F.B.I. Showdown: A Classic Suspense Novel. Gordon Landsborough

then he told him what was on his mind.

      They shuffled round, heads bent, dust coming up from the sun-dried concrete as their feet stirred it into motion. Egghead looked up at that high concrete wall, with the catwalk twelve feet above their heads, and the railed walk right on top of that twenty-foot high ring of ferro-concrete. There were guards leaning along that top rail, and more guards lounging about the catwalk.

      Egghead looked everywhere but at Johnny Delcros, while words came thin and harsh through his tight-drawn lips. And he said, “You got somep’n crawlin’ in your head if you think I’m gonna try’n get over that wall with you.”

      Johnny looked everywhere but at Egghead and snarled, “Hey, you ain’t got cold feet, have you?”

      Egghead said, dispassionately, “I would have, ef I joined in a break over the wall—permanent cold, I guess, along with the rest of me.” He looked at one solitary white cloud that drifted against the blue of the North Carolina sky and whispered, “I got me better ideas, Johnny. But they don’t include the Savannah mob.” He made a nasty sound in his throat. “Them dumb clucks!”

      That was better—Egghead wasn’t quitting and was talking of other ideas.

      Johnny said, quickly, “If you got better ideas, Eggy, you don’t go without me, see? I’m gonna bust outa this place, if it’s the last thing I do.”

      Egghead pacified him. “Sure, Johnny, we bust out together when we go, but we don’t need more’n you an’ me, so we don’t say anything to the Savannah outfit, see?”

      They shuffled around on probably the last circuit before the whistle went for form up for the cellblocks. Egghead spoke with care, stopping when any of the prisoners were near enough to hear. It wouldn’t be nice for them if the Savannah mob got to know they were being double-crossed—even in jail things could happen.

      Egghead’s voice came thinly to the fight-calloused ears of his buddy. “I never did like the idea of rushin’ that wall. One or two of us might get over, but what ef you’n me stop this side o’ the wall with a bullet in us? That’d be no go, now, wouldn’t it, Johnny?”

      “So what? So I got to doin’ some thinkin’. We’ll let the Savannah boys go ahead with their plan, but we’ll sneak out ahead of ’em, see?”

      Johnny said, “Why don’t we tell ’em, Eggy? It would be better, in case they find out themselves. They’re poison, that mob.”

      “Sure they’re poison. That’s why we say nothin’—nothin’, d’you hear, Johnny? You’n me’ll make this break together. There’ll be no room for the Savannah mob, an’ ef we tell ’em, d’you think they’ll let us go without ’em?”

      A prison guard came down and started shouting for fall in. Johnny said, viciously: “I want for to paste him cross the mouth before I leave this joint. For why? Because that guy shoves us around more’n any other guard, an’ I don’t like being shoved around.”

      Johnny wanted to hear the rest of the plan.

      He got it over the evening meal. Egghead spoke above the noise of a thousand prisoners eating. There was a lot of noise, because the men said the food was getting worse and it had always been moderately lousy. Some of them set up a clamour with their plates and mugs, but it didn’t get them anywhere, and they shut up when the prison guards swooped quickly down among them. But it was a good opportunity for Egghead to get on with his plan.

      “Remember the time they gave Erd Savannah the gas? They got a workin’ party to clean up the death chamber the day before, remember? You’n me were on that job. We had to wash down the paint, scrub the floors, and put a shine on everything. You’d have thought they were afraid Erd might take his custom to another jail ef he didn’t like the look of his last sleepin’ room.”

      Johnny spoke through a mouthful of slush, cynically, bitterly. “That wasn’t for Erd. That was for the Governor, who’s a sensitive li’l lily an’ doesn’t like to see dirt, the lousy sonofasoandso.”

      Egghead got impatient and said, “Sure, sure, I know all that. But—d’you remember the covers for the walls an’ auditorium seats? The ones to keep the muck outa the gas holes? They got sent away for a quick clean, so’s they could be put up again when the show was over.”

      Johnny said, “We took ’em to the laundry chute and dropped ’em down to the bin.”

      Egghead said, “We gotta fix ourselves on to that cleanin’ up party next tine they fumigate anyone. Next time we’re goin’ down that chute together, see?” Johnny forgot and started to look at Egghead, recovered and stared down at his plate of food again. Egghead’s voice went on, “That bin’s only a floor below. I guess it won’t hurt us. And it opens into the loading bay where the laundry truck is!”

      Johnny was rapidly cottoning on.

      Egghead whispered, “Don’t you see, Johnny, that’s better’n goin’ over the wall with the Savannah mob. They’ll be on the run from the second the break’s attempted. Now, us, we might get half an hour or an hour’s start before anyone sees we’re missin’.” He leaned closer. Louie Savannah saw the action, and slowly put down his spoon.

      Egghead said, “We gotta have guns, both of us, that’s all. We stick the truck driver up, then lie back among the baskets an’ let him drive out through the gates. Ef he double-crosses us, we give it him in the back of the head.”

      “An’ when we get out of the district?” Johnny with the heavy, fight-marred countenance was better with his fists than with his brains.

      “We still give it him in the back of the head,” Egghead growled. “I ain’t comin’ back into this place, Johnny, no, not never. So I guess this time it don’t matter what I do when I tote a gun.”

      Johnny said, savagely, “Bud, I’m right with you! This babe’s another they won’t bring back alive. Another five years in this place? Guess I’d be screwy as heck by that time, Eggy, just as you say, we go out together an’ we don’t ever come back, no, not never!”

      When they were told to stand back of their benches and march off to the blocks, Louie Savannah got a whisper across the table. “What’s cooking, you guys? You doin’ a lotta talkin’ just now. Shoot the works?”

      Johnny looked quickly at Egghead. It was only a fractional glance, but it told Louie they were up to something and were hiding it from him. Johnny came back across the table as they picked up the mark-time with their ill-fitting prison boots. “Aw, gee, Louie, it ain’t nothin’. Just a ball game we’d like to see in Charleston.”

      Louie said, “Yeah?” and then again, softly, “Yeah?” and then turned to look for Joe Guestler. He was arrogant, young Louie, and no sort of man. Now that Erd was gone he thought he should be boss of the outfit, and he tried to say what should be done in their planning. But he wasn’t like his brother when it came to organising, and that was why they hadn’t got anywhere with the breakout to date.

      Egghead saw the look and said. “He’s on to us, damn it. Fer crissake play the dummy or we’ll be in jake with the Savannah boys!”

      They made their break seven weeks later. Seven weeks isn’t a long time, but seven weeks in jail can seem an eternity, and after a time Johnny got tired of waiting and wanted to try for a break over the wall, just as the Savannah boys were urging.

      But Egghead said no, a wall break was no dice, and he talked Johnny out of it. Acting on Egghead’s instructions, when the Savannah mob got impatient and wanted to start things, Johnny told them he hadn’t got enough guns in for them yet. But to keep them quiet, he got in three guns and then some ammunition for the Savannah boys, with the promise of another couple to follow. He and Egghead already had flat .38 automatics....

      A man was gassed in the lethal chamber after three weeks of waiting—he had croaked a young girl who wouldn’t play the game as he wanted her to—but neither Egghead nor Johnny Delcros got on the working party to clean up the place.

      They