The World in My Pocket

‘You think so?’ Morgan said jeeringly.

‘I know so! Stop that truck, and before you can get within a yard of it, the steel shutters will be down, the time lock scrambled and the radio screaming for help!’

‘Sure?’ Morgan said and his jeering smile made Kitson itch to hit him.

‘I’m sure, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise,’ Kitson said, controlling his temper with difficulty.

‘Suppose you pipe down and let Frank give us his angle?’ Bleck said. ‘If you think you’ve got better brains than he has, then why the hell don’t you run this outfit?’

Kitson flushed scarlet, shrugged angrily and tilted back his chair. He looked sullenly at Bleck and then at Morgan.

‘Okay, but I tell you it can’t be done,’ he said.

Bleck looked over at Morgan.

‘Go ahead and tell us how you figure to work it, Frank.’

‘Yesterday I took a look at the route from the Agency to the Research Station,’ Morgan said. ‘It’s quite a trip: ninety-three miles by the clock. Seventy of these miles are on the highway, twenty on a secondary road, ten on a dirt road and three on a private road leading directly to the Research Station. I was looking for a place where we could stop the truck. The highway is out. The secondary road is out too. The traffic on both these roads is continuous and heavy. The private road is guarded night and day so that’s out too. That leaves us with the dirt road.’ He flicked ash off his cigarette, screwing up his black eyes as he stared around at the three men facing him. ‘Ten miles of road. Four miles from the secondary road and up the dirt road, there’s a branch road leading to Highway 10. Most of the traffic, and it isn’t heavy, uses the road past the Research Station gates because it is a better road and two miles shorter than the other dirt road. A couple of miles before you get to the Research Station gates there’s a bottleneck made by two big rocks either side of the road. Besides the rocks, there are a lot of scrub bushes. It’s a pretty good place for an ambush or an accident.’

Bleck nodded.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’ve been over that road myself and I very nearly had a pile-up there. If you take the bend too fast you’re on this bottleneck before you know it. They’ve put up a sign now because of the number of accidents.’

‘That’s right,’ Morgan said. ‘Well, imagine those two guys in the truck. In this weather it’ll be damned hot in the cab. They’ve driven over the same route dozens of times, and what with the heat and the boredom of the ride, they’ll be down on their heels. They come to the bottleneck. As they turn into the bend, they’ll see a car, smashed up against the rock, but off the road. Lying in the middle of the road will be a woman, with blood on her and looking pretty bad.’ He leaned forward, staring directly at Bleck. ‘You tell me something: what are those two guys going to do - keep going and drive over the woman or stop and find out how badly hurt she is?’

Bleck grinned. He looked at Kitson.

‘Are you listening, stupe?’ he said. ‘Some pipe dream!’

‘What are they going to do?’ Morgan repeated as Kitson shifted in his chair, his face turning red.

Bleck said, ‘They’ll stop. I guess one of them will get out of the truck and the other will use the radio to get help. That is if they are as security minded as Kitson says they are.’

Morgan looked over at Kitson.

‘What do you say? What do you think they would do?’

Kitson hesitated, then grudgingly shrugged his shoulders, he said, ‘I guess Ed’s right. Dirkson would get out of the truck and Thomas would stay where he was. Dirkson would find out how badly hurt she was, move her off the road, go back to the truck, radio for help, and then they’d go on, leaving her for the ambulance to pick up.’

‘Okay. That’s what I think too,’ Morgan said. He didn’t bother to ask Gypo his opinion. Gypo seldom expressed an opinion that was worth listening to except when it had to do with the busting of a safe or the opening of some tricky lock. ‘So we have this situation,’ Morgan went on. ‘We have one guard out of the truck and the other guard inside the truck. Now tell me something else.’ He was looking directly at Kitson. ‘Would the driver scramble the time lock and drop the steel shutters across the windows and the windshield in a situation like that?’

Kitson took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

‘I guess not,’ he said sullenly.

Morgan looked over at Bleck.

‘What do you think?’

‘Of course he wouldn’t,’ Bleck said decisively. ‘From what Kitson says if the time lock is scrambled, it takes an expert to fix it, and this guy wouldn’t start a thing like that unless he thought the truck was in danger. He wouldn’t operate the shutters because he’d be curious to see what his pal was doing and how badly hurt the woman was.’

Morgan nodded.

‘Well, at least we’re getting somewhere. The truck has stopped and the buttons haven’t been pushed.’ He pointed a finger at Kitson. ‘That’s the situation you said wasn’t possible. You said it was crazy talk and a pipe dream. What do you say now?’