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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78409 ***
+
+
+
+                     THE SURPRISE PARTY
+
+                   By Erle Stanley Gardner
+
+
+        As soon as the High Collar Kid saw the man enter
+        the telephone booth he prepared himself against an
+        underworld surprise party.
+
+
+The High Collar Kid noticed two things as he left the rooming house. One
+was that it was raining. And it took no particular powers of observation
+to note that fact. The second thing was that a figure lurking within the
+interior of a corner cigar store, turned rather abruptly from the
+counter and paused before a telephone booth, right hand resting on the
+door knob.
+
+Only a man with unusual powers of observation would have noticed the
+latter fact. The High Collar Kid had unusual powers of observation.
+Otherwise he would not have been alive. Ten years is a long time for
+a man to play a lone hand in gangdom. But the High Collar Kid had
+seen ’em come and he’d seen ’em go.
+
+Yet by not so much as the flicker of conscious gesture did he apprise
+the man at the cigar stand that shrewd eyes had observed him.
+
+The Kid went directly to his enclosed car, jerked open the door,
+searched the damp interior with a swift flash of his flickering eyes,
+and climbed inside.
+
+The pavements were swimming. Street lights gave wavy reflections which,
+in turn, were broken by the miniature geysers of water spattering the
+cement.
+
+The starter whined, the motor purred, the gears clicked, the wheels
+turned. If any one was intending to follow the High Collar Kid he had
+better get busy and travel fast.
+
+The dark, round eyes of the Kid flickered to the mirror over the
+windshield. As he snapped the gear shift back into high he watched the
+street behind. He passed the second corner at forty miles per hour, nor
+did he slow very much as he came to the third corner.
+
+Headlights showed behind him. He swung the wheel. The wet pavements
+helped him around the corner. The windshield wiper beat a monotonous
+rhythm as it swung back and forth. Yet the rain descended faster than
+the rubber wiper could remove it.
+
+He turned right again at the next corner, came back to the boulevard,
+pressed the throttle lower and lower.
+
+The lighted business district dropped behind, gave place to a
+residential street upon which drab houses hid darkly behind dripping
+trees. A rubber coated policeman raised a whistle, then thought
+better of it. The car was going fifty miles an hour, no chance for
+pursuit.
+
+Traffic laws meant nothing to the High Collar Kid--not when he had
+work to do and when a figure lurking across the street had gone to the
+telephone to notify some one of the Kid’s departure.
+
+The dark surfaced streets of the city gave way to the white concrete
+of the state highway. Good going here, not so much chance for a skid.
+The rain was beating with tree lashing fury. There was some wind. All
+in all, it was a bad night for speed. But the High Collar Kid was
+accustomed to taking chances.
+
+He glanced at the clock on the illuminated dial of the car. Eleven
+forty. He’d be in Clarksburg at midnight. There wouldn’t be much traffic
+on the road, not on a night like this. It would be a wild ride. And he’d
+leave the highway before he came to Clarksburg, circle the city and come
+in from the other direction. That was just in case that telephone....
+
+He gently eased the foot brake down upon the spinning, water throwing
+wheels. The windshield wiper increased its beat. Through the tapering
+section of windshield it cleared he saw a figure walking along the
+highway.
+
+A quick glance at the speedometer showed it was eight miles from his
+starting point. The Kid noticed such things. It had been said of him
+that he noticed everything.
+
+He slowed the car.
+
+She was trim, comely. And she didn’t have on so much as a raincoat. The
+dress was of some pale material which showed out well in the headlights.
+It was wet, but not soaking. The stockings were white. The shoes were
+mere slippers.
+
+The headlights picked out her slender, young figure, showed the rhythm
+of the swinging hips, the steady swing of the walking legs.
+
+She’d turn to see what the machine was going to do about it, and then
+the Kid could get a glance at her face.
+
+But she did not turn.
+
+The Kid slowed the car almost to a stop.
+
+Rigid in her studied unconcern, the girl walked straight on. There was
+nothing ahead of her except mile after mile of dripping, rain splashed
+pavement, yet she utterly ignored the automobile almost at her side.
+
+Abruptly the Kid thought of that hand on the knob of the telephone
+booth. Almost unconsciously, his foot snapped down on the throttle.
+The car skidded slightly, responded with a whine of acceleration.
+
+The girl was behind; she had not so much as glanced at the car.
+
+“Walking home,” muttered the Kid.
+
+Half a mile of wet pavement slipped beneath the glistening wheels of
+his car. He could not get the thought out of his mind of the solitary
+figure, striding so utterly alone in the storm tossed night.
+
+If it should be a trap they’d know he’d passed. There would be ambushers
+waiting, concealed in a car somewhere near, or, perhaps, hiding behind
+the trees. If she kept on walking after he’d passed, it would be a good
+sign the thing was on the level.
+
+A side street showed, unpaved and muddy.
+
+The Kid switched his lights over to the dim, slowed the car, skidded up
+the muddy side street, managed to turn the car without getting bogged
+down, and switched off both lights and motor.
+
+Then his fingers crept beneath the pit of his left arm and snuggled
+about the hard butt of a deadly automatic.
+
+He waited. The rain beat down on the car. He could even hear the whish
+of the trees, the spatter of water on the running boards as it dripped
+off the roof of the sedan. The drops gave forth a drumming sound as
+they lashed the enameled hood.
+
+Minutes passed. He grinned. The girl had evidently vanished. She’d have
+been here by now.
+
+He reached forward for the ignition switch.
+
+At that moment something indistinct showed out on the highway, a blurry
+something of bedraggled white. He snapped on the lights.
+
+As the twin pencils of glaring white stabbed the darkness and caught
+the girl fairly in the center of their rays, the High Collar Kid could
+see her scream. He saw the lips part, saw the terror in the eyes, saw
+the pearly teeth. But the wind swept the sound away. Such noise as she
+made failed to penetrate past the heavy plate glass upon which the rain
+slithered in rivulets.
+
+The High Collar Kid started the motor.
+
+She stood still while he drove alongside. When he stopped the car she
+started to walk again, steadily, rhythmically, utterly ignoring the car
+at her side.
+
+The Kid had a way with women. Also he knew something about them. Far be
+it from the High Collar Kid to sit snugly behind the steering wheel and
+call out an invitation to ride.
+
+He was out in the rain, hat in hand, the drops streaking down the
+starched surface of his glossy collar.
+
+“I beg your pardon, but wouldn’t you care to ride?”
+
+The answer came without so much as the turn of a head.
+
+“No!”
+
+After a minute of rain spattered silence between them, she added “thank
+you.” But she hadn’t looked at him and she strode on into the night.
+
+The Kid sighed and took his fingers from the butt of his gun.
+
+“But it’s storming. You’ll catch cold. I won’t bite.”
+
+She strode on in silent indifference.
+
+The Kid saw that she was pretty, with the type of beauty which had
+always appealed to him. If she had been hand picked at his specification
+it couldn’t have been a better job. Slender, young, alert, not too
+curvy, yet well moulded. There was a firmness to the chin, a wideness to
+the eye, and a general air of complete sophistication.
+
+He looked at the swirl of skirts where the wind had its way, and the
+headlights revealed what the wind disclosed. Then he climbed back in
+his car, drove on a hundred yards and waited for her to come up.
+
+“I can’t let you walk this road alone. It’s nearly midnight. There’s no
+shelter. Either you get in and ride with me, or I get out and walk with
+you.”
+
+He knew the moment she weakened.
+
+There was a slight hesitancy, a wistful glance at the long lines of the
+massive, speedy car.
+
+“It’s warm in there,” he coaxed, then was silent.
+
+She smiled at him.
+
+“You win. I guess I’m foolish,” she said, and climbed in.
+
+The High Collar Kid chuckled. He closed the door on her, careful to see
+that her skirt was not caught in the closing of that door, walked around
+the machine and opened the other door.
+
+It was such little touches of gallantry that characterized the Kid.
+
+She was strangely silent as he settled himself into the seat. He glanced
+at her clothes. Strange they were not more rain-soaked. Her hand was
+fluttering at her breast.
+
+He stiffened abruptly. Those clothes hadn’t been out in the storm very
+long.
+
+His hand streaked to his left armpit.
+
+By the time his fingers closed on the hard butt of the automatic he
+could feel the cold ring of steel at his neck.
+
+“Bring that hand away empty,” she said.
+
+The Kid hesitated for a long second. Had there been any one with her he
+would have taken a chance, come out shooting. It was always the way, go
+with smoke in his nostrils, and he wouldn’t mind dying. But she was
+alone. Certainly there was no one in ambush. She had walked into the
+path of his lights. He sighed and brought his hand away--empty.
+
+“Hold your hands on the steering wheel, tight!”
+
+He grinned at her.
+
+“Don’t put me out, sister. I ain’t got my roller skates. What say we
+split the roll fifty fifty and be friends?”
+
+She darted a wet arm under his chin. He stiffened as his automatic was
+taken from its holster, tossed in the back of the car. But her gun was
+pushed into his neck, and women are nervous at such times.
+
+She lifted her feet to the seat, threw one leg over the back and jumped
+into the rear of her car.
+
+“Drive ahead, slowly.”
+
+He complied with the order. Would she shoot? Could she hit? Suppose he
+threw the car into a devil of a skid? There’d be a mud patch along the
+road somewhere soon.
+
+In the meantime there was her purse, lying on the seat at his side, a
+rain spattered affair of gray leather.
+
+He drove with one hand, half turned, the better to talk with her over
+his shoulder.
+
+“What is it, hold-up?”
+
+There was a catch in her voice then.
+
+“You ... you’re going for a ride!”
+
+The Kid knew as much, had known it from the moment that ring of steel
+was in his neck, but he merely smiled. As he smiled, his right hand
+dropped surreptitiously to the catch of the purse.
+
+“What’s the big idea? You got something against me?”
+
+She shook her head. The violet eyes were wide with some emotion. The
+face was set and white. But the lips were firm.
+
+“Not me. I’m making a piece of jack. They figured you’d fall for me.”
+
+“Baby!” he said, as his fingers flipped the catch on the purse and
+started exploring the contents, “they figured right! Anybody’d fall
+for you, unless he was blind or over ninety. And I’d fall for you
+twice!”
+
+She snapped her lips together.
+
+“Turn around and drive. And ... and quit talkin’.”
+
+The Kid figured she was weakening fast. He kept his face toward her.
+
+“So you’re takin’ me for a ride, eh? When do you pull the trigger?”
+
+“I ... I don’t pull the trigger.... Oh, I wish they’d come!”
+
+The Kid eased half way around, preparing to make a grab at that gun.
+Then, of a sudden, he knew he was too late. A car was following, a car
+that ran without lights.
+
+He turned back in the seat. He heard the girl give a sob of relief.
+Lights switched on, bored into the interior of the car. Another machine
+drew alongside. The Kid could see the profile of the man on his side.
+Pete Pelton! Pete, the killer, dapper, cold, cynical, envious. And there
+was Smile Dugan in beside him. Dugan! The feature-battered ex-pug;
+raised from the gutter to become an expert in dirty work. His clock had
+struck.
+
+The door of the other car was opening. Pete Pelton’s dapper form was
+sliding to the running board of his car.
+
+He could twist the steering wheel--perhaps. But Smile Dugan had a big
+automatic, and the look in Dugan’s eyes told its own story. He could
+wait to shoot later, but he’d rather shoot now.
+
+Yet, even in that moment of tense suspense, the High Collar Kid was
+noticing things. His right hand remained within the rain-soaked
+purse. His fingers encountered a stiff paper oblong, the envelope of
+a letter.
+
+And that letter was moist. How did it get moist there within that purse?
+
+The Kid slipped that letter from the purse even as he turned to greet
+killer Pete. His right hand flipped the letter in a side coat pocket,
+the fingers snapped the purse shut.
+
+“Well, well, if it ain’t Pete. Planning a little party, Pete?”
+
+“Yeah. Planning a nice party for you, a little surprise party.”
+
+“I like surprises.”
+
+“_Maybe_ you’ll like this one. Move over. I’ll drive. Get the gat,
+Myrtle?”
+
+She nodded, mutely. In the back, her white face seemed cold as marble
+as it was outlined against the back drop of the rear window, the
+rain-filled night.
+
+Smile Dugan was on the ground.
+
+Would he get in back with the girl, or would he crowd three in the
+front? If he came in front and the girl was left in the back with a
+gun there was a chance, a bare chance that the Kid might arouse her
+sympathies.
+
+Dugan opened the front door.
+
+Pete Pelton jerked his head back, without moving over.
+
+“Naw. Get in back with the broad. He’s got a way with the women an’ I
+don’t trust him with her, nor her with him.”
+
+“That’s not fair!” she blazed. “I did everything according to
+instructions. I memorized every word....”
+
+“Shut up!” said Pete.
+
+The car swayed as Dugan’s huge bulk swung on the running board. The rear
+door slammed.
+
+“Let’s go.”
+
+The car, under the guidance of Pete Pelton, swung toward the center of
+the highway. The other car backed and turned.
+
+“Going to use my own car for the job, eh? Walk home afterward?” asked
+the Kid, making conversation.
+
+“Not us,” sneered Pete. “But tires leave a track out where we’re goin’.
+If there’s goin’ to be any tracks left we don’t want ’em to be our car.
+We’ll leave this car where your estate can find it.”
+
+“What’s the idea?”
+
+“You know?”
+
+“Hell no. Jealous, Pete?”
+
+“Never mind the chatter. You’ve got a good line. You might talk me out
+of it if you got started. Might. Ha, ha! This is once your line of salve
+won’t grease anything except the skids of hell!”
+
+The Kid fell silent.
+
+The girl in the back seat was sobbing.
+
+“We gotta ditch the broad before we pull the job.”
+
+It was Smile Dugan’s heavy voice.
+
+Pete agreed with him without so much as turning his head.
+
+“Sure.”
+
+The Kid thought rapidly, which was the manner in which he was accustomed
+to think.
+
+“You know who these men are, of course,” purred the High Collar Kid as
+he half turned toward the girl. “The glib one with the slicked hair is
+Pete Pelton. The _gentleman_ seated beside you is Smile Dugan.”
+
+“Say,” demanded Pete, “what’s the idea of all that?”
+
+Smile Dugan twisted his thick, battered lips in the sneering smile that
+had earned him his underworld nickname.
+
+“Let ’m talk. He won’t talk long. But let’s ditch the jane.”
+
+“Town coming. We’ll get through that. Then Harry will follow along and
+pick her up.”
+
+The car speeded up.
+
+The lights of a hamlet glowed ahead, ribboned themselves on the cement,
+shone into the sedan, and flashed past.
+
+The kid turned, slipped his hand from his right-hand coat pocket. As
+the street lights whisked by he read the address upon the envelope.
+“MISS MYRTLE MANLEY -- HOTEL CRACKEN” The envelope had evidently been
+left with the clerk, for there was no stamp upon it, and a penciled
+figure in the lower corner showed “717.”
+
+The Kid half swung, dropped the letter in his pocket, looked at the
+girl.
+
+She was returning the gun she had used to hold him up with, dropping it
+back into the front of her wet waist. The curves of her body failed to
+entirely conceal the outline of the weapon.
+
+“Why so silent?” jeered Pete.
+
+“I was thinking, Pete.”
+
+“Yeah. You’d better think. You was the smart kid that thought his way
+out of the Manser scrape when Finney went to the stir. You was the chap
+that thought up a lie that sprung you from the Carter case.”
+
+“That’s not so and you know it,” said the Kid. “Probably you’ve used
+that line to get Dugan started on this trip. But you know it’s a lie.”
+
+“Shut up!” yelled Pete. “Don’t you believe him, Dugan.”
+
+“But it’s a fact,” purred the Kid. “I’ll give you the lowdown on that
+case, Dugan. When Carter was arrested somebody squealed to the D.A. It
+was a telephone conversation, and I can tell you who....”
+
+The car skidded to a stop.
+
+“By God, I’m going to finish it right here. I’m tired of all this yap,
+yap, yap.”
+
+Dugan grunted, the girl half-screamed, “No, no, no!”
+
+Pete slipped to the rain soaked pavement, reached in his arm, yanked
+the Kid out. Dugan’s eyes glinted with a light which comes only to
+the face of a killer about to gratify his lust for blood. The girl
+screamed. Dugan half flung her to the ground. She hit the wet cement,
+slipped, fell into the mud.
+
+She arose, muddied, white, frightened. Dugan was leering at her.
+
+“Want your map changed?” he asked.
+
+“Shut up,” said Pete.
+
+The Kid spoke rapidly, conscious of the half-raised weapon in Dugan’s
+hand, conscious of the sneering lips of Pelton.
+
+“I hate to have you take the girl to the chair with you. You owe it
+to her to give her a break. For you fellows I’ve got no sympathy. It
+serves you right. You bungled the whole thing. You saps! The idea of
+writing a letter of instructions telling her just what to do, just
+where you’d meet her, just what to say.”
+
+Pete’s eyes snapped wide. Dugan started. The girl half screamed.
+
+“Bluff!” sneered Pete.
+
+“Perhaps. But when the District Attorney introduces a letter addressed
+to Miss Myrtle Manley at the Hotel Cracken and asks that it be marked
+Exhibit A for the people, well, just think of me, will you?”
+
+“What the hell do you know of that letter?”
+
+Pete’s voice was strained, lacked its old-time assurance.
+
+The girl was crying now, openly sobbing.
+
+The High Collar Kid, standing in the rain, face to face with death,
+smiled patronizingly.
+
+“You guys are boobs. I frisked the girl’s purse while you were taking
+me for a ride. I found the letter, knew what it was. She said she’d
+memorized her instructions. That letter had rain drops on it. So I
+flipped it out when we went through the town back there.
+
+“You know how these small town constables are. One of ’em was on the
+corner. He saw the letter come out. That’ll get ’em in touch with the
+girl, room seven seventeen. Finding my body will be all they need to
+put two and two together.”
+
+Pete Pelton glanced at Smile Dugan.
+
+“The damned liar. The car window was closed. There wasn’t any constable
+standing there.”
+
+But Dugan wasn’t so sure, and Pete’s voice held an element of doubt.
+
+“You have the letter in your purse, Myrtle?”
+
+She nodded, dry-eyed with alarm now.
+
+Pete reached into the car, opened the purse.
+
+“Gone now,” he swore, and launched into a stream of abuse.
+
+“The damned broad’s no good, bump her off too and she won’t squeal.”
+
+Pete’s voice was almost hysterical.
+
+Dugan half turned. His left fist came up, a jabbing blow of the ring, a
+savage, ripping blow. The girl staggered back under the impact of that
+blow.
+
+The High Collar Kid opened his arms.
+
+“You poor kid,” he said.
+
+There was something masculine, protecting in his gesture; she slumped
+into his arms.
+
+“Baloney!” said Pete.
+
+The Kid’s hand flashed to the girl’s throat, plunged downward. The
+spitting streak of flame that stabbed from his fist seemed to dart
+directly into Pete’s breast.
+
+He staggered back, cursed, spun on one heel, dropped his gun, clutched
+at his breast.
+
+“You, too?” asked The Kid, his eyes narrowed to twin slits, the gun
+boring into Dugan’s stomach.
+
+Dugan hastily elevated his hands.
+
+“Get the gats, Myrtle,” said the Kid.
+
+The girl scooped them up.
+
+“Your gang will be along pretty quick in the follow car,” said the
+Kid. “I guess Pete got it in the shoulder. He’ll probably take some
+more killing another time.
+
+“And don’t think I’m a squealer. I’ve got that letter in my pocket. I
+just ran a shindy on you guys. So long.”
+
+The car purred away into the darkness. The two figures in the front seat
+showed silhouetted against the driving lights. The girl was leaned over,
+snuggled against the High Collar Kid.
+
+Pete coughed weakly. Dugan bent over him.
+
+“They’ll be along in a minute or two.”
+
+“Damn him,” groaned Pete. “He always did have a way with the women! A
+hell of a surprise party! And I combed the town to get a broad that’d
+appeal to him first time he saw her. Stick a handkerchief in this
+damned bullet hole, will yuh?”
+
+[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 25, 1929
+issue of Clues magazine.]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78409 ***