“Come on, Johnny,” said Sam, uncomfortably.
“All right, I’m going,” Johnny said, bitterly. “But I’m not quitting. Somebody who’s mixed up in the Silver Tombstone killed Hugh Kitchen and I’m going to find out who that someone is.”
“I don’t monkey with the cops,” the Princess Astra stated. “In my position I can’t afford to. I’m going to report this...”
“Then give me back my twenty-five bucks.”
“I’ll give back nothing,” Astra declared. “I earned that dough and I’m going to keep it.”
Dan Tompkins got up suddenly. He made a movement toward his coat, but Sam Cragg held up a hand warningly. Tompkins’ hand stopped in mid-air as he remembered what Sam had done to him that morning when he had pulled out a gun. He said, surlily: “This finishes our deal, Fletcher. You ain’t working for me any more.”
Johnny gave him a bitter look, then brushed past the receptionist, Nadine. At the door he turned. “Good-bye, now. But don’t forget me. I’ll be back.” He went out. Sam Cragg gave Dan Tompkins one last scowl, then followed Johnny out of the seance room and down to the street.
Outside they walked quickly for a block up Wilshire Boulevard. Then Johnny slackened his speed.
“That was twenty-five bucks wasted.”
“What you expected to get out of a fortune teller I don’t know...”
Johnny shook his head. “Dan Tompkins hasn’t told us half of what he knows. They were fighting last night across from my room. Joe Cotter, Charles Ralston and Helen Walker.” He frowned. “And I can’t figure out where the Hendersons come in.”
He took Tombstone Days, from under his arm and looked at it. For the first time Sam seemed to notice the book. “You snitched it.”
“I was reading and the phone rang, so I figured I’d borrow the book and read it in my own room. Then the cop came along... You know, there’s some interesting things in here; about old Jim Walker and Dan Tompkins — not our Dan, though. His father or grandfather... Wish I could get a chance to read the book all the way through.”
“If the cops catch us you’ll have a lot of time to read.”
Johnny groaned. “This is no good. We’ve got to get out of town. And we can’t go by train or bus, because the cops’ll be watching the depots and bus stations.”
“You mean we’ve got to hoof it,” Sam said bitterly. “The doggone city limits of this town reach out thirty-five miles...”
“And after that, there’s three hundred miles of desert.” Johnny fixed his eye on a used car lot a short distance away. “No, we’ve got to have a car. A good one, too.”
Sam grunted. “What sort of a car can you buy for around fifty bucks? We haven’t got much more than that left, have we?”
“No, but we could buy a pretty good car for about two-fifty down.”
“Yes,” said Sam, sarcastically, “if we had two-fifty for the down...”
“There are ways...”
Sam blinked. “Johnny, you aren’t...” Then as he saw the speculative gleam in Johnny’s eyes, “Here we go again...”
“They’re after us for murder,” said Johnny. “Anything less is a breeze. Come along...”
He headed into the used car lot and began examining the cars. A man came out of a little buildings in the rear and strolled over.
“I’d like to get a jalopy,” said Johnny. “Just about the worst jalopy you could imagine.”
The salesman looked at him curiously. “Something to drive, or just to wear on your watch chain?”
Johnny grinned. “If it would run two-three miles, that’d be swell.”
The salesman hesitated, eyeing Johnny skeptically. “Come along,” he said, then.
Johnny and Sam followed him to the rear of the little building, where stood a late ’20 Model T. “Look,” said the salesman, “it’s even got tires.”
“Will it run?”
“We guarantee it unconditionally... that it’ll run off this lot.”
“Ten bucks,” said Johnny.
“The junk man offered forty.”
“I’ll make it thirty.”
“Thirty-five and it’s a deal.”
“All right, but you’ve got to give me papers.”
“It’s a deal.”
Ten minutes later Johnny was behind the wheel and Sam beside him. He tried the starter. Nothing happened. Johnny waggled a finger. “Your guarantee, Mister.”
The salesman scowled and got the crank out of the rear of the car. He put it into a hole at the front of the machine, turned and turned and after a long time coaxed some response. The flivver began shaking and Johnny let in the clutch.
“S’ long, Mister!” he cried to the salesman.
“Remember,” said the salesman, “when you hit the street, you’re on your own.”
Johnny drove out of the lot and stopped the car a block away. But he did not shut off the motor.
“All right, Sam,” he said, “give me three minutes, then drive into the place up there in the next block. You want two-fifty for her, but you’ll come down to two hundred. Not a nickel less...”
“Are you crazy, Johnny?” Sam cried.
“If it doesn’t work — yes. If it works, no. Leave it all to me. Act natural — you’re a rube; you want two hundred for her and you don’t give a damn. When you get the money, walk right back here and wait for me. You can’t miss...”
“What do you mean, I can’t miss?” wailed Sam, as Johnny walked off. He tried blowing the horn as Johnny refused to turn, but the horn wouldn’t work. In despair he slumped over the wheel.
Johnny meanwhile strolled blithely up the street and turned into the big used car lot — a place more than twice the size of the one where they had purchased the flivver.
They were high-pressure boys here; two or three salesmen were coursing about the lot, waiting for victims. Two of them surrounded Johnny promptly.
“This Buick here,” one of them cried. “Less than five thousand local miles; a steal at twelve ninety-five.”
“Nope,” said Johnny. “She’s too low down on the ground.”
“That’s the beauty of a Buick,” said the second salesman. “Holds the road...”
“No good for the desert, though. You got to have a car that’s got some space underneath — even when you deflate the tires to about fifteen pounds of pressure... that’s the only way to ride the sand, you know...”
“Here’s a Packard that rides pretty high. But she’s fifteen-fifty...”
“I’m not worried about the price,” said Johnny. “Although I’d just as soon have an old car. When the wind blows the sand out there, your paint job goes pretty quick. And the ore doesn’t help it much, either. Pretty rough stuff...”
“Ore,” said the first salesman. “Mining man?”
Johnny nodded. “Got the best little tungsten mine in Mendocino County. That’s where I’ll be driving this car... if you can fix me up with what I want... something like that old-timer over there...” He pointed to the jalopy that Sam Cragg had just driven into the lot. “Those old boats are the thing for the desert... That doesn’t happen to be your car, does it?”
The salesmen exchanged glances. One of them nodded almost imperceptibly and suddenly turned away. The other blocked Johnny’s sight.
“Got a honey of an old Model A back here — an old doctor had it, but he wasn’t practicing any more and he had the bus in his garage for seven years. Took it out every spring for a day, then put it back in the garage again. She’s as good as new... and only four-fifty.”
Johnny looked at the shellacked old wonder. He shook his head. “I dunno; she’s still not as high off the ground as I want.” He walked around the car, kicked a tire, stooped and peered underneath.