The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

never dare refuse that thou­sand,” he pondered. “I know too much. And they’ll never dare try anybody else, even if they had any evidence left. I’ve got them frightened. It’s all worked out very well. Very, very well indeed.”

      He pondered a moment, then added: “Next to handing that thousand to Dillingham, I rather think I’ll enjoy the laying of that orthopedic corner stone!”

      Then T. Ashley lighted still another cigar, and as the smoke ascended, smiled wisely to himself.

ROUGH TOSS

      Originally published in Complete Stories, May 15th, 1932.

      The telegram arrived just as Tim Spurling, diver, was at breakfast with his wife in the kitchen. A leisurely, skimpy breakfast. When a fellow’s out of work, been out of work for more than six months, why hurry? The wire said:

      CAN YOU COME IMMEDIATELY CRYSTAL LAKE RECOVER BODY STOP WIRE DECISION COLLECT URGENT

      DR SW OLIVIER

      Spurling’s lip tightened as he shoved the message over to his wife.

      “Well, job at last!” he grunted. “And we need it, somethin’ fierce!”

      “Yes, but going down after a body ain’t—”

      “Tain’t what I like, Blanche, that’s a bet. Allus gives me the crawls, handlin’ a stiff. But beggars can’t be choosers. And then, too, case like this—”

      “Well?”

      “So much a day. Tain’t like a contract job, or salvagin’ stuff that the position of it’s known. Carcasses drift round on the bottom. Ain’t nobody can tell how long it’ll take to locate one, and so—”

      Blanche Spurling shot him a quick glance. She asked:

      “You mean, even if you found a body, you could let on you hadn’t and get more pay?”

      “Well, why not?”

      “Wouldn’t that be cheating, or stealing, or getting money under false pretenses? Couldn’t they jail you for that, if it was found out?”

      “Who’s to find out anythin’, underwater?” he retorted defiantly. “And besides, the way times is— Then, too, what we just found out about Bill—”

      The diver’s wife sat brooding a moment. Not even the shaft of July sunlight slanting in through the window could make the table and kitchen other than drear and ugly. With an abstracted air the woman smoothed the hair back and away from her forehead, revealing deeper wrinkles than her thirty-six years should have graven there. Her brown eyes, studying the telegram, appeared to see through and beyond it; perhaps even away to the Arizona desert which alone, so their family doctor told them, could yet save the life of Bill, their only son.

      “Yes, it’s T.B.,” the doctor had bluntly affirmed. “But it’s only beginning. Send the boy out West, and you can still save him. But if he stays here—”

      “Us, send the kid West?” Spurling had queried. “Where would we get the jack to do that? Us, with our rent three months overdue, and a grocery bill with whiskers on it! Where would we get the dough?”

      “Sorry. That part of it is beyond me, Spurling. All I can do is tell you what’s wrong with the boy, and recommend the treatment. He’s positively got to have a change of climate, or—well—”

      And the case had stood right there. T.B. No cash to be had, no job, nothing to borrow on. And Bill, hardly sixteen, and their only child.

      “Judas!” Spurling had cried. “What a hell of a rough toss!”

      His fist, hard clenched, had seemed knotted against whatever gods there be.

      And now, this job! Incredible, yet true. Things, after all, sometimes happened like that. Tim Spurling and his wife, silent a moment in the untidy dreariness of their little kitchen, eyed each other and felt hope reborn. This new job; did it not mean a chance for Bill?

      “There, there, Blanche old kid! Don’t cry!”

      Spurling went round the table and clumsily patted her shoulder.

      “What’s there to cry for now, baby? Things is beginnin’ to come right for us, now, ain’t they? We’re beginnin’ to get the breaks at last, ain’t we?”

      “Yes,” she admitted. “But say, Timmy, how’d you happen to get this here job, anyhow, I wonder?”

      The diver scratched his unshaven chin; a square chin and a hard one.

      “Search me! Reckon maybe it’s ’cause I’m the nearest diver to Crystal Lake they could get hold of.”

      “Yes, that’s prob’ly the reason.”

      “Here, what you cryin’ for, now?”

      “I’m not crying, Tim! That’s just something that got in my eye.”

      Blanche dried her eyes on her apron, then reached for Tim’s hand a moment, and held it clasped in both her own hands, roughened by dishwater and the washtub. Her caress was awkward. Lack of practice, in the matter of caresses, had made it so.

      Silence fell. Through that silence a muffled cough echoed from the next room—an ominous, deadly sound.

      “But we’ll soon fix all that now, kid,” Spurling growled. “Job like this will bring a hell of a lot o’ dough.”

      “How much, Timmy?”

      “Hundred a day, at the very least. Maybe more. Depends on how much the stiff’s family’s got. Even though I got to pay my helper ten or twelve bucks per, there’ll be a swell clean-up.”

      “Who you going to take along for a helper?”

      “Jim McTaggart. He’s ’bout the only guy I’ll trust to handle the pump and hose for me. When you’re down on the bottom and your life depends on another guy bein’ steady and reliable, the best ain’t none too good!”

      “That’s right, too,” Blanche agreed. “Oh, if anything was to happen to you— But tell me, how many days’ll you need, to find—it?”

      “How do I know? Depends on a lot o’ things. Size o’ the lake, how deep, and the like o’ that. This here job—if I have any kind o’ luck—might run into thick kale.”

      Silence again. Blanche broke in.

      “That there telegraph boy, out at the front door. He’s waiting.”

      “Yeah, that’s right. Gotta send an answer, ain’t I?”

      Tim fished out a pencil from his pocket. Bending over the disordered table, he scrawled on the yellow blank: Leaving at once. T.H. Spurling.

      * * * *

      Three hours later Tim Spurling and Jim McTaggart stepped onto the platform of the little station at Crystal Lake. He and Jim helped unload the diving gear from the baggage car, also the air pump. Two huge boxes contained this equipment, at which a duly impressed little knot of people gazed with silent wonder.

      “Take you out to the lake, four miles,” said a loose-lipped man with a small truck. “Mr. Eccles—him that had his son drownded—told me to git you out there.”

      “Oh, all right,” Spurling agreed. “Gimme a hand and we’ll load the stuff.”

      When he and McTaggart and the truckman had loaded the equipment they got aboard, McTaggart sitting on the boxes in the truck body. Out of the village they jolted and away into the hills.

      “Terrible thing to happen, ain’t it?” asked Spurling.

      “Sure is,” the truckman agreed. “Havin’ millions, like old man Eccles, don’t pervent trouble. Only kid he’s got, too.”

      “Yeah, I heard about it on the train. Only sixteen years old, they