Quinn ripped himself off the seat as though he were pulling out stitches binding him to it, clawed for the door-catch in a sort of toppling, forward fall. Holmes kept him up off the floor by slipping an arm around under his stomach and drew him back onto the seat again, like a topheavy sack.
“What’s the good trying to get down? Even if you did get out, you probably couldn’t stand up any more anyway. You’d only fall down on the ground outside.”
One of Quinn’s legs flexed a couple of times, trying to gain altitude.
Holmes rotated the little lever, brought the window down on that side. “Trying to kick out the glass? You haven’t the strength of a kick left in you—” He turned suddenly and caught at Quinn’s flailing hand. “What’s that you’ve got? A table-knife? What can you do with that? Look how easy I can twist it away from you. You’re all rotten with sleep.”
He flung it out forward through the side-opening. “Did you hear it splash? That’s water in front of us, that even black line you see. Right over the hub-cap.”
He held one arm propped against the side of the car, with an attitude of patient waiting, holding Quinn passively walled-in behind it. Something like a futile sob sounded blurredly deep down in the latter’s throat.
“Now you can’t move at all, can you? That’s right, make a lazy pass with your hand, like you were brushing away gnats. That’s about all you’re still able to do. In a minute you won’t be able to do that, even. There go your eyes. Down... down... down—”
I found out one thing, anyway, Quinn thought foggily. I was on the right track. But I found out too late—
“You won’t get away with it, mister,” he mumbled drowsily, as his head went down for the last time. “Bricky knows. There are two of us, not just one—”
Chapter 13
She leaned there bound and helpless in the dark. They’d never make that bus now. Poor Quinn would wait there for her at the Graves house with the dead man to keep him company, until broad daylight; until someone happened on him there, and gave the alarm, and they arrested him for it. And that would be the end of it; he’d never be able to clear himself. After all, this Bristol woman and her partner hadn’t left anything half as incriminating behind them over there as that broken-into wall safe that he was responsible for. She could accuse them all she wanted to afterwards — that is, if she survived this walling-up alive — but it wouldn’t do any good. She hadn’t been an eye-witness to his first entry; she hadn’t even set eyes on him until afterwards. Her word would be worthless.
Precious minutes ticking by. Minutes that were drops of her heart’s blood. It must be all of five-thirty by now. In another ten minutes at the latest she and Quinn should have been starting for the bus terminal. What a fat chance now. She might have known the city would outsmart them. It always did. Just a small-town boy and a small-town girl — what chance did they have against such an antagonist? He’d go up the river to the electric chair. And she’d turn into a tough-gutted chain-dancer in a treadmill, without a heart, without a hope, without even a dream any more.
Precious minutes trickling by, that couldn’t be stopped, that couldn’t be called back again.
Suddenly that other door outside had reopened and someone was in the room again. For a minute wild hope flashed through her mind. Ah, the happy ending, the camera-finish, like in the storybooks, like in the pictures! Someone to rescue her in the nick of time. The besotted hotel-clerk come up to investigate, his suspicions aroused by her non-reappearance when they left? Or maybe even Quinn himself, drawn here by some miraculous sixth sense—
Then a voice spoke, cottony with subdued rage, and the bottom dropped out of her hopes again. It was Griff, Bristol’s accomplice. The two of them had come back again. Maybe to finish her off, here and now, on the spot.
“Why’dn’t you think of that sooner, you half-witted dope? What’s the matter, your brain missing a cylinder?”
“I’m going to ask her now,” Bristol’s voice answered him grimly. “I would’ve the first time, only you came out of there too fast for me. There must have been something there that tipped her off to me. It’s a cinch she didn’t pull my name and address out of a trick hat—”
The closet-door swung out and blinding light spilled over her, shutting off her eyes for a moment. She was aware of herself being loosened from the hook that had held her fast. She was hauled out into the open once more, between the two of them. The towel-gag was lowered sufficiently to enable her to speak.
Joan Bristol held the back of her hand poised threateningly toward her lips, ready to swing it and flatten them. “Now you try to scream and I’ll dent you in!”
She couldn’t have, even if she’d wanted to. All she could do was pant and sag exhaustedly against the man who was holding her up.
Bristol raised a hand to her hair, took a half-turn in it, and drew her head back at a taut inclination. “Now, no stalling. What I want to know is this: just what was it over at the Graves place that hooked you onto me? How’d you know I knew him, and how’d you know where to find me? I’m going to let you have it, and I’m going to keep on letting you have it, until you give me the straight goods on it!”
Bricky answered in a muffled but unhesitant voice. “You dropped your hotel-bill over there. I found it lying in the room with him.”
The blow, when it came, was rabid and with a sound like a paper bag full of water dropping from a third-floor window, but it wasn’t from Bristol to Bricky, it was from her own team-mate to Bristol. She staggered five or six steps back away from the commingled little group they made.
“Why, you—!” he grated. “I mighta known you’d do something like that! It’s as good as leaving your calling-card sticking out of his vest-pocket! I oughta slap you down to the soles of your feet!”
“She’s lying!” Joan Bristol shrilled, one side of her face slowly reddening as with an eczema. “I could swear I still saw it in my handbag after I got back here—!”
“Did you take it out to show it to him? Answer me! Did you? Yes or no?”
“Yes, I did... I... you know, as part of the build-up, to show him how bad I needed money. That was at the start, before he got tough about it. But I know I put it back again, Griff! I know I brought it back here with me!”
Bricky shook her head, within his boa-constrictor-like grasp. “It fell out. It was for seventeen dollars and eighty-nine cents. It had ‘Past Due’ stamped on it, in sort of purple ink. It even had your room-number on it.”
He gave her a merciless shake. “Did you bring it here with you? What’d you do with it? Where is it?”
“I left it there where it was. I was afraid to touch anything. I left everything just the way I found it.”
Bristol closed in again, the sting of the punitive blow evidently lessened by now. “Don’t take her word for it, she may have brought it with her. Frisk her and see if it’s on her.”
“You do it, you’re a dame. You ought to know where — I’ll hold her.”
Her hands went quickly and thoroughly about their business. She missed it by inches. Bricky’s legs were tightly bound together at the feet, anyway. She held them that way, compact. It was within the top of one of her stockings, to the inside. The Bristol woman poked a finger down into each, at the outside of the leg.
“She hasn’t got it on her.”