5 Detective Novels Magazine — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

KILLER UNDER GLASS eance. The man was carrying a small suitcase. He staggered on the rough, bare terrain. Phil became alert with sudden realization only when the man fell. Watching incredulously, he waited for the man to get up. But the man didn’t move. Phil slid out of the cab, not tak- ing his eyes from the fallen figure. He moved cautiously. Within seconds, how- ever, his wary approach generated into a limping run. But he slowed again at the field’s serrated margin. He crossed the last twenty yards the way he once had crossed a battlefield. Phil bent, took the man by the shoul- ders, rolled him over. The thick-fea- tured face was lax, masklike. The nose had been broken at some time, and there seemed even now a sullen, evil cast to the features. Phil slipped free the top button of the man’s coat and slid his hand over the left breast. It was soggy in there. When he brought his hand out again, he wiped his claret fingers against the man’s coat. The man was dead. He looked at the face again. If any man ever was, here was the stereotype of the bank robber, the thug. No? two feet away lay the bag. Phil touched its clasp, and its bulging sides sprang open. Phil pushed them wider. There was money, bills of hun- dred- and thousand-dollar denomination, circled by bank bands. Distantly the police siren was weaving again through the dark. There wasn’t just one bank robber. That was never the way it was. Pat had said two had tunneled into the bank. There was at least one other. They had separated, probably after this one had been wounded. Phil glanced once more at the crude-featured, death-hardened face. The man unquestionably had been a killer. His partner would be the same. Phil forced the bag shut and started at a run across the furrows, back toward the house, the bag flopping at his side with each jolt. He would get 49 word to the police. They could back- track on the trail from here and per- haps pick up traces of the other robber. He’d get on the phone, and the urgent flash would go out by radio, immediately funneling the bulk of the search in this direction. He heard a shout from the fringing woods. Brush snapped and crashed. Someone was running back there. Phil looked and saw a vague shape moving through the interlacing branches. He glanced down at the money bag and ran faster. If whoever was running back there were the other of the bank rob- bers, then Phil, with this bag in his hand, was in danger of death. If the man caught Phil in the house at the phone, he might kill Pat too. : But if he didn’t have the monéy and the man caught him, it might be dif- ferent. He ran toward the Number Two greenhouse, snatched open its doors. : He lurched inside, the humid warmth enveloping him like a bath. On the con- crete benches potted lilies were being forced for next month’s Easter trade. He threw the bag down under one of the benches, thrust it back. He punched it with quick jabs far back and to one side where no one—no one who didn’t know about it—would ever find it. He went out, closing the door, and started toward the house, bending low to take advantage of a screening privet hedge. He was darting across the drive when he glimpsed the man in the gray suit approaching on his right. The man made a staying gesture. Phil knew then that he couldn’t go into the house, not with Pat there. As if he hadn’t seen the man, he swung left, went into the boiler shed and closed the door after him. The smell of coal and the warmth were fixed in his mind as a sort of haven. But it was a desperate haven now. He picked up a coal scoop and leaned on it, trying to get his breath back. The wind sang in the flues; the heat was dry and biting, JOO (C(O) nn (C SS