HIDE-OUT
H.  H.  STINSON

(This issue's classic is a masterful example of the regional detective tale selected from a postwar issue of Liberty, a general circulation, family-oriented magazine with something for everyone, and a close rival of The Saturday Evening Post.  Can you outwit this taunt puzzler's unique detective and spot the slip the killer missed?)

PARKER put a single bullet through J. C.'s head and, with that, started out on the adventure he had been planning for two years.
He reached for the ignition switch and turned the motor off.  J. C. had fallen forward over the steering wheel, but Parker already had the rim of the wheel firmly in his grasp.  He guided the car expertly to the side of Mist Canyon Road, opened the right-hand door, slipped out into darkness and pulled J. C.'s body down off the seat and into the deep gully beside the road.
Before he climbed back into the car, he felt in J. C.'s hip pocket and found the thick wallet.  There should be four to five thousand dollars in it to add to the hundred and sixty-eight thousand in the dispatch case on the seat.
Parker was rather sorry he'd had to do a thing like this.  He hadn't really disliked J. C.  In fact, it had been more or less fun being secretary to a picture producer.  He would scream your ears off one moment, and the very next invite you to the track with him.  Then he would tell you he had put a hundred bucks on the favorite for you and you could skip it if the favorite ran out of the money.
But a plan was a plan and Parker didn't see how he could have carried it out any other way.  When J. C.  had a good day - which wasn't as often as he lost a hatful of dollars - he always drove right home and put the money in the wall safe there.  Since Parker didn't live in the house and didn't know anything about housebreaking and even less about safe-blowing, he had concluded that the only method of cashing in on J. C.'s winnings some lucky day was to take the money away from him and assure himself of a good head start before pursuit began.  That had called for the bullet.
From the canyon Parker drove to his Hollywood apartment.  There he picked up the grip he had kept packed and drove on to the airport.
He was leaving a wide-open trail, but that was part of his plan.  J. C. wouldn't be missed until noon the following day.  Up to that time his household would assume he had put in the night elsewhere.  Once the alarm was raised, a check would be started on Jimmy Parker, his secretary.  Perhaps late tomorrow the police would be called in and an official report broadcast: Missing, J. C. Rink, motion-picture producer.  Missing, James Parker, twenty-seven, weight 145, height five-ten, complexion dark, distinguishing marks small black mustache and small sear on right thumb.  Probably no one would remember that scar.
By the time that description went out he would be in New York, or perhaps heading west toward that ranch in New Mexico.
The New Mexico ranch, just outside of Needle Point, was the heart of his whole plan.  He had bought, it eighteen months previously, after flying to New York on his vacation as Jimmy Parker and catching a train west from there as John Holman.  New York businessman.  Needle Point had been his choice for a hide-out mainly because the maps had shown it to be about as isolated a community as you could find on a railroad.
* * *
He'd dropped off the train there and gone over the road to a white-painted adobe that had a sign "Eats," above the door.  Inside he'd found a sun-shriveled little fellow eating at one end of the counter.  Behind the counter stood a thick-shouldered man with sleepy blue eyes and a slow wide smile.  He'd ordered bacon and eggs, and he'd got into a conversation with the thick-shouldered man.
"Nice country around here."
"We like it," the man had replied.  "Yes, sir, we like it right well."
Parker had sighed.  "It's sure wonderful after living in New York City all your life."
"Visiting out here?"
"No.  I dropped off on sort of a screwy impulse.  I've never been West before, and this country around here looked so swell from the train that I suddenly got the idea I'd like to buy a ranch and stay here."
"A ranch, eh?"
"'Anything for sale around here?"
"Everything's for sale if you got the right money.  I've got a nice one listed right now - five thousand acres, water rights, and a grazing lease on eight thousand acres, just south of Accordion Butte."
Parker had laughed.  "I haven't got that kind of money.  I mean just ten or twenty acres, where a fellow could sit and raise a few chickens and forget New York.  Are you in the real-estate business too?"
The thick-shouldered man had grinned back.  "I'm in a lot of things.  I own the grocery and I'm postmaster and insurance man and plenty other things.  The name is Ben Martin."
"I'm John Holman,"
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Holman." Parker said, "I don't suppose you handle any little ranches."
"It so happens I've got a listing on a ten-acre place not far out of town."
Martin had locked up and they'd gone out to look at the little place.  Before noon Parker had given a check on the New York account he had started in the name of "John Holman" and the place was his.
He had caught an eastbound train three days later, telling Martin that he'd have to put in another couple of years on the New York treadmill before he could cut the ties there, but that he'd be out from time to time:
Since then Parker had managed four visits to the ranch, each time arriving from the east, and the last time he'd told Martin that his next visit would probably bring him there for good.  By then he had felt it was safe to go through with his plan; the groundwork had been perfectly laid.  The police would never think of looking for him in a spot like Needle Point and, with his identity as John Holman of New York thoroughly established, the people of the country would have no suspicion.
* * *
At the airport he got a seat on Flight 94 to New York, boldly using the name of J. C. Rink to impress the reservation clerk.  Arriving next morning at LaGuardia Field, he signaled a porter to carry his big bag to the cab stand and let the man hear him give an address far up on the Grand Concourse.  Up to that point the police could follow his trail blindfolded; but from then on it would be different.
He walked four blocks, descended to the subway and twenty minutes later got off at Grand Central.  In a pay washroom he shaved off the black mustache and not long afterward was on a train heading west.
Three days later he dropped off the California Limited at Needle Point.  He walked across the road to the "Eats" sign and entered the little restaurant.  Ben Martin was behind the counter.
He said, "Hi there, Ben."
Ben Martin said, "Howdy, Mr. Holman.  Glad to see you."
Parker took a stool at the counter.  "I'm starved, Ben.  Got any bacon and eggs?"
"Sure; I'll have them ready in a minute." Martin held out a newspaper.  "Like to look the Albuquerque paper over while you're waiting?"
"You bet," said Parker and reached for the outspread paper.
The next instant two chill circles of steel were on his wrists and Ben Martin was gripping the chain that held the handcuffs together.
"Been expecting you for the last twenty-four hours," he said.
Parker's lips worked soundlessly for a moment and then he forced words around the heart that was in his throat.  He said.  "Hey, Ben, what kind of a joke is this?"
"It's no joke, Mr. Parker.  They found J. C. Rink's body yesterday, and I been waiting for you to show up since yesterday afternoon."
"I - I don't understand, Ben-"
"You mean you don't understand how I got onto you?  Well, that was simple.  I guess you didn't know that, among other things, I'm deputy sheriff here.  Never made an arrest yet, but I've done a lot of studying on crime and criminals.  So I been suspicious of you for quite a while for a couple of reasons.  One of 'em was your mustache."
"Mustache?  I haven't got a mustache."
"That's just it.  Every time you came out here you'd just shaved off your mustache.  I could tell by the pale spot on your upper lip.  I figured that any fellow who tried to change his appearance every time he showed up here was probably up to something.  So I wired a friend of mine in the Los Angeles sheriff's office about six months ago.  He replied they didn't have any want on a fellow of your description.  But when the Rink case busted, he remembered my telegram and remembered it described a fellow just like Jimmy Parker, secretary to J. C. Rink.  So he wired me yesterday afternoon to be on the lookout for you."
* * *
For a moment Parker was too bewildered to deny anything.  He said, "I still don't understand.  Why should you wire Los Angeles?  I told you I came from New York.  You couldn't possibly have known I'd ever been in Los Angeles."
"I knew it first thing - because of your ten-acre ranch."
"My ten-acre ranch?  I don't get it."
"Well, back East they'd call ten acres a little farm.  Here in the West we'd call it a house and garden if we called it anything.  But I been to Los Angeles and it's the only place in the world where every movie star and everybody else pins the name of ranch on anything from a half acre on up.  When you asked for a ten-acre ranch, I knew there was only one place you could be from.  You still want the bacon and eggs - before I put you in the lock-up?"