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  April 19 - May 24, 1947

  Too Late for Tears

  The Original 1947 Serialized Novel

  Roy Huggins

  (custom book cover)

  Jerry eBooks

  Title Page

  Original Publication Information

  PART ONE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  PART FIVE

  CONCLUSION

  PART ONE

  As the car raced by in the darkness, someone flung out a battered handbag . . . a bag containing a fortune in cash that was destined to entangle a dozen lives in cunning intrigue, blackmail, murder. Beginning the gripping story of a beautiful girl’s ruthless pursuit of her ambition . . .

  IT was like almost any Southern California night, a frostbitten moon high and withdrawn among a few reluctant stars, a cool salt breeze blowing in from the sea and sweetening through the odor of brush fires in the hills.

  The open convertible rolled to a slow stop before the house and the man stepped out and closed the door. The woman sat, not moving, staring out across the endless horizontal monotony of the valley. He leaned over and asked if she had gone to Bleep, the tone carrying a suggestion of banter, timidly, as if he were uncertain of its reception.

  The woman opened the door slowly and stepped out and stood looking at the house. She was very young, her mouth dark and full and somehow hard, and the hardness seemed to be directed at the house. It was a small house, a miniature colonial with little green shutters that were nailed down and had no hinges. Light shone behind the many-paned windows, showing stiff white curtains and the empty corner of a room. But the woman knew what was inside the house—sepia walls, and the infinite combinations of the cards, and Bill and Betty, who seemed to be two people, but were really one, a person known as Bill-and-Betty. Last night there had been a visit to Joe-and-Helen, and the night before. She shuddered, realizing that they thought of her as Alan-and-Jane. And quite suddenly the formless malady of the months past became focused and articulate.

  “I can’t go in there, Alan.”

  “Why? What’s the matter, Janie?”

  “Nothing!” She turned and stepped back into the car. “Hurry, they might have heard us. They might come out.”

  Alan had come around to the lawn that sloped down to the curb. He stepped over to her and whispered, “But if we’re not going in. I’ve got to explain. They’re expecting us, sweet. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  The breeze was suddenly cool on her forehead. “Please! Get in! You can call them later.”

  He waited there for a long moment, then moved abruptly and walked around and slid under the wheel. The motor turned quietly and the car lurched and moved swiftly away. She felt the tensions go. The car always did that for her. It was big and new and expensive. The night was warm and Alan was being competent at the wheel. And silent. She sat and let the night flow by, leaving the subtle odor of cottonwood in its wake, blowing gently at her soft blond hair that was tike autumn floss.

  They were leaving Burbank, moving up Dark Canyon toward the pass that would lake them to Hollywood. Jane knew it was the car, the traffic moving by, anonymous and self-contained, Alan’s silence, that made it possible for her to lie back and look at the starred sky and not think about the inescapable quarrel that, must come and the things that must be said; things that had been slowly gathering for a long while. She knew they would be final and irrevocable things. A star fell in a breathless flight and broke and was gone. She smiled.

  The car crossed the bridge at the pass, swung left, and shot up the dark road that wound upward into the hills. Jane sat up abruptly and looked back. The way home was dropping away below.

  Alan said quietly, “I asked Kathy to come in and have coffee with us when we got home. We’ve got to talk this out before we get there.”

  She turned slowly and brought up a slender leg and tucked it under her. There was a tightness in her throat that was like the beginning of exhilaration, but she waited silently.

  “It isn’t just tonight,” he said gently. “It’s been obvious for a long time. You just don’t like my friends, and they know it. And there’s no reason for it, Jane. They’ve all got a lot more than we have, and they’re all nice people.”

  She stared past him, dimly aware of the great flat city stretching endlessly into the misty dark below. She said slowly, “You look at things as if you were seeing them through a diminishing glass. You’re simple, Alan, and you think the world is simple. But it isn’t. And neither am I.” She had begun quietly enough, but now her throat was tight, her voice shrill. “Neither am I!”

  Alan looked down at her and almost smiled. His tone changed. “Are you using that word ‘simple’ the way we used it in the Army, hon, or are you going literary on me?”

  The gentle banter, the effort to laugh it off, jabbed sharply at her, and she flushed. Her mouth moved stiffly when she spoke. “We’re through, Alan. I’m not just talking. I’m going to leave you.”

  The car slowed abruptly and the motor coughed. He shifted gears slowly and deliberately and the car picked up speed and rolled on. After a while he said, “Let’s not go off the deep end with that kind of talk, Janie. I think we’d better skip this until tomorrow.”

  “I’ve intended to leave you all along,” she said evenly. It wasn’t true, but she wanted to say it just that way, with a sting in it. She saw him wince almost imperceptibly and the sense of exhilaration was strong again.

  “Janie, you’re getting all worked up over nothing. It’s my fault. Let’s drop it for now.”

  “There’s nothing to drop, Alan. It’s all been said. Perhaps I didn’t really know about it until tonight . . . or even just now. But I’ve been cheating both of us, telling myself I’d made a go of it, grown used to it.”

  “Used to it? Used to what?”

  “Burbank!” she cried. “And the petty, stifling life we live! I’m not like your friends. I can’t delude myself that I’m happy. And I can’t live on—on flummery.”

  He was staring stiffly out into the path of light, trying to make it out, thinking it over carefully, painfully. “I don’t get it, Janie. What are you talking about?”

  Jane could fool the words within her, rolling and spilling, promising an eloquence that would crush his smug little world. But the words did not form on her lips, and there was nothing but a bitter weight inside her to show for them. She asked herself why it mattered. What was she trying to prove? She lay brick against the cool leather and felt the strength of the car beneath her and was comforted by it.

  After a while Alan said slowly, “I think I get the sketch, Jane. I’ve thought about it before in my simple way. You want to be one of the gay people. You’re allergic to ruts; a home and a job and kids being the standard Number One rut.” His voice was gray.

  Jane didn’t say anything.

  “But how does one get into the mad whirl if one doesn’t happen to own a couple of rubber plantations?”

  It was a long time before Jane answered. “I think I know,” she said distantly. “A long time ago I had that all planned. It was a daydream, of course. But I worked at it. And I think I could have brought it off.” She was almost whispering now. “I suppose the ‘mad whirl’ is as good a word as any for what I had in mind, and I was going to marry it.”

  “But you married me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course I was a flier then; a glamour boy with ribbons and everything.”

  “No, Alan. Part of it was tha
t you had the courage to live—I wish I could say ‘dangerously’ without sounding inane.”

  “I’m afraid you couldn’t. Are you sure the other part wasn’t that I was being shipped out? I probably wouldn’t come back anyway. Give the poor dope a break! . . . And I thought it was a break, Jane,” he added, “if that’s any satisfaction to you. The absent look,” he went on. “That came about ten months ago, after I was mustered out. I wasn’t living dangerously any more. I was just living the way millions of guys had dreamed of living, a minor official in a very small bank—practically a clerk. That was when you began to get the absent look, sweetheart.”

  “All right, Alan! I don’t like the way we’re living. Can I help that? Does it make me some kind of criminal? During the war we were either not together at all or we were together night and day. And we lived like—like——”

  “Yes. We had seven months out of five years of marriage. It was great, sweetheart, great!”

  “It was. I can remember Miami as if it were yesterday . . . and the month in the Catskills——”

  “Oh, hell!” he choked, and then he said no more.

  The car was moving fast now, picking up speed. Alan’s face was gray and hard, his mouth a thin cold line. The hard road whined under the tires. It turned sharply and the car screamed into the outer lane and pulled back slowly, gaining speed. The road straightened, the wind howled, the motor roared its complaint, the whole world whined about their heads and caught at their breaths. Jane cried out and reached for the key, and her hand fumbled against the dark dashboard and Alan knocked it away. Her hand came down hard against a switch and the headlights went out. The road shone with a dull patina in the moonlight and the car rode the night Jane reached out again, and Alan gripped her wrist and held it. She could feel the hand swelling. She stared out across the hood at the road that was a bright wash before them. Sudden lights blared out of the dark ahead and turned out and started toward them, moving fast. Alan’s foot left the throttle and he pulled over sharply. The car was big and dark, and it hurtled by, and their car rocked with the impact of the wind . . . and something else. Jane saw it. She had thought it a shadow. But she had felt the jar behind her.

  She screamed. Alan let go her wrist and slammed his foot against the brake. The car lurched sickeningly to a stop and her hands tore at the handle, and she opened the door and stumbled out and ran down the road. Alan was beside her after she had gone a little way, breathing hard, holding her, and she was leaning against him and saying, “They threw something into the car, Alan! I saw it! It looked like a dog or a child! It’s there . . . in the back seat!” She stopped, trembling, and Alan held her closer, and she could feel his warm breath in her hair.

  After a while he said, “Jane, there’s nothing in the car. Come on. Let’s go home. Let’s forget everything we’ve said tonight and tomorrow we’ll sit down and sweat it out. Okay?”

  “Please! Look in the car! Please!”

  Alan stared down at her for a moment, puzzled, uncertain. Then he turned and went back to the car. She watched him open the door and lean over into the back. He straightened quickly, then leaned over again and stepped back out onto the road. There was something in his hand, and he put it down beside him and stood staring at it.

  He raised his head and said, “Janie, come up here,” His voice was low, but there was a strain of excitement in it.

  Jane walked back quickly. It was a leather traveling bag, a brown and beaten object, one clasp torn off.

  Alan said, “There’s paper in it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I shook it.”

  “Paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we . . . open it?”

  “They threw it in? That car that went past?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it fell in.”

  “They threw it, Alan! Open it!”

  From below them in the direction of the pass, the sound of a motor faintly etched the night silence, drawing nearer. Alan picked up the bag and laid it on the front seat. He unbuckled the straps and pulled them loose, pushed open the remaining clasp at the side and hit the lock clasp with the side of his hand. It broke away and he lifted the lid. They were almost colorless in the cold moonlight, packages about an inch thick lying in a jumbled heap. Alan spoke, and he had gone beyond excitement now. His voice was level, matter-of-fact, as if he were checking a deposit.

  He said. “Fifties and twenties. I’d say between sixty and a hundred thousand dollars, Jane.”

  Jane looked at the money for a long-drawn moment, pulling her eyes away almost with a conscious effort of will. The very stillness of it, its cool crisp cleanliness, seemed to draw her and quiet her. But she looked away and up into Alan’s eyes that were deep dark shadows. She felt that she was going to cry, and she moved forward and put her face against his shoulder. His arms came tight around her.

  “Oh, darling,” she whispered, “I don’t want to lose you.”

  IT was a heavy motor, the sound deepening as the car rounded one of the turns below. Jane looked at Alan and knew that he had heard it too. They both knew. They knew that this car coming toward them. Up the mountain was the one that was to have driven by this spot, to have cut its lights and to have felt the jar of the heavy bag as it was thrown. They moved together. Alan threw the bag onto the rear seat, lifted Jane into the car and followed her in. The car’s motor turned as head lights “rounded the last curve behind them. Jane looked back. The lights of the oncoming car dimmed and went out. She couldn’t see it now. Alan’s motor roared, choked, died, then caught. The ear jumped forward. The lights of the car behind came on.

  Alan saw it and picked up speed. But the grade was dropping rapidly now, twisting as it went. The car could go faster, but now it was a question of skill and compulsion. The car behind was drawing closer. They roared on. The road took a sudden drop, and below them another road crossed and pointed back toward Hollywood. Alan went into a skid at the crossing, let the car have its head and straightened up, pointed toward home. The headlights lit up the signpost, and Jane could see the name of the street: WOODROW WILSON ROAD. It was a straight road, and after a while there were no headlights behind them.

  Then they were at Laurel Canyon and they turned into the southward traffic and lost themselves in I he midst of it.

  They were on Franklin. Alan had dropped down to Sunset and come back up to Franklin by a devious route.

  He said. “No one’s following.”

  “I know,” she breathed. “I know. The car was moving slowly now, as if it felt the same exhaustion, the same spent ecstasy, that flowed through Jane with a slow soft thrumming. “It’s ours,” she whispered. “It’s ours!”

  Alan said nothing. His hands gripped the wheel and gleamed white in the dim light from the dashboard. His mouth was open slightly. He licked his lips, but he still said nothing. And Jane felt a cold, uneasy tightness growing within her, knotting her stomach and pulling sharply across her lungs.

  After a long while, Alan said, “We can’t keep it.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked sharply. “What’s—I don’t see——”

  She stopped abruptly, bewildered. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it!

  “We’ve got to get rid of it,” he repeated. “For a thousand reasons.”

  “But why? It’s ours! No one in the world knows we have it!”

  Once more Jane stopped, breathless. What could I say to him? A magic world lay in a dingy bag behind her. And Alan was sitting at the wheel, his mouth slack and loose, telling her that she couldn’t have it.

  “If we keep it,” he said evenly, “we commit a felony. In the eye of the law, keeping it is as bad as stealing it. We could cancel ten years of our lives, and I’d never be allowed to hold a job of trust again. You want me to walk into a gamble like that absolutely blind. Jane, we can’t afford to take that kind of a chance. You see that, don’t you?”

  Jane didn’t see it. She didn’t see it at all. Wh
ere was the danger? Her face was hot, and she looked up, and Alan’s profile swam darkly and she fought down the searing desire to pound her fiats against, his face until it was without form and without words.

  But Alan was still talking. She heard the word “ . . . reward. Probably a pretty good-sized one for recovery.” he was saying. “Maybe as much as five thousand dollars.”

  “Five thousand dollars!” she echoed. “Oh, Alan! I—I love you, Alan. You’ve got to believe that, because it’s true. This is our chance, and we’ll never get another. We can have what we want, and have each other too. Don’t throw it away!”

  He made no answer, driving slowly, staring blankly ahead. Then: “Don’t you think I’d like to keep it?” he asked heavily. “But we don’t know where it came from. It may be marked, it may be counterfeit, the serial numbers may be known.”

  “And maybe they aren’t,” she pleaded. “Maybe there’s no way in the world to trace it. There are ways to find out things like that, especially for you. Alan, please! Compromise with me. Keep it for a week. We’ll watch the papers. We’ll think the whole thing over.”

  They were at Farrel Street, and Alan swung right. “No, Jane,” he said. “If we were caught with——” His head jerked suddenly and Jane saw that he was looking into the rear-view mirror. She looked back. A single light was bearing down on them. A red light flushed on and a siren was touched lightly.

  Jane screamed, “Don’t stop, Alan!” Alan pulled over to the curb, his face stiff and set. The motorcycle pulled in ahead of them and a large man in the black uniform of the city police stalked hack and leaned against the car on the driver’s side. His face was heavy and wide and his voice had a nasal rasp. “Lemme see your driver’s license.”

  Alan fumbled out the license and handed it to him jerkily. The officer put his spotlight on it, looked it over, then let his eyes go past Alan to Jane. He didn’t say anything, and the two of them sat in blank silence and waited. Finally the man said, “What you two so scared about?”