Cliff Hanger

Gloomy and forbidding vistas opened ahead of the shiny new Nash sedan as it followed the curves of U.S. Highway 101 up the Oregon coast. Dawn had just broken, the light was dim, and at Cape Foulweather, five miles north of Newport (pop. 3,250), the empty roadway sometimes seemed to be curving off into thin air beyond the cliffs.

Big blond Dick Thomson looked ahead and said, "I'm carsick--stop the car." The young man at the wheel, a slim, brown-haired fellow named Jim Meuler, headed off the road and stopped. At that moment Thomson reached behind the seat, picked up a length of iron pipe, and hit his companion a crashing blow on the back of the skull. Meuler jerked the door open and managed to lurch out, dazed, bleeding and incredulous. Thomson was his closest friend.

Assailant Thomson and Victim Meuler, both automobile men, had taken to each other at their first chance meeting two years ago. Six months later, full of hope and mutual admiration, they formed a partnership and bought a Nash agency (the T and M Motors) in Newport. It was a shoestring venture (in case of some unforeseen accident, they took out $10,000 double-indemnity life-insurance policies on each other), but for a while they did well. Dick moved in with Jim and his wife and two children, and they lived together, ate together and worked together.

In recent months, however, business began to go slack. One evening last week, the partners climbed into a new demonstrator and headed north to discuss financing with a Portland bank. They finished the 100-mile journey, registered at a tourist camp, ate a steak dinner and dropped in at a nightclub. Then Thomson announced that the company records, which they had thrust into the dashboard compartment of the car, were missing. At his insistence, they made a long night drive back to Newport, got duplicates, and then, just as dawn was breaking, headed for Portland again--and for violence at Cape Foulweather.

As Meuler staggered from the car, Thomson came after him. For a few seconds they fought wildly at the edge of the precipice. Suddenly Thomson backed off. He was sorry, he said . . . terribly sorry ... He wanted to get Meuler to a doctor . . . Meuler nodded in stunned relief. With Thomson hovering sympathetically by, he took off his shirt and wrapped it around his broken head to keep blood off the demonstrator's upholstery. He got into the car. Thomson slid behind the wheel, drove a few hundred yards north. Then, at a point where there was no guard rail, he turned the machine toward the edge.

As the car went over, Thomson leaped. He landed 50 feet below the lip of the road and watched the car with Meuler in it go somersaulting end over end down a steep, brushy, 100-yard slope. Below that, sheer cliffs fell away to the sea. But just before the car cleared the edge, Meuler was flung out. He was horribly hurt--one leg, a hip and his back were broken, his face was torn and his scalp split--but he rose, fell, rose again. Thomson scrambled downhill toward him and put a tourniquet on his bleeding leg. He took off his pants, covered Meuler with them, and scrambled up to flag a passing motorist.

For a few hours he was a hero. Attendants at Newport's Pacific Communities Hospital felt that he might well have saved Meuler's life. But State Police Sergeant William Colbert was not so sure. Though Thomson insisted that the demonstrator's front wheels had locked, the cops could find no skid marks at the highway's edge. Next day Thomson changed his story, said that he had gone to sleep at the wheel. "Dick," said the sergeant, "why don't you get it all off your chest?" Dick calmly accommodated him. He signed a five-page confession and pleaded guilty to assault with attempt to kill.

But one mystery was left unsolved. "Dick." pleaded Meuler in delirium at the hospital. "Dick, why do you want to kill me?" Dick did not explain.

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