Free The Glass Village by Ellery Queen Page A

He’d probably doubled back, seen the coupé, and decided he had a better chance of escape if we were forced to foot it, too. Tough luck, Mr. Adams.”
    The Judge said, “I’m sorry, Ferriss. We’d better get back to the main road and wait for the other cars.”
    â€œGive me your gun!” said the lawyer.
    â€œNo, Ferriss. We want this man alive, and pushing a car into a bog doesn’t call for the death penalty.”
    â€œHe’s a killer, Judge!”
    â€œWe don’t know that. All we know is that he was seen going around to the kitchen door of your aunt’s house some twenty minutes or so before she was murdered.”
    â€œThat proves it, doesn’t it?” snarled Adams.
    â€œYou’re a lawyer, Ferriss. You know it proves no such thing.”
    â€œI know I’m going to get that murdering hobo dead or alive!”
    â€œYou’re wasting time,” said Johnny. “He’ll risk the main road again, now that we have no car. We’d better get moving.”
    They hurried back along the wagon road in the mire, Ferriss Adams laboring ahead in white-faced silence. Johnny and the Judge did not look at each other.
    Suddenly they heard a burble of voices, scuffling sounds, a man’s laugh. Adams broke into a run.
    â€œ They got him! ”
    They burst out into the blacktop road. Hubert Hemus’s sedan and Orville Pangman’s farm truck were blocking the road. The fugitive was down on his back at the bottom of a pile of flailing arms and legs—the big Hemus twins, Eddie Pangman, Joel Hackett, and Drakeley Scott. Forming a tight gun circle around the boys were Hubert Hemus, Constable Hackett, Orville Pangman, old Merton Isbel, and fat Peter Berry. As the three men pushed through, the pile-up dissolved and the Hemus boys hauled their quarry to his feet. They slammed him against the side of Orville Pangman’s truck.
    Eddie Pangman said hoarsely, “Get your lousy hands over your head.” He rammed the muzzle of his rifle into the man’s belly. The quivering arms went up.
    Tommy Hemus grinned and kicked him in the groin. He fell down with a scream, clawing at his middle. Dave Hemus picked him up and pinned him against the truck again. His legs jerked in spasms of effort to raise them.
    Johnny Shinn felt something stir deep, deep inside. It was the small cold hard core of an anger he thought he had lost forever. It slowly spread to take in the old woman’s head, as if her shattered head and the fugitive’s twitching legs were part of the same violated body.
    He felt the Judge’s hand on his arm and looked down with surprise. His finger was on the trigger of the shotgun and the gun was coming up to Tommy Hemus’s belt buckle.
    Johnny hastily lowered the gun.
    The dripping, muddy, blood-caked, gasping man was hardly recognizable as the itinerant Johnny and the Judge had passed on the road in the downpour earlier in the day. Dirty blond hair hung over his eyes; his jacket and pants were torn in a dozen places; thorns had ripped his hands and face; blood oozed from his mouth were a tooth had been kicked out. His eyes kept rolling like the eyes of a frightened dog.
    â€œYou flushed the bastard right out to us,” said Burney Hackett.
    â€œSaw your tracks where ye turned into the ma’sh,” said burly Orville Pangman, “then heard your guns.”
    â€œWe spread out along the road and ambushed him,” panted Peter Berry. “Real excitin’.”
    Old Merton Isbel said: “Scum. Dirty whore scum.”
    Eddie Pangman, great red boy-hands opening and closing on his rifle: “Put the cuffs on him, Mr. Hackett!”
    â€œAw, Pop don’t have no cuffs,” said stocky Joel Hackett disgustedly. “Didn’t I always say you ought to get cuffs, Pop? Cop’s got to have at least one pair, anybody knows that.”
    â€œYou mind your tongue,” said Constable Hackett.
    â€œCops