The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six Read Online Free PDF Page B

his Aunt Eunice’s.
    Kurt was leafing through the paper and he was smoking. Phyllis was irritable. She kept looking over at Sixte. “You’re a fool, Kurt. Get rid of him.”
    “Take it easy.” Kurt leaned back in his chair, lighting another cigarette with his left hand. With his coat off, his shoulders were not as wide and he was a little pigeon chested. “I’ve got a call out for Rubio. Let him do it.”
    Sixte’s feet were tied, but his hands were free. There was no way he could move quickly, and nothing to use with his hands. He was trying to put himself in the position of the police and getting nowhere.
    Suppose some neighbor had just turned off the radio? Suppose the police had become curious, would that make them look around? How smart were they?
    All right. Suppose they had come, and suppose they had examined his room. Suppose they decided he had been kidnapped, all of which was a lot of supposing. But, if they had? What would they do?
    Closing his eyes to shut out the room he was in, he tried to picture the situation. He knew something of police work, something of the routine. But there would be little to go on…the Madeira. It was the one thing that was different. That might help.
    What else?
    As long as they sat still, he had time. Yet as long as they sat still they could not make mistakes. He had to get them into the open, to start them moving. Sooner or later the nagging of Phyllis might irk Kurt into killing him.
    But Kurt didn’t want to kill, if he didn’t have to…he wanted this Rubio to do it. Kurt didn’t want to kill but Tom had no doubt that he would if pushed. Kurt might be the key, but what did he want?
    He wanted money. Easy money, quick money.
    Kurt hoped to sell the passport and tickets, for maybe a thousand dollars…a thousand dollars…who, if he could, would not buy his life for that sum? Or twice or three times as much? Or more?
    Rubio had not called, so there was a chance. A faint, slim chance.
    “Look,” he said quietly, “I’m a reasonable guy. What you do is none of my business. Anyway, I’m supposed to go to South America. I don’t know who either of you are, and I don’t want to know, but I figure you’re pretty smart.”
    All criminals, psychologists say, are both egotists and optimists. A good point. Flatter them—but not too much.
    “Suppose you knock me off, and suppose you sell my papers to Rubio…will he pay a thousand bucks?”
    Kurt smiled. “He does or he don’t get them.”
    Sixte shrugged. “All right. You know him better than I do. But he knows you’ve got me on your hands. The only way you can make any dough is to sell those papers, otherwise you knock me off for nothing, am I right?”
    “So what?”
    “So he says, ‘I’ll give you five hundred, take it or leave it.’ Then where are you?”
    Kurt’s smile was gone, he was studying Tom Sixte and he didn’t like what he was thinking. Kurt was remembering Rubio, and he had a hunch that was just what Rubio would do—and where did that leave
him
?
    “Now I want to live. I also want to go to South America. Rubio will give you a thousand bucks for my papers. All right,” Sixte put his palms on his knees. “I’ll boost the ante. You put me on that plane to Bolivia with my own tickets and I’ll give you
five
thousand!”
    “Don’t listen to him, Kurt.” Phyllis was uneasy. “I don’t like it.”
    “Shut up.” Kurt was thinking. Five thousand was good money. Five G’s right in his mitt.
    He shook his head. “You’d have them radio from the plane. What do you think I am, a dope?”
    Sixte shrugged. “I know better than that. You’re a sharp operator and that’s what I’m banking on. Any dope can kill a man. Only a dope would take the chance at that price. Especially when he can get more.”
    He took his time. “See it from where I sit. I want to live. If some drunk gets killed, that’s no skin off my nose. I like women, good food, I like wine. I can’t have any of them if I’m