Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 2, September 24, 1927

But she was an old woman and was using a pistol for the first time in her life, a pistol, moreover, gone stiff and difficult of trigger from years of disuse.

Her shots went wild and the robbers closed in upon her, bore her over to the bed and there bound her hand and foot as they had her husband. She screamed with rage as much as fear and fought them as hard as she could till they had stretched her prone on her back, tied helplessly.

Then they began to ransack the premises looking for the big roll of money Ambrose Green was reputed to keep always on hand in his home. Bureaus, chests and closets they rifled and an old desk they ripped apart. But none of the gang could find the money.

They cursed and grew enraged as the luck of the search went against them. Eyes glaring and glowering through their masks, they surrounded the old man.

“Where the hell do you keep that money?” the leader, a small, lithe figure of a man, demanded.

“I ain’t keeping no money here,” said Green.

“That’s a lie, you old skinflint. Come through and tell us or things will go a damn site worse with you than they have.”

“I ain’t got no money here.”

“Don’t lie to me!” snarled the leader, and repaid old Green for the blow between the eyes he had dealt him by punching the helpless man in the face.

“Tell us where that money is! Do you hear?”

A Killing Deferred

Green was silent.

“There’s no use of you denying you got money here. Hell — everybody knows you keep a bunch of it in the house — that you’ve always got it on tap to lend out.”

When Green still remained tight-lipped, the youthful-appearing chief of the gang said:

“I’m going to count three, and if by the time I do you still hold out the information from us, by God I’ll shoot you dead. One... two—”

“You go to hell,” said old Green. “I don’t think you’ve got the guts to shoot.”

“You—” and the leader lifted his weapon.

But one of the other masked men gripped his arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Come over here a minute. Let’s talk this over.”

There was a consultation, in which it was decided that it would be useless to kill Green, for he evidently had some very secret place where he kept the money stored and that even if they murdered the old couple and had the whole premises to themselves they might never find the “swag.”

They had already searched every likely place they could think of and been unsuccessful. There was unquestionably some secret and very cleverly thought out place of concealment.

To Make Him Talk

“That old bird would rather die than give us the satisfaction of getting away with it — you can see that,” said one of the gang to the leader.

“Let’s try the old woman then,” he suggested.

“That’s better,” agreed another.

“I don’t know,” said a third. “Gosh, how she fought back at us. She’s as much of a tiger cat as the old guy.”

“Let’s see how good her nerve is,” said the leader.

They left aged Green bound to his old-fashioned rocking chair and went into the bedroom.

“Now, mom,” the chieftain of the bandits said, “you tell us this minute where your husband keeps that money hid or we’ll kill the two of you and tear the house down to get it.”

“I heerd you askin’ my husband, Ambrose, to tell you,” she said. “And threatenin’ his life. And he spurned you. And so do I spurn you! I guess we’d both rather die than let our honest money get into the hands of such scoundrels — such cowardly scoundrels as you men.

“You go ahead and shoot. But if you kill us I know that God will see that you never get out of this county alive. You’ll be hunted and caught and shot down like mad dogs.”

Against the fearlessness of the old couple the robbers stood enraged but nonplused.

It was then that a horrible, savage, fiendish idea entered the mind of the leader. It must have occurred to him as his baffled eyes chanced to look at the reddened metal of the old, round-bellied stove alight in the living room.

“You fellows hold off,” he said curtly to the others. “I’ve got the notion that’ll make ’em come through — make ’em tell.”

Old Ambrose Green’s eyes were on the man as he came into the apartment where the farmer sat bound to the chair. But the leader of the robbers ignored his stare. Green saw the man go to the stove, fling open the door; then stoop, take up the poker that was at hand and push it deeply into the red coals.

While he waited for it to become hot, he turned a malicious grin on the aged farmer.

“I guess there’s going to be some talking done pretty soon, you old fool,” he said.

“Ain’t been any done yet.”

“Well, I’m going to toast the bare soles of your wife’s feet till there is.”

To the Rescue

Streams of cold sweat started down Green’s cheeks.

“Good God!” he said. “You wouldn’t — couldn’t do that!”

“Couldn’t hey? You just wait a minute more till this poker gets good and red-hot and you’ll find out whether I mean business or not.”

The old man gulped.

“Well, then—” he began, but the voice of his wife came from the next room: