Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 9, September 1962

Deadly calm, Ann said, “No, Holly. It wasn’t an accident.” She replaced the trunk in the attic, with poor Mrs. Pettingill still inside. “It was no accident,” she confronted Clara and Mr. Pettingill. “You murdered her.”

Money to Burn by Clark Howard

When thieves fall out... and so on and so forth, a familiar proverb so well-known that it hardly bears repetition. Faced with a choice of freezing to death or peeping warm by burning money, what would you do?

* * *

It had been snowing for two hours when Phil Madigan woke up at eight o’clock and looked out his hotel room window. The sight of the grey overcast morning filled with calmly falling snow petrified him for a moment so that he could only stare at it dumbly, hardly believing it to be real. But it was real, all right; great big white snowflakes drifting down so serenely, already covering the sidewalks and street and parked cars below. Yes, it’s real, all right, Madigan thought, a wide smile breaking across his face.

He turned from the window and hurried through the connecting bath into Sam’s room. He had to tell Sam right away!

Sam Hooper was sound asleep when Madigan rushed in and shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Sam!” Madigan said urgently, “get up! It’s snowing, Sam! It’s here; the snow’s here!”

Hooper, the older of the two by twenty years, did not have Madigan’s capacity for coming fully awake the first thing in the morning. He had to prepare himself to face the world, and he did so now, twisting and grunting and yawning while his sleepy senses returned.

“What? What’s here?” he said sourly.

“The snow, Sam!” Madigan repeated excitedly. “It’s here! It’s here!”

What Madigan was saying got through to Sam Hooper then and he forced himself awake, jumping out of bed and stumbling along with Madigan to the nearest window. Together they stared down at the main street of the little town, freshly whitened by the snow. They stared with eyes wide and mouths slightly agape, as if they had never before seen such a phenomenon. Then they looked at each other and smiled happily. It was here, they were thinking. The snow was here at last.

They had been waiting for this, the first snowfall, for more than three weeks. It usually came not later than the middle of October but this year it was way overdue, for today was the twenty-third. Hooper had been complaining for the last seven days, since the fifteenth came and went and no snow appeared, that he would wait only one more day and then ditch the job; but each day he decided to wait another, until now, finally, his patience had been rewarded. His eyes shone with an eagerness to get on with the work at hand.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Ten past eight,” said Madigan.

“Okay, let’s get things moving. You check with the weather bureau while I get dressed; then I’ll get everything together while you get ready.”

“Right.” Madigan hurried back into his own room.

Hooper went into the bathroom, washed, and began a fast shave. He could hear Madigan on the phone getting the weather report. Their plans depended on the forecast. Madigan had assured him a hundred times that it would be favourable, that the first snowfall of the season was always a heavy one. It had better be, thought Hooper now, or we’ll get caught just as sure as hell is hot.

He finished up and went back into his room and started dressing. Madigan came in a minute later, grinning like a cat with a mouse under its paw.

“We’re set, Sam! Weather bureau says the snow is expected to continue for at least six more hours. I told you, didn’t I, Sam? Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah, you told me, kid.”

“Hot dog! We’re gonna pull it off, Sam. In a couple more hours we’re gonna have money to burn!”

“Well, we ain’t got it yet,” said Hooper calmly, “and we won’t have it if you don’t get cleaned up so we can hightail it out of here.”

“Sure, Sam, sure.” Madigan hurried into the bathroom, humming to himself.

Crazy kid, thought Hooper. Acting like some college punk that just made the team. He’d better settle down or he’s liable to get a bullet in his gut. Sticking up a bank is serious business.

Sam Hooper was the man to know, if anyone did, just how serious the robbing of a bank could be. This would be his seventh bank. He had made it away clean on four of them, had been caught on the other two. For the two on which he had been caught, he had spent a total of fourteen years in Federal penitentiaries; five on the first, nine on the second. He was now forty-four years old and had thought he was finished with this strongarm stuff.