Hardboiled Fridays!

Pug said, "I'm trying to think of the best way of knocking you off."

"The Chinese do it with rats" I said. 'They let 'em eat the victim."

"Where am I going to get the rats?"

"Well," I said, "there're three in the car now."

I don't know which one hit me; Pug or the guy with the garlic breath. It was the barrel of a pistol and it cooled me for a couple of minutes. When I came to we had stopped by a shack. I was alone with the guy on my left.

"On tap again?" he asked, poking his pistol in my side."

"Sure."

"You take it funny for a guy whose got no more'n ten minutes," he said.

My head hurt.

The Fifth Grave (a.k.a. Solomon's Vineyard)
by Jonathan Latimer
(Mystery Book Magazine, 1946)