Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 104, No. 4, August 22, 1936

“I saw it all, sergeant! I’ll phone headquarters and tell them. Here. Take my car and get after them! The gray coupé at the curb. You can get police broadcasts on my radio.”

Hewitt recognized a business man of his acquaintance. Eagerly he snatched the ignition key thrust out at him.

“Thanks, Mr. Johnston! How many men in the mob, and what kind of a car were they using, if you noticed by chance?”

“There were four men. One stayed at the wheel of the sedan. It was a Piper Six, dark blue with red trimmings. I couldn’t catch the numbers when they pulled out. I happened to be looking when three of them started the business. They tossed something into the truck, through the little side port that was open. A gas bomb, I think. Then they opened up firing on the driver, when he rushed out to the sidewalk. When he fell, one of them jumped into the truck cab, and the others ran back to their car.”

Hewitt darted to the curb, piled into the gray coupé and started up the motor. The bandit mob had gotten precious seconds start of him, but this powerful car could outdistance the armored truck, he thought, if he could cut the trail.

Mr. Johnston shouted from the store doorway: “One of the bandits has a tommy-gun, Hewitt! Watch your step!”

Hewitt nodded grimly, sending the coupé leaping, and shouted back:

“When the first car gets here, tell ’em I’m taking the trail, and that the mob turned south on Clayton. Thanks for the car!”

Swabbing blood from his left eye as he roared up to the intersection with Clayton Street, Hewitt made a one-handed turn that rocked the gray coupé sickeningly. Straightening out, he noticed the broad skid marks on the asphalt, where the truck had made the south turn at high speed.

Those skid marks gave him a hint. He watched the pavement for more of them, feeding gas savagely.

Three blocks reeled off dizzily. Then Hewitt slammed on brakes, twisting sharply east on the Airport Boulevard. Those tell-tale skid marks gave him the cue. The armored truck and the sedan consort had turned off there, on a course that would take them out of the city limits within six or seven blocks.

The coupé lurched as he fought the wheel, straightened out and leaped ahead under the spur of the throttle. Hewitt hoped grimly that prowl cars taking up the trail and the emergency squad car headquarters would send roaring out there, would spot those skid marks and read the answers. He was leaving some of his own.

He swabbed at his eye again, peering eagerly ahead for a sight of blinking red tail lights. There were a number ahead but he couldn’t know whether or not one of them marked his quarry.

Fumbling, he switched on the radio, set the wave band and tuned in the police broadcasting station. The announcer was repeating a general alarm, and directing prowl cars and special cruisers to Konger Food Store No. 47.

In addition to the regular patrolling cruisers, a harassed chief had put everything on wheels at headquarters rolling tonight, manned by detectives singly and in pairs, anticipating another strike from the bold mob knocking off stores and filling stations for the past week. Hewitt had been engaged on that special duty.

They had struck, all right, Hewitt reflected grimly, and not just as anticipated. He happened to know that that armored truck had been nearing the end of the Saturday night pick-up route at Store No. 47, and that there would be something like five or six thousand dollars in currency and silver aboard, not figuring checks cashed for customers of the food chain stores.

He crouched over the wheel of the scudding coupé. The cut had about stopped bleeding, and trickling blood didn’t bother his vision. He was on the route the bandits had taken, he was pretty sure, but guessing their destination was something else again.

He overhauled a car, slowed long enough to make sure it wasn’t either the armored truck or the sedan and roared past. Two more cars in quick succession were overhauled and passed up. After that, Hewitt just looked for the bulky armored truck. That would be easier to spot at speed, and the truck was his main quarry, anyhow.

He was well past the city limits now, and houses facing the boulevard were thinning out. The radio kept up a chatter of orders. They were stirred up, back there at headquarters, and getting nowhere, apparently.

Ten miles reeled off in almost as many minutes. Hewitt had been watching the pavement ahead and on his left closely. On this broad boulevard though, there wasn’t much chance of picking up telltale skid marks.

There were dozens of chances for the bandits to have turned off the Airport Boulevard. Hewitt realized abruptly that he was following a rather blind trail now.

The brilliant lights of a filling station ahead caught his eye. He pulled down speed, whirled into the station and made a screeching stop. Attendants about the pumps scrambled to safety, then clustered when he stopped.