Stewart Sterling
Fear Street
Bruce Garret bent down to tie a shoelace that didn’t need tying. The street seemed to be deserted. But he glimpsed a shadowy movement half a block behind him as a stealthy figure melted into the darkness of a convenient doorway. Garret straightened up and continued his apparently aimless stroll along the back street. There was no longer any room for doubt. He was being followed.
He’d spent too many years trailing other men to miss the significance of this skulker at his rear. This was no prowling lush-roller, hopeful of separating a late-hour drunk from his cash. The man had cautiously kept his distance, since Garret left the Rocky Mountain House.
Strange. Garret didn’t know a living soul in this mining town. He’d never been in Stope City before. It was extremely unlikely anyone could have learned he’d drop off the Transcontinental Express here at six-forty tonight. At the hotel he hadn’t registered from Washington, D. C., but merely scrawled B. Garret, New York City.
Even if someone had managed to inspect his luggage, after he’d checked into the Rocky Mountain House, all that could have been found would be catalogues and data sheets of the pump manufacturer Garret was supposed to represent as salesman. Nothing to indicate his actual status as emergency investigator for the government.
One possibility occurred to Garret. Could he by chance have run across someone in this hard-rock Montana town who had good reason to remember Bruce Garret from the days when he’d been the Sphinx Agency’s most feared nemesis of bank robbers? That was something that could be cleared up quickly enough.
He sauntered past a cafe with a gaudy cerise Neon sign reading:
The glow of the sign spilled out over the sidewalk like claret; it might also throw a little light on the identity of the person following him.
Abruptly he turned, stepped in toward a store window and looked back over his shoulder. The man behind him couldn’t conceal himself this time by ducking into the cafe door. He swung across the curb toward the opposite side of the street. He bent his head and turned his face away, so Garret had only a brief glimpse of his features. But that was enough. The follower wasn’t anyone the investigator had ever assisted to an enforced vacation at the public’s expense. That stocky-shouldered frame, the heavy, square-cut jaw and grim slash of a mouth weren’t characteristics a detective would be likely to forget.
Garret didn’t believe in playing a waiting game. Meet trouble more than half-way was a fixed principle with him. He cut across the street after the man.
The man began to run back in the direction from which he’d come. His heavy mining boots prevented his making speed, but he managed to turn the corner of the block while Garret was still fifty feet away.
The detective didn’t make the mistake of rounding the corner close to the buildings. He kept out in the middle of the sidewalk until he was well past the edge of the wall on the side street. As he expected, the other was crouching up against the bricks, waiting. The man’s right hand was up close to his shoulder where metal glinted.
Garret slipped the pistol from his arm-pit holster and walked in on him.
“What’s the idea of the puss-in-the-corner stuff, mister?”
The man lowered the hand gripping the knife. “I thought you was chasing me!”
“Nuts to that!” Garret eyed the knife. It was a long hunting blade with a wooden handle. The sort of weapon that has to be kept in a scabbard because the blade doesn’t fold up. Not the kind of thing a person would be likely to carry around — unless he was pretty sure he’d have some use for it. “You’ve been trailing me ever since I left the hotel.”
“Hell I have! Keep away from me or—”
Garret seized the man’s wrist that gripped the knife, threw his weight against him and pinned him to the wall. The other brought up a knee, viciously; wrenched fiercely to free the blade. Garret clubbed him across the side of the head with the barrel of his pistol.
The man’s head sagged under the blow, but only to sink his teeth into the back of the hand holding his wrist. The suddenness of the pain made Garret relax his grip for a split-second; long enough for the blade to come ripping up toward his belly!
There wasn’t time for anything more than reflex action. He turned sidewise and smashed downward with his left fist. Hot wire touched his forearm as the razor slashed the skin. Then he smashed the gun barrel down on top of the man’s skull.
The knife clattered on the sidewalk. The stocky figure slumped heavily against the wall.
Garret went through the unconscious man’s pockets. A little silver, a mashed-up pack of cigarettes, a soiled handkerchief, some matches.
It was the knife that told him. Along its handle, a name had been charred into the wood. J. G. Darcy. The worn place on the man’s belt under the leather scabbard indicated the knife belonged there.
Garret slipped the reddened blade back into the scabbard. There was nothing to do now but take this fellow in to the police station, where he could be put through the hoops. Garret didn’t care about getting mixed up with the cops. There’d be questions it might be awkward to answer without giving away his hand. But he couldn’t let J. G. Darcy loose to knife him in the back some other time.
A sedan swerved around the corner. Momentarily, its lights fixed Garret and the slumped figure in a blinding glare. A goggled face was a white blur at the window. There was a sudden, barking cough as if the motor had back-fired. Splinters of brick stung Garret’s cheek.
He flattened himself on the sidewalk; jerked out his gun and pumped bullets at the vanishing tail light. The car was swallowed up in a pall of dust that hid the license plate.
So nobody knew he was in town? Apparently Darcy wasn’t the only one. There wouldn’t be any chance of overtaking the car. But maybe at the police station, Darcy could be induced to tell who was working with him.
As soon as he slipped his fingers inside the stocky man’s collar, Garret knew better. The shot from the speeding car had settled that.
The flattened chunk of lead, rebounding from the wall, had gashed an inch-wide hole in the back of Darcy’s skull. Short of an autopsy, there’d be no way of estimating the calibre of the bullet now. Probably the rifling marks made by the murderer’s pistol-barrel had been obliterated too. For all anyone except a ballistics expert could tell, the shot might just as well have come from Garret’s gun. And the chance of there being a firearms expert in Stope City was zero.
It added up entirely too well. Darcy was dead. There were bullets missing from Garret’s gun — the shots he’d pumped after the fleeing car. The blue-coats would be crazy if they didn’t detain him. He couldn’t afford time out for that. Not if the strange accusation Washington had received from Stope City were true.
Garret looked around. Amid the rumbling overtones of the mining town, nobody seemed to have paid any attention to the sound of the shooting. The only people in sight were a couple of maudlin drunks squabbling in front of The Big Red Rooster.
Garret moved swiftly up the side street. Twenty feet from the corner was a vacant store. A For Rent sign was propped in the window. The door was padlocked, but it took only a couple of minutes with his jack-knife blade for Garret to chip away the putty from a window pane. He pried the glass out far enough to reach in and slip the catch.
He went back and hoisted Darcy’s limp figure over his shoulder and dumped him through the window. Then he climbed inside the store and tugged the body under a counter where it couldn’t be seen from the street. Two minutes later — with the pane replaced — Garret was striding up the side street.