“I’ll look it up,” Wallington said, taking his book from the glove compartment of the car.
A moment later he picked up the receiver from the hook on the two-way radio, said, “This is car seven calling Headquarters signal fourteen, co-ordinate AB north three hundred, and seventy-two east.”
Wallington could hear the dispatchers’ voice snap to quick interest, “Signal fourteen?”
“Right.”
“Okay,” the dispatcher said, then hung up.
Lieutenant Tyler said, “Now I want to put some of this stuff back in the ground. We’ll keep the rest of it and...”
“You mean we’re going to leave some of this stuff here?”
“That’s right. When the man who dug that hole comes back to pick up the stuff I want to be sure we have a charge against him that’ll stick. It’s not a crime to dig a hole in the ground, but it is a crime to have dope in your possession. I want to see that he has plenty in his possession.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right,” Tyler said, filling his pockets with packages from the oiled silk cache. “We’ll bury the rest and leave the ground just like it was. Then we’ll get out of here so that these passing motorists won’t wonder what we’re doing. Of course, we’re taking a chance that the man who buried it isn’t one of these passing motorists... I think it’s a little early. I wish those reinforcements would show up. When they do, I’m going to station a man over in that field with a telephone. We’ll plant cruisers down the road on each side. I don’t want these boys to get away. I want to catch them red-handed.”
They walked back to the police cruiser and sat down to wait, knowing that within a matter of minutes two more cruisers loaded with men prepared for any emergency would be on the ground.
The co-ordinates had located the position of car seven within two hundred feet.
The trap was ready to be set.
Chapter 14
Rob ached to the bone. The parched dryness of his mouth was causing his tongue to swell. He determined to try shouting. At the moment, he felt that he could risk anything in order to get a glass of cool, refreshing water.
He took a deep breath — then held it as he heard steps outside, the sound of a key being turned in the lock. The door opened. A low candle power electric light clicked on. The big man, who had sat on the table, smoking, while amusedly watching Rob and the other man fight, walked across the stateroom to the porthole, pulled a curtain across it and stood looking down at Rob with eyes that were half-closed in thoughtful speculation.
“How about water?” Rob asked thickly.
“Sure,” the man said. “Sure thing. I’ll bet you are thirsty. You came out of it pretty easy though. You aren’t marked up much.”
“I feel as though I’d been put through a mangle,” Rob said.
“Sure, you’ll feel pretty tough. Okay, I’ll get you some water.”
He left the little room, taking care to lock the door behind him, was gone for some twenty or thirty seconds, then returned with a glass of water. “How about sitting up?” he asked.
Rob sat up. The man held the glass to Rob’s lips, tilting it so that Rob would gulp down the water.
“How’s that?” he asked.
Rob sputtered and choked on the last of the drink, but managed to say, “That’s better. I could use more of that.”
“Not right now,” the man said, perching himself on the table, cupping his hands around one of his knees and studying Rob thoughtfully. “You and I are going to have a little talk.”
Rob said nothing.
“You’re a tough little rooster,” the man said admiringly, lighting a rich brown cigar. “Where did you learn to fight?”
“I did some boxing in school.”
“I’ll tell the world you did. Put up a pretty good fight, considering that you had to give away forty pounds at the start. Now let’s talk a little sense. Let’s get over this business of being tough with each other. It isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Your name’s Trenton, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Rob Trenton?”
“That’s right.”
“Now look, Rob, let’s be grown up and quit this kid stuff. You drove that Rapidex sedan from the dock to your place at Noonville. Now something happened to the car between the time you started and the time you arrived.”
“Sure it did. I had a blow-out,” Rob said.
“Something else happened to it.”
Rob tried to look innocent.
“Now I’m going to tell you frankly,” the big man said, “we’re a pretty tough lot here. We don’t try to be tough but we’re playing for big stakes, and when a man gets to playing for big stakes he gets pretty impatient when something gets in his way. Do you understand what I mean?”
“I can appreciate the force of your statement,” Rob said.
“Sure you can, sure you can,” the big man said reassuringly. “Now look, Rob, things haven’t been going too smoothly and we’re going to have to clean up and make a getaway. Every minute that we’re wasting cuts down our chances. Of course, the boys think they can pull this thing and get away with it, but they’re worried, they’re anxious. We have a deadline of midnight. We’ve got to start scattering by midnight. We’ve got to be way out of the state on a plane before daylight tomorrow morning, and it has to be done in such a way that we won’t be caught. Now just put yourself in the position of one of the boys, Rob, and you’d be pretty impatient, wouldn’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Sure you would. If you thought something was standing in your way, you’d get tough. You’d get awfully tough.”
“Yes, I guess I would.”
“Well,” the big man said, “you’re standing in our way, Rob. You’ve got information that isn’t going to do you a damn bit of good, but it’s information we need. We’ve got to get it. There are easy ways and there are hard ways. I don’t like to think of the hard ways because the boys are too much on edge. I can’t tell just where they’d stop once they started. I don’t like it myself, but I’m damned if I’m going to get soft in a show-down and let you cheat us out of the profits after we’ve taken all the risks.”
Rob said, “Why blame it on me? Do you know what happened there at the pier?”
“No, what?”
Rob said, “I was detained and searched to the skin. It was a matter of a couple of hours, I guess, and during all of that time the car sat out there in the shed—”
The man smiled and shook his head with easy good nature. “No, Rob,” he said, “that isn’t going to do. We weren’t dumb enough to let the car sit there without having someone to keep an eye on it. To tell you the truth, we were good and worried when you didn’t come down to drive it away. It bothered us a bit.”
“How did you know I was going to be driving it away?” Rob asked, trying to keep the eagerness from his voice, yet dreading to hear the answer.
The big man merely smiled and shook his head again. “We’re wasting a lot of time and a lot of words, Rob,” he said. “Suppose you just break down and tell us. Give us the low-down and I can assure you that nothing more will happen to you. You’ll be inconvenienced a little bit, but that’s all. You’ll have a chance to get away around midnight and... well, we’ll have to fix it so you can’t communicate with the authorities for, oh, maybe eight or ten hours, but that’s all that will happen to you.”
“That sounds like enough,” Rob said.
The smile left the big man’s face. “Look, Rob,” he said, “if you don’t co-operate, things are going to be bad, they’re going to be plenty bad. After the boys have gone so far, then you can’t tell what’ll happen. They’ll get the information they want, but if they’ve had to go far enough to get it, they well, put yourself in their position. You wouldn’t want to leave a witness behind you who could testify to kidnapping and diabolical torture and then make an identification. Now let’s be reasonable about this thing.”