Because he had to get Harris off the subject, Tucker said, "Maybe by the time we leave here you'll have a bankroll to last you for a year or even longer."
"How?"
"Wait," Tucker said, because he had no real answer.
They left Deffer's room, turning off the lights and closing the door behind them.
Jimmy Shirillo was waiting with the Halversons. He was standing just inside their door, while they were sitting up against the brass headboard of their bed, bound and gagged, their hands tied to the brass bars behind them. She was thin and somewhat pretty, though with the sagging look about the eyes that indicated a woman wearied and almost beaten by life. Her husband, a tall, thin, sallow-faced man with bushy eyebrows and ears that looked as if they had been grafted from a hound, had been weathered even worse by the years, servile and eager to please. And terrified.
"Questions?" Shirillo asked.
Tucker looked at the Halversons again and saw exactly what Keesey had meant. "No questions. If they even know what Baglio is, I'd be amazed. I have a feeling our man could have been kept in this house for the last month without these two ever being aware of it,"
Shirillo nodded. "They were so obliging, I thought they were going to tie each other up."
"Let's check out the rest of the rooms on this side," Tucker said. "Just to be safe."
In the last two rooms in that smaller of the mansion's two wings, they found proof that both Keesey and Deffer had lied to them: two used bedrooms with full closets. A cursory examination of each was enough to convince Tucker that two more gunmen were up and about and currently unaccounted for.
"I wouldn't have guessed the cook would lie to us," Harris said. He had pocketed his Lüger and was using his free hand to caress the sleek lines of the machine gun.
"He did, though," Tucker said. "And when Deffer mentioned more than two guards, I thought he was lying."
"But where are they?" Harris asked. Anxiously he turned to face the unlighted stairwell, the long arm of the corridor, then the short one.
Shirillo said, "They have to be outside yet." He wasn't ruffled at all. He had surprised himself, and Tucker, with the degree of his adaptability. If Harris became unreliable, Tucker would still be able to count on Shirillo.
"They must have seen us," Harris insisted. His voice was coarse, unsteady. "The way we've been turning the lights off and on in this place, anyone outside would-"
"We haven't, really," Shirillo said. "We've mostly used the flashlight, and the draperies would block that much from a man outside. The only places we used ceiling lights were the art room, storage room and the Halversons' bedroom. The first two don't have any windows, and the third alone wouldn't necessarily arouse suspicion. I think the guards must be behind the house; that's why I'm eliminating what lights we turned on in the front rooms."
Good. Clean, reasoned thought. Tucker knew, if they got out of here, he'd use Shirillo again, on another job. To Harris, whom he knew he would never use again, he said, "I agree with Jimmy."
"Well, friends, even if this is true, it doesn't change anything. Even if those two loose guards don't know we're in the house, they're still down there, below us. Any time now they might go off duty or step inside for a cup of coffee, and when they do it's over." The last couple of words came out of his throat like juice squeezed through a fine-web strainer.
"On the other hand," Tucker said, "we might get finished before they know anything at all."
"Unlikely," Harris said. He revised that opinion: "Impossible."
Tucker said, "Just the same, our best chance is to be quick, to get this done and call in the copter. Let's go see Mr. Baglio."
They turned off the lights in the Halversons' room and closed the door, went quickly to the main stairs, where Tucker stopped and turned to Harris. "Stay here with the Thompson. You're in a good position to guard the stairs-even the back stairs if anyone enters the corridor from those."
"Give me a walkie-talkie?"
"You won't need one," Tucker said. "Not if there's trouble. We'll hear the Thompson chatter no matter where we are."
"Okay," Harris said.
He stepped back into the shadows. For such a big man he was able to conceal himself well, was all but invisible.
Quickly, then, Tucker and Shirillo split up and explored all of the remaining rooms except the one in which — according to Keesey-Baglio and Miss Loraine were sleeping. Finding nothing worthwhile in any of those rooms-certainly not a sign of Merle Bachman-they met before the last door, tried the knob, twisted it, pushed the door inward and flicked on the beam of the flashlight.
For a long moment Tucker thought that the bedroom was uninhabited and that Keesey had been lying to them again, for everything there remained in sepulchral silence. Then the mound of jumbled bedclothes, cut across with an intricate lacework of shadows, convulsed and was flung outward from the huge bed as the woman reacted to the light, rolled, bounced onto her feet, her face taut, not unlike a groggy fighter coming out of a delirium with the sudden realization that he's on the verge of unconsciousness and may lose the match.
"What the hell's this?" she asked.
She was wearing a floor-length flannel nightgown, rumpled and worn and obviously comfortable. It was a sign that her relationship with Baglio was more than a temporary one. If she'd merely been a bed partner, she'd have slept nude or in a frilly bikini outfit calculated to make a man like Baglio keep her around awhile longer. The flannel nightgown was a symbol of her independence and her security within the Baglio household. She didn't need to advertise her sexuality. She was confident that Baglio was always aware of it and that something more than that was what made her interesting to him.
Her hands were out at her sides, as if she were trying to gauge her position and the chance she had of running past them.
"No chance at all," Tucker said.
Shirillo said, "Watch Baglio!"
The strongman had gotten out of bed on the far side and was reaching into the top drawer of the night stand. As he came up with a small, heavy pistol, Tucker placed a shot in the general direction of his hand. He didn't care if he ruined Baglio's golf grip for life; but as it happened, he didn't hit flesh. The silenced shot snapped off the pistol case. Baglio cried out and dropped the gun.
The woman was still unconvinced and took a couple of steps toward the door. When Tucker put two more bullets in the floor a foot in front of her, she stopped cold, having more fully assessed the situation, and she satisfied herself with glaring at him.
Even in the yellow flannel she was a spectacularly lovely woman, and she reminded him of Elise Ramsey. The resemblance wasn't really one of looks or measurements; but Miss Loraine had Elise's way of standing, her attitude of self-control, an air of confidence and competence that was undeniably attractive. It was this about her which had temporarily mesmerized him so that he hadn't noticed Baglio going for the gun.
On the other side of the bed, Baglio, dressed in only a pair of blue shorts, was rubbing his numbed hand. He said, "You could have hit me, you idiot." He sounded like a schoolteacher reprimanding a thoughtless and irresponsible child.
"No chance," Tucker said. "I'm an excellent shot." He did not know if Baglio would believe that anyone could have planned to hit the gun in that dark room, with that much space between them, with a silenced pistol, but he didn't think it would hurt to puff himself. "Don't get the idea I'm shy about putting one through your hand if you reach for anything else."
"I don't know what you're after," Baglio said, unaffected by Tucker's bravura. "But you've made a mistake breaking into my house. Have you any idea who I am?" A real schoolteacher.
"The famous Rossario Baglio," Tucker said. "Now, come along with us."