Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

2 I cruised along through the out- skirts of Mojave and almost to the far end of the short main street, eased into a filling station, and checked the rearview. The big car was just holing up in a station two blocks back and on the other side. He could keep track of me from there. I waited until Maggie came back, then climbed down and went around the end of the build- ing marked MEN. But I kept right on going. Once out of sight of my truck, I sped down the alley on the double. Two blocks, then a left turn and I casually eased down the half block toward the highway. I wondered who it would be— Akers’ hired hands, or Wirth’s. _ When I got a peek at the big car, I worked a little farther along until I saw the man behind the wheel. It was Joe—Wirth’s bird- dog, the boy in the fancy tweeds. I turned my back to light a smoke and think. It was Wirth’s idea, then. He’d held me up for some reason he’d never told me, because he wasn’t any more prepared to un- load the stuff on Sunday morning than he was on Saturday afternoon. But he had let me go Sunday. He’d all but kissed me good-bye. 1 blew a cloud of smoke and took a second look. I saw Varney. climb- ing into. the car on the other side! I started back to my rig, the way I'd come. Joe and mami urn 126 er. So Wirth and Bart Akers -were running hand in hand. Sure, Wirth could say “put it on -the bill” and walk out. He probably owned part—maybe most or all— of the Silver King. That put Maggie in on the ground floor. I’d suckered in all the way. The phony card game. The big act where Matt Brady tried to play hero and got a crimp in his skull. And all the time the blonde had been making those eyes of hers do tricks, it had been just a game. It wasn’t hard to see now. Wirth keeping me in Reno just long enough to steer me into the blonde. Some sleight of hand and the girl ordered out of town—but not be- fore she’d laid the ground work about a sister in L. A.-And even if I hadn’t suggested her coming with me, she could have angled it so I would. But why? | Why did Jake and Bart Akers groom a trucker down with four hundred clams and a doll and send him on his way to Los Angeles? The van was empty; I'd opened it at the State-line inspection. Only the girl and her things were on board. She could have gone. by train. She could have been in that car two blocks behind my rig. Why didn’t they take the girl and her two suitcases in their car? - I stopped on that and lit another smoke. Any way you looked at it there was only one answer. What- ever it was I carried, it was too hot ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE Gomichbooksteo