Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

Paul threw a quick look over his shoulder and saw that a man in plain clothes had fired the shot, aiming in the air. That would be a detective. He wondered fleetingly how it was that a detective should have been around in that neighborhood at just that moment. The plain-clothes man must have been taken by surprise, for he was several hundred feet behind the rest of the pursuit.

There were a dozen men savagely chasing Paul Tyler now, with Mrs. Groh puffing in the rear. But Paul, instinctively using the long, ground-eating pace that he had learned to employ in the 440-yard dash in college, easily outdistanced them in spite of the fact that he had the cleaner over his shoulder.

He reached the corner, swung around it, and looked about desperately for the crew manager’s truck of the Easy-Way Vacuum Cleaner Company, from which he had been working. He spotted the truck, half-way down the block in Ninth Avenue. He saw the seven or eight members of the canvassing crew gathered about the tailboard of the truck, turning in their orders and their machines, and getting back the deposits which they had put up.

Paul paused at the corner for only a fraction of a second. But in that infinitesimal space of time he realized bitterly that he stood no earthly chance of recovering his deposit for the ruined vacuum cleaner. And he also realized that if he lingered here another instant, the bloodthirsty mob behind him would have him by the heels.

He was bewildered by the quick turn of events which had transformed him from a starving canvasser into a fugitive murderer. But so adaptable are human instincts that he now thought and reacted only as a fugitive. His hunted glance switched from the Easy-Way truck over toward the Ninth Avenue Elevated structure. There was a station at this corner, and he heard the rumble of an El train, approaching overhead.

That rumble, aided by the shouting pursuit that was bearing down on him, stimulated him to further flight. He launched himself up the stairs toward the station above, still hugging the useless vacuum cleaner.

As he went up the stairs he saw the detective, still several hundred feet away, stop and take careful aim at him. He bent over almost double, and the shot clanged against the metal framework of the El station, only a few feet away.

It was a dreadful feeling to be shot at, but Paul had no time to think about it, for his pursuers were already coming up the stairs, and the first of them was almost within reach of him. He could see their maddened, angry expressions, and he could read in their eyes the intention to lynch him if they got their hands on him.

Mrs. Groh, at the foot of the stairs was shrieking, “He killed my poor husband! In cold blood!”

Paul’s pulse raced wildly in competition with his flying feet as he sprinted to the top of the stairway. He heard the train pulling into the station, but he knew he could never make it with these people so close behind. He swung around, lifted the vacuum cleaner from his shoulder, and hurled it down at the mass of faces below. He saw men duck and leap out of the way of the hurtling mechanism. Then he turned and lunged through the station.

Now, for the first time, it occurred to him that he had no nickel to get through the turnstile. The train was in. He could see its automatic doors open. They would close in another moment, and the train would go on. His escape would be cut off.

The lack of the nickel broke his stride, because he was still thinking along conventional lines. He couldn’t get through without a nickel.

But the hoarse shouts from behind came floating up in a wave of hatred. And he uttered a wild laugh. He was wanted for murder now, and here he was hesitating about a nickel. With the laugh still in his throat he took a running leap and vaulted the turnstile.

The cashier in the booth yelled, “Hey!” But Paul was already across the platform and through the slowly closing door of the middle car of the train. Just as he got in, the door slid shut behind him.

It was a six-car train, and there was only one guard at the last coupling. The doors were operated by a switch at that coupling which closed them all at once, and at the same time released the power that sent the train on.

It started with a lurch as the door closed, and Paul put his face to the glass in time to see the first of the crowd streaming out on to the station platform, with the plain-clothes detective fuming behind them and waving his gun. Their figures disappeared from view as the train gathered momentum.

Paul was breathing hard. He turned to see if anyone inside the car had noticed his escape. But there’d been no one on the platform, and he realized with a sigh of relief that if any of the passengers had seen him running for the train they must have thought he was merely another New Yorker in a hurry.