The Big Bite by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online

headlights and then an even briefer glimpse of somebody else apparently trying to hide from the lights by crouching down in the seat. To make up his mind that fast, provided he did crash me deliberately, he must have had a preconceived idea of who those people were. The chances were he was actually looking for them. I knew Mrs. Cannon was out there by the lake; so maybe the big guy was out there too. She had been waiting beside the swamp road for somebody in a car, because when she saw me coming she stepped out into the road for an instant, and then realized her mistake and stepped back. It was still only twilight and I didn’t have my lights on, so she could see the car all right. Therefore, the car she was waiting for could have looked something like mine. She couldn’t have been expecting Cannon, because his was a gray Cadillac sedan. So suppose it was a convertible with the top down. That tied in with the theory Cannon had smashed me deliberately; I was the same size as this big joker and presumably even our cars were similar.
    Say they were both out there. To get back to town they had to come right past where we had crashed. They stopped and investigated when they saw Cannon’s car. He was in it, unconscious or helpless. He’d wanted to kill them, apparently; maybe the feeling was mutual. At any rate, they’d never have a better opportunity. Nobody would ever suspect. And nobody had, except Purvis. He kept getting in their hair, sniffing around, so they stepped on him too. They’d also step on me in a minute if they suspected me, but I should have seen enough of the game by this time to know how it was played. Swing first and never turn your back on anybody.
    So far, I didn’t have any actual proof of this, except that I knew Mrs. Cannon had been out there at the lake and I’d been in the next room when Purvis was killed, but I didn’t need too much in the way of evidence. The threat was enough if I backed it up with some real pressure, and I was beginning to have an idea about that.
    I crushed out the cigarette and lay back on the pillow, it was a little while before I got to sleep because the thought of that taxi driver began to nag me again. A lot depended on how much publicity there was when Purvis’s body was found. If he came forward, a little heads-up police work would put the finger on me without too much trouble. They’d know he picked me up at the bus station, and the approximate time. Check that against bus arrivals and Galveston wouldn’t be too difficult to arrive at. A record of his telephone calls would show he had talked to somebody down here twice in the past two days, to somebody in this hotel. From then on a kid could do it. Of course, I hadn’t killed Purvis and I was pretty sure I could tell then where to find the guy who had if they started leaning on me too hard, but it would be a damned expensive speech if I did have to tell them.
    When I awoke the next morning my throat still felt as if a horse had stepped on it. That judo, I thought, they could keep it. Just give me good, clean, bone-crunching professional football where you could tell by looking at a guy about how hard he’d be able to hit you. I thought of Purvis before I got out of bed, but there was no particular feeling about him one way or another aside from the fact I’d just as soon forget what his head had looked like if it was all right with everybody. It was something about the combination of dark blood and gray hair. He was an odd-ball, all right. I wondered what he would have done with the money if he’d got it. Probably spent the rest of his life following a ballet troupe around like a baseball filbert following the Giants. He must have been dreaming of that one big score for years, and then when he was near enough to put out his hand and touch it he wound up looking like something somebody had stepped on.
    I turned Purvis off like closing a tap and rolled out of bed. There was a lot to be done to get the show on the