“You can do it now,” he said.
The panic that had almost made him yell out deepened when he saw Cramer’s face. It didn’t help at all to tell himself that he was crazy, that Cramer was all right, a swell guy. He was thinking that no one in the world, not Jarrett’s nor Mr. Russell nor even Elizabeth knew he had ever met the Cramers.
Cramer didn’t throw away the gun. After the other car had gone over the hill beyond them, he raised it and pointed it at Joe. His face was covered with perspiration, and his eyes looked frenzied.
“Okay,” he said, with a chatter in his words. “Don’t move.”
“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “Wait a minute. Don’t point that thing—”
He was feeling with his left hand for the catch on the door behind him, but he couldn’t find it.
“Look out,” Joe said. “Don’t—”
Then he knew it wasn’t any use to talk any more. He knew that Cramer was going to kill him. There wasn’t time to think of Elizabeth, there wasn’t time to be frightened.
“Hey,” he said, and tried to grab the gun, as he saw by the crazy twitch of Cramer’s lips that he was going to fire. Plunging at him from behind the wheel, he saw the flash, he heard the report; slivers of glass from the windshield bit deep into his cheek. Then he was on Cramer, fighting, and Cramer was suddenly very big, and very strong, and he had turned into two men, confused and struggling in a shaky mass on the running board.
In a moment the second man, the big man, had Cramer flat against the hood, and was twisting the gun out of his hand. When he had it clear, he tossed it across the car and straightened Cramer up with a hand at his collar. This second man was in the uniform of a state trooper, and as he saw him clearly Joe remembered how slowly the other car, the coupé, had been going — slow enough for a man to swing off, behind them, where he wouldn’t be picked off by the headlights.
It must have been the coupé, for it was coming back to them now over the brow of the hill, while William Frederick Cramer sat on the running board, his head in his hands, and a little spot of blood on a knuckle of his right one, where the trooper had crushed it against the car, just before he fired.
Fredric Brown
Don’t Look Behind You
The “trick” idea and the ingenious “gimmick” are traditional standbys of the detective short story — and long, long may they flourish; but for a “tricky story” that is infinitely removed from the mechanical devices of old, we give you Fredric Brown’s “Don’t Look Behind You” — and in all seriousness we warn you, DON’T!
Just sit back and relax, now. Try to enjoy this; it’s going to be the last story you ever read, or nearly the last. After you finish it, you can sit there and stall a while, you can find excuses to hang around your house, or your room, or your office, wherever you’re reading this; but sooner or later you’re going to have to get up and go out. That’s where I’m waiting for you: outside. Or maybe closer than that. Maybe in this room.
You think that’s a joke, of course. You think this is just a story in a magazine, and that I don’t really mean you. Keep right on thinking so. But be fair; admit that I’m giving you fair warning.
Harley bet me I couldn’t do it. He bet me a diamond he’s told me about, a diamond as big as his head. So you see why I’ve got to kill you. And why I’ve got to tell you how and why and all about it first. That’s part of the bet. It’s just the kind of idea Harley would have.
I’ll tell you about Harley first. He’s tall and handsome, and suave and cosmopolitan. He looks something like Ronald Colman, only he’s taller. He dresses like a million dollars, but it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t; I mean that he’d look distinguished in overalls. There’s a sort of magic about Harley, a mocking magic in the way he looks at you; it makes you think of palaces and far-off countries and bright music.
It was in Springfield, Ohio, that he met Justin Dean. Justin was a funny-looking little runt who was just a printer. He worked for the Atlas Printing & Engraving Company. He was a very ordinary little guy, just about as different as possible from Harley; you couldn’t pick two men more different. He was only thirty-five, but he was mostly bald already, and he had to wear thick glasses because he’d worn out his eyes doing fine printing and engraving. He was a good printer and engraver; I’ll say that for him.
I never asked Harley how he happened to come to Springfield, but the day he got there, after he’d checked in at the Castle Hotel, he stopped in at Atlas to have some calling cards made. It happened that Justin Dean was alone in the shop at the time, and he took Harley’s order for the cards; Harley wanted engraved ones, the best. Harley always wants the best of everything.
Harley probably didn’t even notice Justin; there was no reason why he should. But Justin noticed Harley all right, and in him he saw everything that he himself would like to be, and never would be, because most of the things Harley has, you have to be born with.
And Justin made the plates for the cards himself, and printed them himself, and he did a wonderful job — something he thought would be worthy of a man like Harley Prentice. That was the name engraved on the card, just that and nothing else, as all really important people have their cards engraved.
He did fine-line work on it, freehand cursive style, and used all the skill he had. It wasn’t wasted, because the next day when Harley called to get the cards, he held one and stared at it for a while, and then he looked at Justin, seeing him for the first time. He asked, “Who did this?”
And little Justin told him proudly who had done it, and Harley smiled at him and told him it was the work of an artist, and he asked Justin to have dinner with him that evening after work, in the Blue Room of the Castle Hotel.
That’s how Harley and Justin got together, but Harley was careful. He waited until he’d known Justin a while before he asked him whether or not he could make plates for five and ten dollar bills. Harley had the contacts; he could market the bills in quantity with men who specialized in placing them, and — most important he knew where he could get paper with the silk threads in it, paper that wasn’t quite the genuine thing, but was close enough to pass inspection by anyone but an expert.
So Justin quit his job at Atlas and he and Harley went to New York, and they set up a little printing shop as a blind, on Amsterdam Avenue south of Sherman Square, and they worked at the bills. Justin worked hard, harder than he had ever worked in his life, because besides working on the plates for the bills, he helped meet expenses by handling what legitimate printing work came into the shop.
He worked day and night for almost a year, making plate after plate, and each one was a little better than the last, and finally he had plates that Harley said were good enough. That night they had dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria to celebrate and after dinner they went the rounds of the best night clubs, and it cost Harley a small fortune, but that didn’t matter because they were going to get rich.
They drank champagne, and it was the first time Justin ever drank champagne and he got disgustingly drunk and must have made quite a fool of himself. Harley told him about it afterwards, but Harley wasn’t mad at him. He took him back to his room at the hotel and put him to bed, and Justin was pretty sick for a couple of days. But that didn’t matter, either, because they were going to get rich.