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

For the past year, since getting out of Leavenworth, Hooper had led a quiet, law-abiding existence; he had a rented room, ate in cafes, and worked nine hours a day as a leather tanner, a trade he had picked up by courtesy of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. It wasn’t much of a life for a guy like Sam, a guy who had lived it up in Miami and Mexico City, been used to fancy cars, fancy clothes, and fancy dames; but at least he was able to look a cop in the eye and not always have to be thinking about some job he could get busted for; at least he could lay down a twenty for change without worrying about the bill being marked; at least he could sleep nights. He hadn’t been setting the world on fire, not by a long shot, but he had been doing all right.

And then the kid came along. Phil Madigan, his name was. A small-timer, a candy store burglar. Madigan was a real sports enthusiast; skin diving, ice skating, skiing, the works. That was how he happened to run up on this job they were getting ready to pull. He had been up in the mountains for some winter sports the previous season and had come across a cabin high up toward the peaks. It was a little place, just one average sized room, Madigan had told him, and it was so far up that it was isolated from the time the first snow fell until the spring thaw about four or five months later. It was owned by a real estate company down in the town of Preston where Hooper and Madigan were now, and was rented out to fishermen during the trout season. A perfect place to hide out, Madigan had said that first time he and Hooper met.

The kid had been referred to Hooper by one of the few contacts Sam still retained in the underworld. Hooper had passed the word around that he was out of business, that he intended to make it as a square after his last bit in prison; but apparently he wasn’t taken too seriously because Phil Madigan turned up at His room one night saying he had a hot bank job on the line and had been told to look up Sam Hooper.

Sam listened to the plan out of a mixture of professional curiosity and sheer boredom, after first making it plain that he had ‘retired’. But the more he listened, the more interested he became. It began to sound as if the kid really did have a sweet one waiting to be picked. So he took down all the particulars of the job and told Madigan he would look it over and let him know in a few days.

For the next two nights he worked the plan over and over in his mind and on paper, trying to find some weakness in it, some flaw which would give him an excuse to dump it; but each time he went over it, he came to the same conclusion: it was a good, sound bank job that looked like it could be pulled off very nicely if handled properly. And even though it was a small town bank, the take would probably be well worth the effort and risk involved.

Sam tried to think over the deal rationally. He knew if he got caught on another bank job he’d be in prison until he was an old, old man. But the temptation was just too much for him. He kept thinking how nice it would be to have a briefcase full of money in his hand and step on a plane for Acapulco again. In his mind danced pictures of new clothes, a shiny convertible, and blondes — great big blondes.

The great big blondes did it. Sam Hooper decided to go the route one more time.

He and Madigan began polishing up the plan. The most important detail — the getaway and hideout — had already been taken care of with the little cabin high up the mountain. The one big obstacle in hitting a bank in that area was getting down the winding mountain highway before a roadblock could be set up at the bottom. This was virtually impossible to do; that was why there had never been a stickup in any of the resort towns that circled the mountain. But Hooper and Madigan would eliminate that problem by going up instead of down. It’s a perfect set-up, Madigan had said. We pull the job on the day of the first snowfall, then beat it up to this cabin. Nobody’ll ever think we’d do that. The place is snowed in for at least four months. All we have to do is sit it out until spring and then just kind of drift down through town one day like we were early fishermen. Before anybody can notice us, well be gone. Sure, it’ll be dull and monotonous up there all alone for four months, but we can hold out. And in the spring, we’ll have money to burn!

Hooper finished dressing and threw his extra clothes in a suitcase. Then he sat down on the bed and gave their guns a final check. They had a .410 gauge shotgun with a sawed-off barrel and two .38 revolvers. Each would carry a revolver; in addition Madigan would handle the shotgun while Hooper collected the money in the bank. Hooper also had a little .25 automatic he carried in his hip pocket as an extra precaution. That was his hole card, his kicker, in case somebody got the drop on them; not even Madigan knew he had it.

“Hey, snap it up!” he yelled to Madigan in the bathroom.