The Ravagers by Donald Hamilton Page A

practice along the way. “Wait!” she cried. “There is somebody! It’s that private detective. I had to bring him! I couldn’t help it. He stopped me and demanded to know where... where Penny was. I had to tell him. He was going to the police if I didn’t tell him. He promised he wouldn’t do anything to harm you as long as she was all right.”
    “He promised!” sneered the voice from the woods. “Now isn’t that sweet!”
    “You don’t understand! He’s just a private investigator, he doesn’t care about you. He says the Canadian authorities can look after their own damn fugitives; he isn’t being paid to do anything but look after Penny. Let him come out; let him talk to you. Don’t hurt her just because... I couldn’t help it, I tell you. I had to bring him. It was either him or the police.”
    There was a lengthy silence before the man out there spoke. “All right, tell him to come out with his hands in plain sight. If he flashes a gun, the kid is dead, understand?”
    “Yes. Yes, of course. Come out Mr. Clevenger. Please be careful. He’s got a knife in Penny’s back.”
    I opened the door and stepped down to the ground. “Drop the stick!” said the youth holding Penny.
    I could see him now, and his companion, and the girl. She was still wearing yesterday’s short divided skirt and grubby white shirt. She was kind of mussed and dirty, with mud on her sneakers and bobbysox. Her hairnet was missing and the rollers and curlers were coming unwound, snakelike, here and there. Nevertheless, she didn’t look to be fundamentally damaged, although her face was pale and scared behind the big glasses.
    The men were in dungarees and work shirts. They were a mean-looking pair: one handsome, murderous young delinquent, and one aging sneak-thief with obvious alcoholic predilections.
    “Drop the stick!” the younger one snarled.
    “Go to hell, punk,” I said pleasantly. “What are you afraid of, that I’ll point it at you and say bang-bangyou’re-dead?” I took a couple of steps away from the trailer door. “You with the bloodshot eyes,” I said. “Come over here and take a look through this mobile home. Make sure I didn’t bring any cops before your friend wets his pants worrying.”
    The younger one tightened his arm across Penny’s throat. “Watch your lip, mister,” he said. He hesitated, and said reluctantly, “All right, Mousie. Go ahead and look in there like I told you in the first place.”
    A signal passed between them that I guess I wasn’t supposed to see or understand; then Mousie sidled past me. I heard him enter the trailer and come back out. “Okay, Frankie. It’s empty.”
    “All right, you,” said Frankie. “What did you have to say to us?”
    “Let the kid go and we’ll forget we ever saw you,” I said, pretending not to hear the old thief slipping up behind me. The clumsy way he moved, it was no wonder he’d wound up in jail. I kept talking to help him out: “What do you say, Frankie? Turn her loose and we won’t bother you. You can go where you damn well please.”
    Frankie said, “Bother? Tall man, you don’t bother me a bit.” Apparently American gangster movies had formed a large part of his education: or maybe all prisons turn out the same product the world over—well, the English-speaking world over. He had that tough, lipless, convict way of talking. “You mean we should let you drive off and leave us here on foot? That would be a hell of a deal, now. We might as well have stayed in Brandon.”
    I said, “All right, take the damn truck. Take the trailer. Just turn the kid loose. I promise...”
    I pivoted on the word, and my timing was right. Mousie was right there, with the big kitchen knife raised as if to chip ice for a highball. I suppose he was really hoping to plant it between my shoulder blades. He might be a professional thief, but as a murderer he was strictly amateur talent. The high-held knife was out of position for any kind of thrust or