Night My Friend Read Online Free PDF

driver’s side and placed the shotgun across his lap, its barrels pointed toward the empty space where Harvey Stout’s car soon would be. Two shells went into the chambers, and he was ready. In his mind he ran over the details once again. The hunting license was in his pocket—Stout would have neither license nor gun, but the lack of one would explain the lack of the other. He had come along simply to watch. They might suspect differently, but certainly the suspicions would be no worse than those born of Harvey Stout’s story of events on le Shima.
    At five minutes to five a car turned off the highway and headed toward him. From somewhere in the woods came the boom of a shotgun, and the ruffled rushing of birds on the wing. The forest was a living thing, breathing, vibrant.
    The last western rays of the orange sun flickered through the enveloping clouds, and the car came silently closer like a great gliding animal breaking into the brush. Up ahead Captain Mason paused to look around, then gave the signal for them to follow. Harvey Stout paused and raised his rifle to his shoulder. Harvey Stout opened the car door and slid across the seat.
    “Hello, buddy. You got the money?” Raised his rifle and so did Travello and so did Dale. Three men. The money. “What in hell are you doing with that shotgun?” The first bullet spun the captain around, and Stout and Travello kept firing. The gun was warm in Dale’s hands. He sighted at his target. The enemy.
    “You damn fool, Fielding! You can’t pull it, can you? You couldn’t kill Mason and you can’t kill me.”
    Dale heard the voice as if from a distance, and he knew the words were true. The shotgun was limp in his hands. Harvey Stout walked over and lifted it up. Then he slapped Dale twice with his open palm. “The hell with you. I can’t fool around any longer. I’ll take this gun and be thankful you got off so easy.”
    He threw the shotgun in the back seat of his car and climbed in behind the wheel. Dale watched the scorn on his face with a mixture of feelings. Somehow it was almost as if he had failed Harvey by not killing him.
    After the car pulled away he sat for a long time staring into the dusk, until at last all was darkness around him and the other hunters had departed. Then he drove slowly home to Marge and the boys.

The Night My Friend
    H IS NAME, THEY SAID, was Johnny Nocturne.
    Perhaps it was not his real name, but it didn’t matter. To the people in Tin Pan Alley, and the disc jockeys, and the lovers who listened dreamily to his songs, he was Johnny Nocturne, creator of mood music for the night people.
    He’d never be another Irving Berlin or Cole Porter because his music somehow lacked the universal appeal of true greatness. But for those who liked the ever-changing moods of darkness, he was the master.
    And like his music, Johnny Nocturne was a prowler of the night places. He claimed he got his best inspiration riding through the dark places of River City in a police prowl car. The cops of the night beat all knew him, and often they enjoyed having him in the back seat, humming a little tune that might be tomorrow’s hit.
    Friday night was a good one on the night beat, and Johnny always managed to meet car 52 when it pulled out of Police Headquarters just before midnight. The cops in 52 were good fellows, not the kind who looked for trouble—just good fellows.
    On this Friday night, Tom Harper was driving 52. He’d been on the force for some ten years, with the last three spent in a patrol car. It was a lot better than walking a beat, and it had made him feel that he was getting ahead on the force. It gave him an answer when his wife nagged him about the poor pay and long hours.
    His partner for the past year had been Harvey Backus, a big, long-legged kid still in his mid-twenties. Harvey could run faster than any man on the force, as any number of young hoodlums had learned to their sorrow.
    Together, these two prowled the post-midnight streets