An Incident on Route 12 | Page 2

acceleration.
* * * * *
The second car stopped when still a hundred yards away, the Packard
caught in the motionless glare of its lights. Garfield heard the steady
purring of a powerful motor.
For almost a minute, nothing else happened. Then the car came gliding
smoothly on, stopped again no more than thirty feet to Garfield's left.
He could see it now through the screening bushes--a big job, a long,
low four-door sedan. The motor continued to purr. After a moment, a
door on the far side of the car opened and slammed shut.
A man walked quickly out into the beam of the headlights and started
towards the Packard.
Phil Garfield rose from his crouching position, the .38 in his right hand,
flashlight in his left. If the driver was alone, the thing was now cinched!
But if there was somebody else in the car, somebody capable of fast,
decisive action, a slip in the next ten seconds might cost him the sedan,
and quite probably his freedom and life. Garfield lined up the .38's
sights steadily on the center of the approaching man's head. He let his
breath out slowly as the fellow came level with him in the road and
squeezed off one shot.
Instantly he went bounding down the slope to the road. The bullet had
flung the man sideways to the pavement. Garfield darted past him to
the left, crossed the beam of the headlights, and was in darkness again
on the far side of the road, snapping on his flashlight as he sprinted up
to the car.

The motor hummed quietly on. The flashlight showed the seats empty.
Garfield dropped the light, jerked both doors open in turn, gun pointing
into the car's interior. Then he stood still for a moment, weak and
almost dizzy with relief.
There was no one inside. The sedan was his.
The man he had shot through the head lay face down on the road, his
hat flung a dozen feet away from him. Route Twelve still stretched out
in dark silence to east and west. There should be time enough to clean
up the job before anyone else came along. Garfield brought the suitcase
down and put it on the front seat of the sedan, then started back to get
his victim off the road and out of sight. He scaled the man's hat into the
bushes, bent down, grasped the ankles and started to haul him towards
the left side of the road where the ground dropped off sharply beyond
the shoulder.
The body made a high, squealing sound and began to writhe violently.
* * * * *
Shocked, Garfield dropped the legs and hurriedly took the gun from his
pocket, moving back a step. The squealing noise rose in intensity as the
wounded man quickly flopped over twice like a struggling fish, arms
and legs sawing about with startling energy. Garfield clicked off the
safety, pumped three shots into his victim's back.
The grisly squeals ended abruptly. The body continued to jerk for
another second or two, then lay still.
Garfield shoved the gun back into his pocket. The unexpected
interruption had unnerved him; his hands shook as he reached down
again for the stranger's ankles. Then he jerked his hands back, and
straightened up, staring.
From the side of the man's chest, a few inches below the right arm,
something like a thick black stick, three feet long, protruded now
through the material of the coat.

It shone, gleaming wetly, in the light from the car. Even in that first
uncomprehending instant, something in its appearance brought a surge
of sick disgust to Garfield's throat. Then the stick bent slowly halfway
down its length, forming a sharp angle, and its tip opened into what
could have been three blunt, black claws which scrabbled clumsily
against the pavement. Very faintly, the squealing began again, and the
body's back arched up as if another sticklike arm were pushing
desperately against the ground beneath it.
Garfield acted in a blur of horror. He emptied the .38 into the thing at
his feet almost without realizing he was doing it. Then, dropping the
gun, he seized one of the ankles, ran backwards to the shoulder of the
road, dragging the body behind him.
In the darkness at the edge of the shoulder, he let go of it, stepped
around to the other side and with two frantically savage kicks sent the
body plunging over the shoulder and down the steep slope beyond. He
heard it crash through the bushes for some seconds, then stop. He
turned, and ran back to the sedan, scooping up his gun as he went past.
He scrambled into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut behind
him.
His hands shook violently on