“Who lives there?” he whispered. “Don’t know. People here come and go. Wait a minute — I’ve seen a dark sort of man near that door.”
“English?”
“Don’t know. Just dark — big, youngish, stoutish.”
They were tiptoeing towards the door beneath the faintly-lighted window. A few yards from it, Stella bent down with a gasp — another peg.
“Maybe you’re right,” Jock said. “It’s unlikely he could have thrown this out of a car without being spotted.”
Searching frantically, they could not find any more pegs near the door.
“He had no more,” Jock whispered. “Anyhow, he couldn’t have grabbed up more than a few in his fist. But this last one is pretty near that door. He might easily have dropped it at the door and it rolled here.”
“Shall we get a policeman?” Stella said. “There’s always one near the square.”
Jock scarcely heard her. He was staring at the door of the small house, and he felt murderous. Heavens, what a relief it would be to get his hands on someone. Just show him someone, that’s all.
“I’m barging in there,” he whispered.
“Me, too,” she said.
“We’ve just got to risk it,” he said.
“But if we’re wrong?” she whispered.
“That will be just too bad.”
He could not think clearly of anything but that he must get into that house. There was a bell-push. He pressed it savagely. They could hear the bell. Nobody came.
Jock, his fingers just aching to get a grip on something, was going to press the bell again, when Stella whispered: “Light’s out upstairs.”
“Then we are right,” he said. He grinned, flexing his fingers. He pressed the bell again, and at that moment the door was flung wide open and a man, a big shape against the darkness behind, asked angrily:
“What you want, you?”
“It’s like this,” Jock began apologetically, “we saw a light upstairs and we wanted to ask you—”
On that word Jock landed his right on the man’s jaw and drove a left at his heart. As the man sagged backwards he hit him viciously again, and he crashed on his back into the dark passage.
“Leave the door open,” he said to Stella, as he pushed past the man’s body in the narrow hall. But he had to stop, baffled by the darkness ahead. She pushed against his back.
“There’s always a switch in a hall,” she whispered.
His fingers were rapidly feeling both walls of the narrow hall. He found the switch and as he pressed it down he heard Stella gasp behind him. Halfway down the narrow stain ahead a man stood with a heavy revolver pointed at Jerry. His face was thin and hard.
“Okay,” the man said. “The snatch is off. It beats me how you found us so quick. You can have your kid back. But don’t move. You and the lady and the kid will just stay here quietly till we make our getaway, see?”
Behind him a woman’s dim shape moved uneasily.
“The nurse!” Stella said bitterly. “Jock, that beastly nurse!”
“Don’t move!” the man said. The gun in his hand was very steady. “There’s a door to your right, Winterset. Get into that room, you and the lady. I’ll bring the kid down to you. Start moving, but not this way.”
Jock moved, but not to the door on his right. Not likely. He heard Stella behind him cry something frantically, but he went on. He had a job of work on hand. All his being was concentrated on getting his hands round that thin man’s throat. He went on step by step, into the mouth of the big automatic.
“I’m going to shoot!” the man yelled.
Jock laughed. His foot was on the stairs now. He was going to shoot, was he? Shoot or not, he was going to have his foul neck wrung. He was going to learn it was dangerous to monkey with a man’s son. There was a roaring in his ears, and a sudden livid scream from Stella far away behind him. He scarcely felt the stabbing pain high up in his left arm. His hands were round the man’s throat now; he was laughing into the terrified sobbing face beneath him as he swung him down the narrow stairs. The whole world seemed to roar in his ears as, his hands tight round the man’s throat, they fell together through a sickening screaming void to the foot of the stairs.
Jock fell on his left arm, and felt himself fainting, but suddenly the pain was so awful that he heard himself yell. “My arm!” he yelled, opening his eyes wide. Stella was bending over him, her eyes streaming with tears. That pulled him together. He remembered where he was.
“Jerry all right?” he whispered.
“Yes, darling, yes!”
“Get the police,” he said faintly. “And then a doctor. My arm...”
“Darling, don’t worry — everything’s all right.” She was sobbing pitifully. There were other shapes behind her. He peered painfully at the long white room he was in. His left arm, from the shoulder down, was screaming with pain.
“Jerry’s all right then?” he whispered.
“You’ve been dreaming, sweet,” Stella said, trying to smile through her tears. “Such dreams! But now they’re putting you to sleep again. You had a bad taxi accident on the way to Euston, and they had to operate...”
“Lucky you’re alive,” a voice said gruffly. His father. Lord, quite a party.
“Better let him rest now,” he heard a white shape say from somewhere far away. “The morphine should be taking effect...”
Drifting off, he heard Stella say: “His arm — his poor arm!”
Jock simply couldn’t help trying to grin up at her from inside deep waves of lovely drifting clouds.
“He’s dreaming again!” someone said.
But the old girl knew better. Trust her. Love — a dream? Not likely. She bent down and nibbled his ear.
“I’m with you, mister,” she whispered.
She put her ear to his lips. “Don’t worry, Stella,” he tried to say. “You, me, Jerry — we’ll manage fine... you only live once... one arm’s enough — with you and Jerry.”