it. The extra cartridges I dropped into my coat pocket; the .38 went into my waistband where it was convenient and stood little chance of becoming fouled with lint.
I waited.
Dusk became darkness, and I could see the misty lights of the club.
Seven, eight, nine o'clock.
I waited.
Nine, ten, ten-thirty. I had no watch but I could hear those out-of-tune electronic chimes banging out each quarter hour, so I knew what time it was, although I tried not to listen.
Eleven o'clock, eleven-fifteen.
I checked the .38 again just to give my hands something to do. Eleven-thirty. I saw the limousine turn off the graveled road and onto the highway. If my chance was coming tonight, it would be soon. I waited until the limousine had passed, then switched my lights on and followed.
After all the tailing and waiting and hoping, it seemed anti-climatic that the actual business of killing Burton should be so easy. Once more we took the expressway to town, and then the limousine turned west on North Hampton Street and I thought: By God, I've been doing all this tail chasing for nothing! We were headed right back where I started from. The apartment building.
I switched off my lights and coasted to the curb about a block behind the limousine. I saw Burton and Pat Kelso get out of the car, and I saw the chauffeur standing there holding the door open for them. Burton and his secretary started up to walk to the front entrance. I headed for the limousine.
I stuck my head in the door and said, “Whataya know, Humphrey? I had a feeling we might meet again sometime.”
At first he just looked surprised. Then he recognized me and began to get mad. I guess he had been thinking about our chat in front of the University Club. He had it all planned out in his mind just how he was going to tell me off if he ever saw me again, but before he could say anything I stuck the .38 in his face. I put it right under his nose where he could smell the gun oil and steel.
“What the hell is this!”
“Nothing yet,” I said, getting into the back seat. “Just stay where you are. Don't move or make a sound.”
“By God, if you think...!”
I jammed the muzzle into his throat and he almost fainted. “Listen to me, punk, and listen good! I want you to sit there like a goddamn statue. You move one muscle and I'll blow the roof of your mouth through your skull!”
He could be a very smart boy when it suited him. He didn't move a muscle. He sat just like a statue. I leaned over the back of the seat, moving the muzzle of the .38 until it was pressing against the base of his skull, then I patted him down. He wore a .38 automatic in a shoulder holster, just like in the movies. His only trouble was that automatic might as well have been a chocolate bar, for all the good it had done him. He hadn't even made a move in its direction.
I never cared for automatics. There are too many things to go wrong with them. I shoved it in my coat pocket, then reached back with one hand and pulled down the folding jump seat by the door.
“If it's money,” he said tightly, “I ain't got any.”
“It isn't money,” I said.
“What is it, then? For God's sake, what is it?”
“All right, Humphrey,” I said, “I'll tell you what it is. I'm going to kill your boss. When he come out of that apartment building, you're going to just sit there behind the wheel and say nothing and do nothing. Is that clear?”
“Kill Mr. Burton? Why?”
“I've got my reasons, Humphrey.”
“For Christ's sake, Mr. Burton's the finest guy in the world! Why in the world would you want to kill him?”
“He's so goddamn nice, why does he dress his chauffeur in a .38?”
“Jeez, for protection!”
I laughed. “A fine lot of protection he's going to get out of you, Humphrey. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you didn't lose your job over this.”
He was sweating plenty. I kept grinding the muzzle of my revolver into the back of his neck and I could see the nervous sweat oozing out on his face.
“Jeez, won't you take that thing out of my neck!”
“Sorry, Humphrey, it's necessary. It's a reminder of what will happen to you if you should feel any hero impulse coming on.”
He sat very still and quiet for several minutes, and so did I. After a while I heard a soft hiss, a bare whisper of a hiss, and then I recognized it as the vacuum stop on the apartment building's front door. Then a figure grew out of the darkness, heading toward the limousine.
“Remember, Humphrey.”
He whimpered a little. A very small whimper.
Then suddenly the night was alive with noise. The twin air horns on that limousine exploded a steady stream of sound into the darkness. I jerked my pistol out of Humphrey's neck and clubbed him with the barrel. I hit him again and again, and finally the noise of the horns stopped as abruptly as it had begun. I jumped out of the car and almost ran over Burton.
“Listen,” I said, jamming the revolver hard into his gut, “you make one sound and you're dead! You understand that?”
“What... What's going on here! Where's Robert!”
“If Robert's your chauffeur he's nursing a fractured skull. Now get in under the wheel and do it quick!”
“No!” His eyes were wild. He was completely panic stricken. He tried to shove himself away from me, and I knew immediately that it would have to be done here and now.
To muffle the sound I jammed the muzzle hard into his soft stomach—still the noise sounded like a TNT plant going up when I pulled the trigger. Burton's mouth flew open. He started clawing at his middle, but that action was pure reflex. Alex Burton had died almost instantly.
His body was a hell of a thing to handle. He had weighed almost two hundred pounds and there didn't seem to be any place to grab hold. However, I did manage to get him in the back seat and close the door. Then I got under the wheel of the limousine, after shoving Humphrey down to the floorboards, and got away from there. It seemed incredible to me that the street wasn't filled with people—horns blasting, guns exploding!
The noise, I guess, hadn't been nearly as loud as it had seemed to me, but it had been plenty loud enough.
For a moment all I could think of was getting away from that neighborhood as fast as possible, but soon I began to settle down. The excitement and wildness, the exhilaration born of sudden violence, began to cool in my brain and I thought: Hold it, Surratt! This is no time to risk a reckless driving charge, not with a dead man in the car, an ex-governor at that! Maybe a dead ex-governor and a dead chauffeur as well.
Traffic was pretty thin on the side streets at that time of night, and I kept going south and east, not knowing where I was going, but knowing that I had to get that limousine and the bodies as far away from the apartment as possible. Pretty soon we were, in the factory district again, not far from Burton's own plant, and I decided that this
