Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, December 1956 — page 131: what you’re looking at

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

nearly-hidden gleam of: a_ tube caught my eye. There’d been no music out of the thing. Not a note. I stalled for time again. “Maybe now,” I called. “Keep an eye on it.” “How long is this going to take, Matt?” “Hold on,” I told her. “Just hold on, will yuh?” I turned the radio quickly in my hands. Pressing the back down, I slipped it aside, but the works I saw were strictly not of the radio variety. Familiar to me, sure, but not radio. What I was holding was the chassis of a little walkie-talkie. I didn’t remember the number. B—C something. We’d used them often enough during the war. Someone had stripped away the case and tailored the works into this little portable radio shell. Now I knew why the blonde had been so careful to pronounce the names of towns. A play-by-play report. A progress check every time Matt Brady turned the wheel. Our tail couldn’t have lost us if he’d tried. Not even at night. ~ We could do without any more of that kind of thing, too. I wrapped my fingers around the R-F amplifier tube, slipped it out, and replaced the back. Then I put her radio back on the miniature Fort Knox behind me and ee on the brake pedal. © ~ “Matt! It moved.” 7 ~ “Come on, Maggie,” I called. “That does it. We're ready to RETURN TRIP roll.” But we didn’t roll, not right away. I didn’t know which way to turn. I had to think. “We'll build up a little air,” I said, my eyes glued to the dials, : They didn’t need watching, but _ J needed some time. I realized now that the bundle of bills behind had never seen the government mint. There could only be one reason Wirth wasn’t getting into the same car with the cash, for the trip south. That reason was twenty years on the rockpile. I thought about those etchings hanging on his walls. He was a master crafts- man all right. The whole setup was plenty clear. He’d cut a set of plates and printed the phony twenties. A million dollars—two million, what did it matter? He’d picked a patsy, Matt Brady, to carry it down to a center of distribution. And Brady’d do the job for four hundred dol- lars and a smile—and maybe a hole in the head. 6. I made one solid decision. We could do without the escort when I got to discussing things with Maggie. Traffic was pretty heavy when we pulled out into the stream. I eased along playing the lights, waiting for a break, the tail- car boxed in a block behind us. Then Maggie Blake cracked up. She broke like a school kid jilted on the night of the big dance. We were riding along and suddenly 129 COPMICLOOOKS.(6O)