"deaddonttalk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blackmon Robert C)

THE DEAD DON'T TALK

but the living do especially when a cheap hood spots a double cross!

by Robert C. Blackmon



Lanky, slicker-clad body hunched over the wheel of his slowly moving old roadster, Detective
Lee Benton watched the rain crawling down his windshield and the lights of Morris Weir's big
coupe reflecting in his rear-view mirror. He kept the roadster moving just fast enough to
hold his block-and-a-half lead on Weir's heavier car.

Unknown to Weir, he had been shadowing the tall, cold-eyed East City restaurant owner
practically every minute of his off-duty time for two weeks, ever since the Dean bonds were
stolen. Weir, he believed, could know the answer to the Dean bond theft, for which Dick
Benton, Lee's younger brother, faced trial and almost certain conviction in court next week.

Dick, a Dean & Co. clerk, was carrying seventy thousand dollars in negotiable securities
to another office a few blocks away. His story was that two men had suddenly started fighting,
with himself caught between them, about a block from the Dean office. That they were planning
to steal the Dean bonds didn't enter Dick's mind. He thought it was just a fight, and thought
only of getting out of the way.

Both men had knocked him about a bit, apparently in trying to get at each other. The
fight lasted but a few minutes, and a crowd gathered to watch it. Then Morris Weir appeared
and tried to part the struggling men. In the following confusion, the two men had disappeared
in the crowd. The East City police arrived about that time, and Dick Benton discovered that
the Dean bonds were missing.

The two men who had been fighting could not be found.

Dick and Morris Weir, who apparently did all he could to help, could describe the pair
only as "a small, thin man and a short, fat man." No one in the crowd would admit seeing the
fight.

The surety company covering the loss made a quick investigation, called it an inside job
and were prosecuting Dick. Bail was set too high for Lee Benton to handle.

Benton's dark eyes, red-rimmed from loss of sleep, glinted beneath the brim of his hat.
His fists tightened on the wheel, and his square jaw hardened.

Dick was innocent, of course, a victim of a smartly planned robbery. He would stake his
life on that. But the surety company's lawyers had dug up enough damaging evidence to convince
an indifferent jury. Dick had always gambled and drunk too much for his own good; he'd always
needed money and had borrowed frequently from many people. All of that was going to help
convict him next week.

Benton swore through clenched teeth.