Joe Cotter sighed wearily. “Look, Sam Cragg, you aren’t a bad guy, but I’m tired and sleepy. I’ll go a couple of rounds with you if you insist but why not wait until morning? We’ll both feel more like it.”
“That sounds fair, Sam,” Johnny said.
Sam hesitated. Then he finally growled, “All right, but give me the key.”
“I’ll keep it,” Joe said. “Just in case you get the idea of running out during the night.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Sam began.
“Let him have the key,” Johnny cried. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” He went off after the motel man.
The vacant rooms turned out to be side by side. The motel man led Johnny and Sam into the first. It was a nicely furnished room with a double bed.
“Three dollars,” said the motel man.
Johnny yawned. “Okay, we’ll take it.”
“In advance!”
Johnny groaned. “Am I going to have trouble with you, now? We’ll pay you in the morning...”
“The rules are...”
“I know, I know. But our car’s outside. Sit in it all night if you’re afraid we’re going to run away with it.”
“But—”
Johnny took the man’s arm, led him firmly to the door and pushed him out. Then he closed the door and bolted it. After which he turned to Sam Cragg.
“You and your astrology!”
“I’ll lick him in the morning,” Sam muttered.
“Stay up all night and train for him,” Johnny snarled. “Me — I’m going to get a good night’s sleep.”
Next door a woman screamed.
“Johnny!” Sam cried. “Did you hear that?”
“I’m not deaf. It’s probably just someone being murdered. But I’m damned if I care!”
He threw himself upon the bed. Sam stared at him a moment, looked worriedly at the wall, then finally shrugged and moved to the bed.
Johnny Fletcher was already asleep.
Chapter Two
It was still dark when Johnny Fletcher opened his eyes. For a moment he lay still. Then the events of the evening before rushed back into his mind and he sat up. He reached out and shook Sam Cragg.
“Up, Sam!”
Sam Cragg groaned and stirred. “Whatsamatter?” he mumbled. “It ain’t morning yet.”
“It will be in a little while. We’ve got to get moving.”
“Why?”
“Because we haven’t got any gas,” Johnny snapped. “And no ignition key.”
The bed creaked and Sam Cragg sat up. “Oh!” he grunted. “It comes back now.”
Johnny climbed out of bed and walked to the window. Brushing aside the curtain he looked out. “Dawn’s breaking. Come on.”
Not having undressed the night before their preparations for departure were simple. They merely walked out the door.
Outside the sky was greying. A light was on in the office building, but all the cabins were still dark. Shivering in the cool morning air, Johnny and Sam went to the old jalopy. From the glove compartment Johnny took three objects: a piece of wire, a length of rubber tubing and a canvas sack of the kind used for water by desert travelers. He handed the last two objects to Sam.
Sam scowled. “You know I don’t like this stuff, Johnny.”
“I don’t like it, either, but we have between us the sum of sixty-five cents, which may or may not buy us enough gas to get to Los Angeles.”
Sam sighed. “All right, all right.” He moved off toward a convertible parked nearby — Joe Cotter’s car. While he busied himself about the gas tank, Johnny performed his own little job, which consisted of attaching the piece of wire to the starter, so that a spark would jump from the ignition — sans ignition key.
Sam returned with a canvas sack full of gasoline and poured it into the gas tank of the jalopy. “Better get another,” Johnny suggested. “Seeing it’s Joe’s car.”
Two minutes later with Sam beside him, Johnny stepped on the starter. The motor caught instantly and they started out of the motel yard. As they passed the office a man came out and called to them, but Johnny pretended not to hear.
Johnny drove quickly through San Bernardino. With the lights of the city behind them he began chuckling. Sam looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“I’d like to see that cowboy’s face when he finds our car missing.”
“I’d just as soon have stayed there and had it out with him,” Sam said. “The big palooka!”
He hunched down lower in his seat, scowling. After a moment he glanced surreptitiously at Johnny and drew a booklet from his pocket. Johnny shot a quick sideward glance and saw the title of the book: “Astrology In 12 Easy Lessons,” he read aloud. “Here we go again.”
“Go ahead, laugh,” Sam said. “But I’ve got a funny feeling — as if something’s about to happen.” He turned the page. “Let’s see — today’s the ninth. Yeah, Uranus is rising in Jupiter. Sons of Aquarius should be very careful all day, lest ill fortune befall them...”
“That was yesterday,” Johnny interrupted. “Everything’s in reverse. You predicted good luck yesterday and we had bad. Today...”
Sam Cragg, turning his head casually, jerked and cried out in horror.
Johnny’s head swiveled, and the car careened wildly across the road. He regained control before it went into the ditch, brought it over to the right side and braked it. Then he looked into the tonneau of the flivver.
A man was sprawled there — his legs on the floor, the upper part of the body on the seat. The handle of a knife protruded from his back.
“He’s dead!” Sam gasped. Then his eyes widened. “Uranus rising in Jupiter. The sons of Aquarius...”
“Ah, hell,” Johnny snarled. “The woman who screamed next door during the night—”
“A woman couldn’t have dragged this baby out and lifted him into the car,” Sam mumbled, shaking his head.
“There’s a car coming,” Johnny exclaimed. He whirled and stepped on the starter. Fortunately he had not removed the wire and the motor caught. He shifted into second, stepped on the accelerator and moved into high.
“He’s coming pretty fast,” Sam cried.
Fifty feet ahead, a narrow paved road cut the main highway. Johnny turned into it.
“He’s gone past,” Sam reported.
Johnny nodded. Suddenly he drove the car off the pavement, over a shallow ditch into an orange grove. Twenty feet from the road he stopped the car.
“End of the line,” he said, shortly.
“You gonna dump him here?”
“No — I’m going to leave the car here.”
“Why not just the body?”
“We can’t take a chance. They’ll know us by the car...”
“But they’ll check up on the license plates.”
“Let them. They’ll find that a Mort Murray of New York City bought the plates. I never bothered to have the registration changed when I bought the heap from Mort... Mort’ll cover up for us. He’ll say the car was stolen from him and since it had no value he didn’t report it. Which is almost true.”
“The car isn’t that bad. It brought us all the way across the country.”
“Which was the eighth miracle of the world... Better take the books. We’ll need a stake.”
Sam hesitated then reached gingerly into the rear of the car, almost under the lower half of the torso, and brought out a large, heavy carton, tied with a heavy cord.
Johnny took one last look at the car, then shook his head and started for the road. A few minutes later they were back on the main highway.
A car came along and Johnny used his thumb. The driver grinned derisively as he sped past.
“Maybe it’s just as well we don’t get any more lifts,” johnny said philosophically.
Sam Cragg was of a different opinion. “Everybody can’t be like that cowboy. It’s forty-some miles to L.A. You don’t think I can walk that far, do you?”