I shoved the gun in my belt and hauled him up. He wouldn’t turn her loose, and tried to bring her with him. I hit him. He turned his face a little, and finally let her go and looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. I hit him again and felt the pain go up my arm. He was standing there rubber-legged as if he couldn’t fall until somebody told him where, so I put my hand in his face and pushed. He stretched out alongside the blonde on the floor. I felt of my hand. It hurt and it had blood on it, but I couldn’t feel any broken bones.
Madelon Butler stood up. The dark hair was wild and her eyes were like winter smoke as she came toward me. I didn’t know what she was trying to do until I felt the gun sliding out of my belt. I grabbed her wrist, broke her grip on it, and shook her hand off.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “Sit down.”
She didn’t seem to hear me, so I shoved her down in the chair at one end of the table. The other two were getting off the floor, and now they both looked crazy. He was crying, and her face was white and her eyes blazed.
I pointed to the chairs at the other end of the table. “You’d better sit down,” I said. “I’m tired of wrecking my hands. From now on I use the gun.”
His mouth was working. Tears ran down his face. “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I’ll kill you.”
“Quiet,” I said. I pointed at the chairs again.
They sat down.
I pulled a chair up to the table, halfway between them and Madelon Butler, and sat down myself. I tilted back in the chair a little, put the gun in my lap, and took a cigarette out and lit it.
After all the violence it was suddenly quiet in the room, so still I could hear the sound of my own heavy breathing. Then the blonde’s voice came up through it.
Her hands grasped the edge of the table so tightly her fingers were white around the nails. I could see the cords standing out in her throat. Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper that sounded as if it were being pressed out of her by a heavy weight on her chest, but some of the things she said I’d never heard before myself.
It went on and on. Madelon Butler watched her curiously, the way she might study something brought up by a deep-sea trawl. When the blonde finally stopped for breath, she said, “You are a vulgar little gutter rat, aren’t you?”
But the blonde was finished. She could only stare silently. She drew her hands across her face and shuddered, and at last she turned to me.
“What are you going to do with her?” she asked.
“Never mind,” Isaid.
“Let me have the gun,” she begged. “Just let me have it for five seconds. Let me kill her. I’ll give it back to you. You can kill me, or turn me over to the police, but just let me have it.”
“Relax,” I said. “You’ll get ulcers.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
Madelon Butler lit a cigarette and watched us through the smoke. The man sat hunched over the other end of the table, holding the edges of it with his hands and saying nothing.
“We’re going to take your car and go for a little ride as soon as it’s dark. If you don’t mind.”
“How much is she paying you?”
“Who said she was?” I asked.
“Of course she is. Why else would you do it?”
“I’m her mother.”
“How much?”
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t think you could meet the price.”
She turned her face then and looked at the man. “Didn’t you hear him, Jack? You see? The dear, sweet thing couldn’t find it. She didn’t even know what we were talking about.”
“Stop it!” he said.
“She not only double-crossed you then, to get it, but she’s using it now to double-cross you again and get
away and leave you holding the bag.”
“Shut up!”
There was no stopping her. “Why didn’t you have sense enough to look? Just look? Did you trust her, or something? Didn’t you know what she was? Didn’t the other one teach you anything?”
His eyes were terrible. He hit her across the mouth with his open hand. She stopped then, and it became suddenly and almost breathlessly silent in the room. I could even hear the squirrel chattering again, up on the hill.
I looked at my watch. It was only a little after one. We couldn’t leave until it was dark. That meant for at least six more hours I had to sit here and keep them sorted out and untangled and away from each other’s throats. I had thought that if I got them in here I could turn the gun over to Madelon Butler and let her watch them while I got a little sleep, but I could see that was out. They’d rush her the minute I dropped off. They were crazy enough. Or if they weren’t, she’d taunt them into it with that arrogant contempt of hers.
I’d given up trying to figure it out. And there was no use asking any questions. I’d just be wasting my breath. They were all too hell-bent on killing each other to bother with outsiders trying to make sense out of it.
I was tired. It had been thirty hours since I’d had any sleep, and we had a long afternoon and another whole night ahead of us. I wondered what our chances were of getting back to Mount Temple and into that house without being caught. In the dark, and with another car, we shouldn’t be stopped on the highway, but the house was another matter. They’d be watching it.
I stood up and motioned toward the storeroom. “In there,” I said.
They went by, watching me like a couple of big cats, and walked in. They sat down on some boxes. I stood in the doorway and looked at them.
“You won’t get hurt if you stay in there,” I said. “And when we leave here you’ll be turned loose. But if you try to come back through this door or jump Mrs. Butler again while we’re here, you’ve had it.”
“Aren’t you brave, with a gun in your hand?” the blonde said.
“Don’t keep crowding your luck. Just because I haven’t shot you already doesn’t mean I won’t if I have to. I’m strictly a money player, and there’s a lot of it tied up in this. Too much to let a couple of hotheads like you louse it up. Keep it in mind, Blondie.”
“I wouldn’t count on that money too much,” she said.
“You wouldn’t? Why?”
“You’ll never get it.”
“I’ll worry about that.”
Her eyes had grown thoughtful, and now she actually smiled. It was a very cold smile. “Yes. You’ll worry about it, before you get through. You haven’t found out yet who you’re dealing with. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before, but it makes me feel a lot better.”
“What does?”
“The fact that even if you get away from here, it really doesn’t matter. One of you will kill the other before it’s all over. Isn’t it nice?”
“Isn’t it?” I said. “Unsaddle your broom and stay a while.”
I closed the door and walked back to the table.
Madelon Butler was still sitting in the chair at the end of it. I sat down and lit another cigarette.
“You’d better go in and get some sleep,” I said. “You’ll need it.”
“It’s too hot,” she said.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “But it may be a little hot tonight, too.”
She gave me that supercilious smile of hers again. “Not afraid to go back there, are you?”
“No,” I said. “We’re going back.”
“You’re rather fond of money, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never had any.”
“I hope you’ll be very happy with it.”
“I like your friends,” I said, nodding toward the storeroom. “Why don’t all of you rent yourselves out to curdle milk?”
“You’re not becoming squeamish, are you?” she asked mockingly. “Where’s your fine, professional attitude? Surely the detached and unemotional Mr. Barton wouldn’t let a little display of petulance like that upset him.” She broke off. “By the way, you never did tell me what your name really is.”