The Kidnapper by Robert Bloch Page A

me my notice. So let’s you and I settle up. Where’s that twenty you borrowed off me two weeks ago?”
    “What twenty, Steve?”
    “Whaddya mean, what twenty? That twenty bucks I loaned you over at Miller’s Tavern, two weeks ago Saturday.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never borrowed no twenty bucks from you.”
    I grabbed him by the collar. “The hell you didn’t! You said you’d pay me back last Thursday. Come on now, I’m leaving. Where is it?”
    “Take your hands off me.” I was holding him tight enough so that when he said it, it would sound like he really meant it.
    “Let him alone, Collins,” Cutrelli yelled.
    “All right, you asked for it!” I batted Specs one across the side of the jaw, hard enough so that he fell back over the bench. The other guys were looking up now, and coming over.
    “Hit a guy wearing glasses, will you?” Cutrelli said. He stepped forward and stuck out his left. That was just what I’d been waiting for. I moved to one side, back, then came in. I swung from my hip. My right came up under his jaw and I heard a sound like a bat connecting with a ball for a homer over the fence.
    Nobody else tried to stop me. I walked out of there, knowing I’d played it perfect, knowing that each step was taking me closer and closer to the big day.

Chapter Eight
    I t was Friday, June sixteenth. A nice warm day, the last day of school. Everybody was planning their vacation. I had mine planned, too.
    I got up at noon and checked out of the YMCA. That’s where I’d been staying, the YMCA, after I quit my job. I told Mrs. Delehanty I was moving to Oregon. The YMCA was a good place for me to stay, these last days, because I’d been plenty busy getting things set.
    There’d been only one meeting, Sunday, with Specs and Mary. The rest of the time I had them call me, afternoons, from a pay phone to the booth across the street from the Y in Walgreen’s.
    They were ready now, and I was ready.
    I went across to the drug store and had lunch. I carried my suitcase.
    At one, Specs drove up in the old heap and picked me up. He took me out to the road near the cottage, backed onto a side road.
    I walked down and got the Olds out of the garage. I’d put it there yesterday afternoon, when I moved in—and Specs had waited on the road then, too, to drive me back in his car.
    Now I looked the place over once more. It was a perfect setup. These people I’d rented it from, the Racklins, used to live out here themselves, and they had fixed it up real nice. First of all, there was a two-car garage, with a driveway, set in back of the house and on the way down to the lake. Trees all around on both sides—and the next cottage was half a block away, easy.
    This cottage was more like a house, really. Big front room, small dining room, good-sized kitchen with a bottle-gas stove and an oil heater in case it got cold. John off the kitchen, too—no running outdoors to a privy. There were two bedrooms off the dining-room. They had a linen closet and plenty of towels, dishes in the pantry and everything. The place was even furnished half-way decent. Radio and a phonograph attachment. I knew, because Mrs. Racklin showed me through the joint and I had to pretend to be interested and ask all kinds of damn fool questions. I told her my wife was working until Friday afternoon, that’s why she couldn’t come out.
    Another thing I’d made sure of was that the Racklins weren’t going to be around. They lived in town, and they were driving up north over the weekend.
    They gave me the keys Thursday morning, the fifteenth, and when I came out with Specs that afternoon I’d lugged quite a few groceries. There was a store down the line at the crossroads, about a mile and a half away. We’d be eating regular.
    Now I took a final inspection tour and I was satisfied. I’d done everything I could think of. Even brought a deck of cards and some magazines out. And there was milk in the icebox for the