The state trooper lay crouched in the ditch, covered with a dark blanket, so that just his forehead, eyes and nose were exposed. He was cold. The damp chill of the ground seeped through his clothes and the blanket.
Out on the highway, cars went droning by, first making themselves audible by a distant whine caused by tyres and motor. The whine would grow to a snarl, then headlights would briefly become visible, flash past, and the car would hurtle on into the night.
The state trooper shifted his position two or three times to avoid cramped muscles. He looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch, anticipating the hour when he would change places with Moose Wallington.
At the moment, Moose was sitting on a side road parked in a cruiser, and on another side road two miles below two men waited quietly, under orders so strict that not even the glowing tip of a cigarette was permitted to betray their presence.
A car coming from the west slowed down perceptibly, then pulled to the side of the road, crawled along in low gear. The beam of a spotlight, dancing out across the irregular shoulder of grass, caused the state trooper in the ditch to drop down entirely under the blanket.
The military-type field telephone between his feet was connected with another telephone by a black wire which ran along the ditch for a couple of hundred yards, then ambled off aimlessly across a field until it followed the top of a barbed-wire fence.
The trooper turned the crank, raised the receiver to his ear. Almost instantly the voice of a waiting trooper said, “Hello, Larry, what is it?”
“I’m getting a customer,” Larry said. “Get the cars alerted.”
“Okay. Can you describe the car?”
“Not yet. All I can see are the headlights and a spotlight searching around. They’re looking for something. Now hold the phone. I’ll take a peek.”
The trooper gently raised a corner of the blanket for a long look, then said, “They’re getting closer. They’ve found the signpost and evidently they’re counting fence posts. They’re looking along the ground now. It’s a black sedan … a big one. Could be bullet-proof glass.”
“How many of them?”
“There’s one working the spotlight and I can see another one … wait a minute, the other one looks like a woman.”
“Okay. Hang on for just a minute,” the man at the other end of the line said. He called Headquarters of the State Police fifty miles away and over the radio a signal went out. “Cars sixteen and nineteen special signal twenty-four.”
Instantly the two state patrol cars switched on ignitions and started their motors so they would be warm and ready for the chase. The monitor came back on the telephone, and Larry, crouching as flat as possible, said, “The man’s started to dig now. The woman seems to have moved on over to the other side of the road in that orchard. I can’t see her at all now.”
“Okay, keep me posted. I’ll hang on.”
Larry could hear the monitor saying into the other telephone, to the radio dispatcher, “Okay, send out special signal twenty-five,” and within less than a second after that, the waiting cruisers heard the voice of the dispatcher at Headquarters saying, in that peculiar monotone with which all radio dispatchers send out even the most exciting news, “Cars sixteen and nineteen special signal twenty-five, confirm back to Headquarters.”
Within a matter of seconds both cars had reported, stating that they had special signals twenty-four and twenty-five and were all ready to go.
Crouched on the ground, Larry waited until the shovel had struck the metallic protective covering. Then a moment later, he saw the flash light snap on and off and a figure started for the car. Larry said into the telephone, “I’d be ready to give the next signal if it weren’t for that woman. She’s over across the road and hasn’t shown.”
“Ready for twenty-six with the man?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay. He can’t get away. We’ll wait a minute and catch them both when the woman gets back.”
“Say wait a minute, she isn’t coming back,” the trooper said. “She’s gone scouting. You’d better get this man. He’s starting the motor. Flash signal twenty-six.”
Over the phone the trooper heard Moose Wallington’s voice addressing the central dispatcher. “Car seven to Headquarters, special signal twenty-six to cars seventeen and nineteen.”
The trooper in the ditch had waited too long for the woman to return. The man in the driver’s seat of the big sedan now had the car in gear.
Throwing off his blanket, hitching his gun into a favourable position, the trooper crawled through a hole in the barbed-wire fence.
He suddenly impaled the car with a flashlight.
“State Police,” he called. “What’s the trouble?”
“No trouble, officer.”
“What have you stopped for?”
“Nothing.”
“Hold it. I want to inspect your licence.”
The car lurched forward.
Larry pulled out his gun, but grinning, held his fire.
The car literally rocketed off into the night, headed eastward. The man in the driver’s seat, white-faced and tense, threw the car into second, then into high, keeping the throttle down to the floorboards.
The state trooper stood waiting. His flashlight shot its powerful beam into the orchard on the other side of the road. Once he thought he saw a swirl of swift motion, but he couldn’t be certain. The orchard was on a slope. Behind it was a brush-covered hill thick with second growth.
The trooper kept swinging the beam of his flashlight in a questing circle. He picked up nothing.
The man in the getaway car exhaled his breath in a deep sigh. His heart was pounding and his mouth is as dry. It had been a close call, but he had made it. He was in the clear now.
Then the headlights of the fleeing car suddenly disclosed the body of a State Police cruiser broadside on the road. A red spotlight blazed into the eyes of the startled driver.
The man jerked a gun out of his hip pocket. His lips tightened. His foot slammed down on the brake pedal. The car screamed to a sliding stop.
Moose Wallington came walking up on the driver’s side. The other officer walked up on the other side of the car, coming cautiously.
The driver rolled down the window and said, “What’s all the trouble about?”
“That’s what we want to know,” Moose Wallington said. “Why didn’t you stop for that other trooper?”
The driver laughed. “That guy wasn’t a trooper. That was just a bird playing a joke.”
Moose opened the door on the driver’s side. “Let’s take a look at your driver’s licence.”
“Okay, copper. Here it is,” the man said and shoved the revolver across his lap.
What happened next happened with incredible speed. Moose Wallington’s big hand came down over the man’s wrist. The gun was twisted, the man’s arm doubled into helplessness. He screamed and came tumbling out of the car.
Moose Wallington kicked the gun to one side, methodically pulled handcuffs from his belt.
From behind, the other cruiser which had been closing in blazed its red spotlight over the scene.
“Everything’s okay,” Wallington said.
Two minutes later Headquarters received a signal, “Car nineteen special signal thirty-one, black sedan with one person, licence number on sedan 6LB4981.”
The dispatcher repeated the number.
Moose Wallington reported, “We’re bringing in the prisoner.”
“Okay. Federal Narcotics has been notified and will be here. Any resistance?”
“Not to speak of,” Wallington said casually. “Let me have fifteen minutes here before we start in. We want to help comb the territory for a woman who seems to have made an escape. Apparently she didn’t get back into the car when the driver did. She was scouting and something may have alarmed her.”
“You got the evidence?” the dispatcher said.
“Yes, it’s here.”
“All right, search for the woman. I’ll put out a special broadcast.”
Thereafter a veritable porcupine of light shafts from the trooper’s flashlights combed the countryside and combed it in vain.
The voice of the dispatcher, however, blanketed the entire district, “Calling all cars. Near the junction of state highways 40 and 72 at co-ordinate AB north three hundred; seventy-two east, a woman escaped a dragnet and may be hitch-hiking. Study all cars with women riders, make routine checks. Hold all hitch-hikers for questions. For the next half-hour this is of paramount importance.”
Thereafter cruisers concentrated on the area. Hundreds of motorists were stopped for ‘routine checks’ on driving licences.
But the woman made good her escape. Two hitch-hikers were held by State Police for questioning, but neither was the one the police wanted. Each could prove she had been riding in a car at the exact time the state trooper had had a vague glimpse of a woman, whom he as described as “young and attractive – judging by her figure and the way she moved”, emerging from the car when the cache of dope was being uncovered.
With what the police already had on Rob Trenton, however, they felt justified in checking on the young woman with whom he had made a recent European trip.
The only hitch was that Harvey Richmond, ace narcotic investigator, who had been working on that ‘angle’, couldn’t be reached. He was, in the words of the reporting trooper, “Not immediately available.” He was, in fact, investigating a ‘hot lead’, so that he expected to make a flock of arrests by midnight, and had asked for two loads of state troopers to be held in readiness at that hour.
Colonel Miller C Stepney paced the floor thoughtfully, studying reports which were pouring in from state troopers all over the country. The man who had been picked up had refused to talk. The driving licence showed that his name was Marvus L Gentry. He had in his possession every one of the oiled silk packages which had been left at the scene to act as bait for the persons who would return to pick them up. There was at the moment nothing to connect L Gentry with any person anywhere in the state. He had an out-of-state driving licence, and while the classification of his fingerprints was being rushed in for comparison, it would be a matter of several hours before anything definite could be obtained. His manner, however, was that of the veteran crook, sitting completely tight and keeping his mouth clamped in a firm line of silence.
Colonel Stepney debated the possibility that the passenger list would give him more information about Rob Trenton’s companions on the European tour. This matter had been within the exclusive province of Harvey Richmond and it was against the policy of Harvey Richmond to make a report until the case was thoroughly in hand. Richmond was a special narcotic officer and his relationship with the State Police was that of coordinating the narcotic work of the different law enforcement agencies. While he might make more detailed reports to his immediate superiors, he certainly adopted an enigmatic policy with the State Police.
Under the circumstances, knowing how easy it is to flush game by being too eager, and how disastrous premature questioning may be, Colonel Stepney decided to hold off on everything until he had heard from Harvey Richmond. After all, the State Police now had the entire cache of heroin which had been smuggled in and subsequently buried. There was no way of communicating this information to Harvey Richmond. However, Richmond would doubtless soon put in a call.
So Colonel Stepney paced the floor and waited.