“No,” Hurley said coldly. “There was no point to it, because whatever happened had to happen before the train reached here.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “I’m not a policeman and I don’t know police routine. But I do know clandestine operations, and I’ve been sitting here thinking just how I would pull this kind of operation off. And there’s only one way it could have been done.”
I smiled at Hurley whose eyes were no longer sleepy. “The obvious first move would be to corrupt one of the local couriers.”
“Impossible,” Donovan said. “Nobody’s going to put himself in a position where he’s sure to be caught and punished.”
“He will if the price is right,” I said drily. “But when you come right down to it, the only one who couldn’t duck responsibility was the Munich courier. All one of the local men would have to do is turn his passports over to Bruton in the usual way, get his signed receipt, then follow him on to the train to find out where his compartment was located. It would be simple enough for the local courier to get the man from Munich to open up. After all, he would know the local man and if the local man called out something like ‘I’ve got a passport you signed for—’ ”
I paused and smiled grimly. “And unless I miss my guess that’s just what happened. Only Bruton got a knife in the throat instead of a passport.”
“My God!” Hurley said. “The Rundesheim courier.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “It was Lassiter here.”
“No, you don’t,” Lassiter exploded. Blood had suffused his face, turning it ugly. “You’re not going to hang me with a lot of blue-sky speculation. You get yourself some proof before you start throwing accusations around.”
Donovan nodded in agreement, and Hurley turned his eyes on me.
“It had to be Lassiter,” I said. “Only a fool would admit to being the last to see Bruton — which eliminates the Rundesheim courier. The smart man would turn his own passports back in and claim never to have met Bruton. Which is exactly what Lassiter did. The timing works out, too. Instead of waiting for the next train, as he claimed to, he rode up to the suburban stop and got off there. That’s where he must have called from.”
“You’re still guessing,” Lassiter said.
“True,” I said. “But if you want concrete proof — where’s the Munich courier’s receipt?”
Hurley frowned. “I don’t follow that,” he said. “He wouldn’t have a receipt if he didn’t meet Bruton.”
“Precisely,” I said. “But he would have brought back the unsigned copy and it should have been in the brief case with the passports. But it wasn’t, because Bruton had signed it and Lassiter didn’t dare let that be found.” I turned and smiled at Lassiter. “And that missing receipt is what’s going to hang you,” I said.
Last Harvest
by Joan Richter{©1971 by Joan Richter.}
A story about two young people of today: Sheila and Jack understood each other very well — perhaps too well; but, as often happens in a close relationship, only the tip of the iceberg was visible…
He leaned back against the kitchen counter of the one-room apartment they shared off campus. His thumbs were hooked deep into the pockets of his levis. “I’ve got to go. There’s no Way out of it.”
She looked up from the book in her lap, open to the same page it had been when he’d walked into the apartment fifteen minutes ago. She closed the book and put it on the floor beside her and uncrossed her legs from their lotus position. Slowly she stretched out and rested back on her elbows. Her dark hair fell in a silky drape past her shoulders and settled in a shiny pool on the floor beneath her.
They were almost mirror images of each other — young, lean, levied. Their sweatshirts were different. His was gray. Hers was a light blue, the same sky hue of her eyes.
“Look, I don’t want to go,” he said.
She stared at him critically, the expression on her face a challenge. “Then don’t.”
He straightened and freed his thumbs, slamming the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “You know it isn’t that easy!”
“Who said anything about it being easy? But I don’t think it’s as hard as you’re trying to make out. There are three of them. That should be enough. If they want to take the chance, let them. They don’t need you.”
“They need the car.”
“Lend it to them.”
“My car? Are you kidding?”
“All right then. Let them find someone else who has a car. Let them rent one — if the car is what makes you think you have to go.”
The chill was fading from her voice. She heard the fading and she knew he’d heard it. She wasn’t going to lecture him anymore, she wasn’t going to ask him not to go. She had been on the verge of begging him and she’d never done anything like that before. In a way it had frightened them both.
He crossed the space between them and knelt beside her. He touched her hair and looked deeply into her eyes. His voice was soft. “I know what you’re saying. I hear you. And I understand. But I can’t pull out, not now. There isn’t time for them to get anyone else. Tonight’s the last of it. There’ll be a frost tonight and rain tomorrow. That’ll finish it until next year.”
He looked away from her, out the window. “The sky’s clouding up. I hope it holds out for a few more hours.” Absent-mindedly his hand slid down the length of her hair and then began to trace the familiar curves of her body. With a sigh he sank down on the floor alongside her.
Next year, she was thinking to herself as she lay beside him; that’s right, there’s next year — one last year of college and another harvest. “You told them what I found out about old man Purdy?”
“I told them.”
“What did they say? How are they going to handle that?” She sat up, leaning on one elbow, looking down at him. “What are they going to do about the farmer?”
“Look, Purdy isn’t going to be any problem.”
“What do you mean no problem? What have they decided to do about him?”
“Oh, come on, Sheila, stop giving me the third degree.” He tried to roll away from her, but she straddled him, pinning him down with her hands on his shoulders.
“Tell me. I’ve got a right to know. If it hadn’t been for me you wouldn’t know anything about Purdy, you—” She paused, hearing her own new choice of word. All along she had been talking about them, as though Jack were not a part of it. But he was. A cold wire of fear caught in her throat. “What are you going to do to him?”
He sprang up, knocking her away from him. “Nothing, damn it! What’s the matter with you? What kind of guy do you think I am?” He stood above her, staring down at her angrily, ignoring the fact that she was holding her elbow which had hit the hard floor with a sharp crack.
She grimaced against the pain and fought the tears that sprang into her eyes. She swallowed and got her voice under control. This was her last chance to convince him. “Didn’t you understand what I told you! Purdy will be waiting for you. Every night for the last two weeks he’s been sitting on that back porch of his, waiting. If you know there’ll be a frost tonight, so does he. He’ll know tonight’s your last chance. He’ll be there with his spyglass just like that little kid said. He’ll spot you and go right to the phone and call the police.” She didn’t go into what getting caught would mean. She’d been over it all before — prison for God knows how many years.
“He may try, but he won’t get anywhere. We’re going to cut the telephone wires — and just in case he decides to use his car we’re letting the air out of his tires.”