Fear is the Key

"Sorry, Judge. He's mine." The sheriff looked down at the policeman lying groaning on the floor. "The moment he took that gun he stopped being your business… You better get going, Talbot: you won't have far to run."

"Shoot to kill, eh?" I said thoughtfully. I looked round the court. "No, no, not the gentlemen — they might start getting death or glory ideas about having medals pinned on them…"

"What the hell you talking about?" 'the sheriff demanded.

"Nor the young ladies of the high school. Hysteria…" I murmured. I shook my head then looked at the girl with the dark-blonde hair. "Sorry, miss, it'll have to be you."

"What — what do you mean?" Maybe she was scared, maybe she was just acting scared. "What do you want? "

"You. You heard what the Lone Ranger said — as soon as the cops see me they're going to start shooting at everything in sight. "But they wouldn't shoot at a girl, especially not at one as good looking as you. I'm in a jam, miss, and I need an insurance policy. You're it. Come on."

"Damn it, Talbot, you can't do that!" Judge Mollison sounded hoarse, frightened. "An innocent girl. You'd put her life in danger-"

"Not me," I pointed out. "If anybody's going to put her life in danger it'll be the friends of the sheriff here."

"But — but Miss Ruthven is my guest. I — I invited her here this afternoon to-"

"Contravention of the rules of the old southern hospitality. I know. Emily Post would have something to say about this." I caught her by the arm, pulled her none too gently to her feet and outside into the aisle. "Hurry up, miss, we haven't-"

I dropped her arm and took one long step up the aisle, clubbed pistol already reversed and swinging. For some time now I'd had my eye on the broken-nosed character three seats behind the girl and the play and shift of expression across the broken landscape of his Neanderthalic features as he struggled to arrive at and finally make a decision couldn't have been more clearly indicated by ringing bells and coloured lights.

He was almost vertical and halfway out into the aisle, with his right hand reaching deep under the lapel of his coat when the butt end of my Colt caught his right elbow. The impact jarred even my arm so I could only guess what it did to his: quite a lot, if his anguished howl and sudden collapse back into the bench were any criterion. Maybe I'd misjudged the man, maybe he'd only been reaching for another cigar; that would teach him not to carry a cigar-case under his left armpit.

He was still making a great deal of noise when I hobbled my way swiftly up the aisle, pulled the girl out into the porch, slammed the door and locked it. That would only give me ten seconds, fifteen at the most, but it was all I needed. I grabbed the girl's hand and ran down the path to the street.

There were two cars parked by the kerb. One, an open Chevrolet without any official markings, was the police car in which the sheriff, Donnelly and I had arrived at the court, the other, presumably Judge Mollison's, a low-built Studebaker Hawk. The judge's looked to be the faster car of the two, but most of these American cars had automatic drive controls with which I was quite unfamiliar: I didn't know how to drive a Studebaker and the time it would take me to find out could b® fatal. On the other hand, I did know how to operate the automatic drive on a Chevrolet. On the way up to the courthouse I'd sat up front beside the sheriff, who drove, and I hadn't missed a move he made.

"Get in!" I nodded my head in the direction of the police car. "Fast!"

I saw her open the door out of a corner of an eye while I spared a few moments for the Studebaker. The quickest and most effective way of immobilising any car is by smashing its distributor. I spent three or four seconds hunting for the bonnet catch before I gave it up and turned my attention to the front tyre nearest me. Had it been a tubeless tyre and had I been carrying my usual automatic, the small-calibre steel-jacketed bullet might have failed to make more than a tiny hole, no sooner made than sealed: as it was, the mushrooming Colt bullet split the sidewall wide open and the Studebaker settled with a heavy bump.

The girl was already seated in the Chevrolet. Without bothering to open the door I vaulted over the side into the driving-seat, took one swift glance at the dashboard, grabbed the white plastic handbag the girl held in her lap, broke the catch and ripped the material in my hurry to open it, and emptied the contents on the seat beside me. The car keys were on the top of the pile, which meant she'd shoved them right to the bottom of her bag. I'd have taken long odds that she was good and scared, but longer odds still that she wasn't terrified.