Chapter 75 dangerous trip

He said goodbye to Mary and the children and backed the car out of the garage. She stood by the driveway as usual, pale and worried: "Be careful, George." "Watch out for what? Women?" Every time he went out, she fantasized that he would have an affair. "I mean robbery, there's a lot of robbery on the road." "I'll be careful, I always come home safe, don't I?" "Call me tonight from the motel." "Okay," he agreed.This requirement is not excessive and can be met. He drove to the office, parked outside, and took the small bag from Mr. Brown.

"George, there are diamonds and other things in it, worth about ninety thousand dollars." "In such a small bag?" "Good things always come in little bags, George. Have you got a pistol?" "It's in the car drawer, but I don't know how to use it if I really want to use it." "You read the papers. In the past two months, three jewelry salesmen have been robbed and one of them was killed. I don't want any accidents for you, George. You have a wife and a family." "don’t worry." "Have you brought all the copies of the order?"

"Of course," said George. "don’t worry." Mr. Brown rubbed his sweat-stained hands: "I've always been worried about this kind of travel. It's too dangerous, George, too dangerous." He left Mr. Brown and headed north.The jewelry bag, carefully locked in the sample case beside him. George, a jewelry salesman of forty-two, had been in the business nearly half his life.In the early years, he did some errands in his current company, delivering small diamonds in Manhattan, collecting money and negotiating transactions at auction houses on Fifth or Fourteenth Streets.Later, because Mr. Brown trusted him, he began to do sales work, often taking jewelry to various cities.

At night in hotels, he would often scatter the diamonds, rubies, and sapphires on the dressing table, and gaze at them, admiring their gleam in the mirror, feeling their fleeting beauty and power.He is very fond of jewelry.Selling jewels was dangerous work for Mary and the children, but for George it was more important than raising a family. He has this mentality about jewelry, or it can be traced back to a summer in the early 1930s, when his father drove the family north to Canada to see a total solar eclipse.At that time, he hadn't gone to school yet, but he still remembered their trip north in a convertible.Even though they lived across the border, back then, the journey was quite a long one.He remembered his mother's disdain that it wasn't worth traveling so far to one place just to see the sun go dark, but eclipses had impressed him more than anything else in his childhood.

They stood on the top of the hill, facing the sun, looking at the sun through smoked glass. Although the whole process took less than a minute, it was worth the two-day journey.George especially remembers the moment when the uneven moon covered the sun and shone brightly. "They look a lot like diamonds," his father said. They were indeed alike, George always remembered, thinking of the approaching sparkle of diamonds in the black.Later, at sunset, he would often stand in their backyard, trying to see the diamonds again from the sun.He didn't know that that scene only happened during a total solar eclipse.After he got married, he never mentioned this to Mary, because he was an introvert and rarely talked about his work.Because that just makes her nervous.

"Look, George," she said, pointing to an item in the evening paper. "Another diamond salesman has been robbed! This is the fourth time this year!" "Should I quit my job? Honey, would you be happier without a paycheck every week?" "But, George, that's dangerous!" Although the company takes various precautions, he thinks these days are a bit dangerous. On this trip to New England, he carried diamonds worth 90,000 yuan, which was still their wholesale price, and the retail price might be doubled. Combined with other retail items in his case, it could be worth two hundred thousand.However, he knows that in this industry, there are many people who are worth millions, and they are not worried.Take Mr. Brown, for example. He is nearly seventy years old, and he has come to Los Angeles with a diamond of two thousand carats.

There have been four major robberies in jewelry stores this year, three of which have occurred within the past two months.One of them, whom George knew, had a cracked skull and two shots in the ribs.After the incident, he sent flowers to the man and visited him in the hospital.Afterwards, he couldn't figure out why he did it, because they only dealt with each other in business. Just before noon, George pulled off the Connecticut highway looking for a better restaurant to eat.Finally, he found one.He carefully locked the car and found a window seat from which he could watch his car while eating.

If all went well, he could still stop at Waterlieber in the afternoon and drive to Boston the next morning.He'd been to New England before, but didn't like the trip because business stops along the way prevented him from flying.Besides, driving in such hot weather is also very uncomfortable. The journey to Waterbury was very smooth.It wasn't until he left there, heading north into Massachusetts, that he noticed a green sedan following him. That night George stopped at a motel outside Boston that he had visited before.He made a long-distance call to Mary from his room. "Is everything going well, George?"

"It's going well, my dear, and the weather is very fine." "Are you coming home tomorrow night?" "That depends on the situation. If something happens in Boston, it may be the day after tomorrow." "Be careful. Be careful, George! Have you got a gun in your room?" "Of course not! I wouldn't shoot anyone with it anyway." "George—" "I know, I'll be careful." He reached for a cigarette, but couldn't light it with the microphone in one hand. "How are the children?" "Very well. Susan and Jimmy are out, going to the movies. Blaney is in the house looking at the comics."

"Look, Mary, if I don't come home tomorrow, I'll call and tell you." "Okay, George, but be careful—" "Goodbye," he said, and he hung up and went to the window to look out at the motel parking. It was dark, but the green car was still visible.Someone was smoking in the car. George frowned and glanced at the box on the bed.He opened it, carefully weighing the diamond bag in his hand, and looked around for a hiding place, but couldn't see a suitable place.He looked at the other items in the sample box: envelopes, stationery with the company name on it, order forms, postage stamps, and so on.

He closed the box, locked it, and went back to the window.The man was still sitting in the green car, maybe waiting for it to be completely dark?George looked up at the western sky. The sun had disappeared behind the trees and the street lights were starting to come on. He considered calling the police, but, what to say?Say a person is acting suspiciously? He paced, lit another cigarette, and considered what to do.It's only half an hour from Boston, and the roads are full of traffic and the lights are bright. Wouldn't it be better to leave now and find a safer place in the city?If the man followed him, it would be clear that it was much easier to find the police in Boston than here. George sighed, put on his coat, packed his small travel bag, went outside, and got into the car.The room was booked by his company, so there was no need to check out.He started the car and drove out of the parking lot without daring to look back. He drove about a block before he ventured a glance in the rearview mirror and saw it following.Well it is indeed tracking.There was no doubt now that the man was after him in Waterbury, or possibly followed from New York. George sped up, and the car sped up, but, don't worry, there was a bright highway ahead, leading straight to Boston, and he'd be there in half an hour. Suddenly, a row of flashing red lights came on, followed by a "Detour" sign.He cursed softly, then turned left onto a secondary road that was completely unlit.The green car followed closely behind. George began to sweat, feeling that he had made a wrong move, that his escape was foolish and had forced the man to do something on the road, but who knew there would be such a detour? Cars bumped and bumped on the dirt road, and it dawned on him that the green car was speeding up, or trying to corner him.The only thing he can do is speed up, hoping to find an exit and get rid of that person. In the dim light, he saw a path ahead and turned into it.The green car stopped for a while and followed. George's headlights caught a reflective street sign that read, "Bud's Reservoir."A dead end. At this moment, he suddenly panicked.He braked hard, staring at the calm water of the cistern where the road ended. The people behind must have figured it out too, for he stopped about fifty feet behind George and turned off his lights.With shaking hands, George felt for the case with one hand and reached into the drawer with the other. The gun felt strangely cold and hard in his hand.The sky overhead was almost black.The last gleam of light was also gone, and it reminded him of the eclipse.He came here, came to this dark path, and faced the choice of life and death. George opened the car door and looked in the rearview mirror.The man behind had gotten out of the car and was walking towards him, with one hand in his pocket.George considered handing him the diamond and begging for his life, then got out of the car and raised the gun with trembling hands. "Wait a minute!" The man saw the pistol through the lights in the car, and his own hand was stretched out. George saw the gun in his hand and pulled the trigger. The man fell forward on the hood of George's car and rolled to the ground. There was silence.The gun fell from George's hands to the ground, and he hadn't thought to use it. However, he has no choice.He walked over to the body, looked down at the dead man, and kicked the gun a few feet away from the man's hand.He then walked to the man's car, which was open. He had to move the car aside so he could get over, call, get help. He was about to get into the car when it stopped again, still thinking about what he had done.Then he walked back to his car, opened the sample box, and looked at the shiny diamonds.He remembered that before the moon covered the sun, the sun was like that.Now, he felt as if he, too, had entered a solar eclipse. George picked up the dead man's pistol, shot himself twice through the window of his car, and dropped it on the ground near the man's hand.He poured out the diamonds from his small pocket, carefully divided them into three piles, wrapped them in paper, put them into the envelopes he took out from the box, wrote his home address on them, mailed them to himself, and put a stamp on them. He reversed the car, narrowly squeezed past the green car, and drove slowly back the way he had come in the dark, trying to think. Presently he saw a mailbox, stopped, and dropped three letters into it.He drove on again until he came to a telephone booth on the side of the road.He threw in coins, called the switchboard, and said in a panic: "Get me to the police station! I was robbed!" He waited, listening to the click of dialing and answering, wondering what he was doing.Perhaps like a solar eclipse, where the shadow of the moon has been covering the sun for years, everyone has an eclipse at some point, and tonight, it came to George. The police officer, named Duke, was tall and neat, with piercing blue eyes.He sat across from George and asked for the third time what had happened in the evening. "Mr. George, you said there were two people?" George wiped his palms and said, "Yes." It never occurred to him that he would do such a thing, but it never occurred to him that he would kill someone—even in self-defense. "They've been following me since at least Waterbury and I tried to get out of the hotel early and take the trail to get rid of them, but they cornered me and shot me." "What happened to you at the cistern?" "Like I said, they took the diamonds and they got in the car together and forced me to drive down that dirt road all the way to the top. I thought they were going to kill me and push me into the pool with the car and others.But when they got out of the car, I opened the drawer, took out the pistol, and killed one, and the other ran off, across the field with the diamonds.In the dark, I couldn't find him. " "You are lucky to be alive and we have been in touch with your wife in New York," Officer Duke said. George nodded: "There have been so many robberies recently, she was afraid that it would be me next, and it turned out to be me. I just hope my boss understands that there is really nothing I can do." "You did your best, you killed a man." "It never occurred to me that I would kill someone." Officer Duke muttered to himself, fiddling with some papers. A uniformed policeman walked into the office and handed him a piece of paper.After he finished reading, he leaned back in his chair and asked, "Mr. George, is there any conflict between you and your wife?" "Contradictions? No, of course not! We have two children." "Does she have any doubts about your business trip?" "I think any wife would, she's worried." "Yes," Officer Duke put down the pencil in his hand and looked at George coldly. "Why do you ask that?" said George, his palms sweating again. "Well, Mr. George, it seems that the man you shot was not a robber at all. He was a private investigator your wife hired to find divorce evidence." Suddenly the room darkened and began to spin, and George felt out of breath.He vaguely heard the officer asking, "Now, can you tell us where you put those diamonds?"