"I hope you skid into a ditch!" Mooney bawled into the icy air. He was
in a fury. There was a bus line that went where they wanted to go.
A warm, comfortable bus that would stop for them if they signaled,
that would drop them just where they wanted to be, to convert one of
Harse's ball-bearings into money. The gold one, Mooney planned. Not the
diamond, not the pearl. Just a few dollars was all they wanted, in this
Jersey shore area where the towns were small and the gossip big. Just
the price of fare into New York, where they could make their way to
Tiffany's.
But the bus cost thirty-five cents apiece. Total, seventy cents. Which
they didn't have.
"Here comes another. Car?"
Mooney dragged back the corners of his lips into another smile and held
out his thumb.
It was a panel truck, light blue, with the sides lettered: _Chris's
Delicatessen. Free Deliveries._ The driver slowed up, looked them over
and stopped. He leaned toward the right-hand window.
He called: "I can take you far's Red Ba--"
He got a good look at Mooney's companion then and swallowed. Harse had
put on an overcoat because Mooney insisted on it and he wore a hat
because Mooney had told him flatly there would be trouble and questions
if he didn't. But he hadn't taken off his own silvery leotard, which
peeped through between neck and hat and where the coat flapped open.
"--ank," finished the driver thoughtfully.
Mooney didn't give him a chance to change his mind. "Red Bank is just
where we want to go. Come on!" Already he had his hand on the door. He
jumped in, made room for Harse, reached over him and slammed the door.
"Thank you very much," he said chattily to the driver. "Cold morning,
isn't it? And that was some storm last night. Say, we really do
appreciate this. Anywhere in Red Bank will be all right to drop us,
anywhere at all."
He leaned forward slightly, just enough to keep the driver from being
able to get a really good look at his other passenger.
It would have gone all right, it really would, except that just past
Fair Haven, Harse suddenly announced: "It is the time for me to. Eat?"
* * * * *
He snip-snapped something around the edges of the gleaming sort of
dispatch case, which opened. Mooney, peering over his shoulder, caught
glimpses of shiny things and spinning things and things that seemed to
glow. So did the driver.
"Hey," he said, interested, "what've you got there?"
"My business," said Harse, calmly and crushingly.
The driver blinked. He opened his mouth, and then he shut it again, and
his neck became rather red.
Mooney said rapidly: "Say, isn't there--uh--isn't there a lot of snow?"
He feigned fascination with the snow on the road, leaning forward until
his face was nearly at the frosty windshield. "My gosh, I've never seen
the road so snowy!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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