“You got to give them credit,” Numbers said. “They really get things organized, once they get to it.”
Down the hill a man with a rifle sprawled in plain view and Numbers motioned to the reporter and dodged into the house. There was nothing much to do now but watch and wait.
They were throwing a cordon around the hill. It was hard to cover all of it because of the size and there were many open places. There was a cornfield on one side and a woods that marched up the hill from the back. Beyond the woods was the highway and you could hear traffic once in a while because no one had remembered to block it off yet — or no one had thought it necessary.
“It’ll be real dark in a few minutes,” said Numbers. “They haven’t got enough lights set up yet. All I have to do is get to the woods and then down to the road and I can go for another ride.”
“There may be a few cops in the way, even in the dark.”
Numbers was wiping the .357.
“I can talk to them, six at a time.”
“That sure makes everything come out even.” The reporter realized that he was talking wildly. “BangbangbangbangbangBANG! Mathematics with a .357, Q.E.D.”
Numbers didn’t shoot the reporter. He didn’t even seem angry.
“It don’t matter now.” He was laying out the cartridges again, the ones he had taken from the dead trooper. “There ain’t any way you can make it come out even once people mess it up.”
“I don’t know.” The reporter was listening in amazement to himself. “You got three. You claim they owed you one beforehand and one for your wife.”
“I wasn’t married to her,” Numbers said. “Not really. She married this other guy. I felt bad for a while. I felt real bad. When she died I didn’t really feel bad. A cop-killer don’t really feel nothing.”
The reporter said, “I thought you hadn’t killed a cop then.”
“I have now,” Numbers said. “I’ve killed three of them. That’s the thing; they forget cop-killers were people to begin with and some of it won’t brush off. They get so busy taking things away from you they forget that if they don’t leave you something, you haven’t got anything to give a damn about.”
Numbers said, “You really got to look out for a guy who don’t give a damn for anything.”
After he said that, he arranged the cartridges carefully and counted them. Down the hill in the dusk, a police captain with a bull horn blared, talking to the machine gunners. A searchlight came on, turned against the front of the house.
Numbers was looking at the cartridges with a wondering, almost admiring expression.
“That ought to show something,” he said presently. “That ought to show how you got to stand by the figures. Look at this, now, I just forgot about twenty-three lousy thousandths of an inch.”
“What?” the reporter said. “What?”
“Twenty-three thousandths,” Numbers said, his voice liking the statistics of ordnance. “That is mainly the difference by how much .38 special cartridges are too big for a .357 cylinder.
“There were six cartridges in the gun I got from the sergeant,” he said. “There’s one left. And all I got from the other cop are .38s.”
He laughed. The reporter didn’t feel like laughing. Down the hill the captain with the bull horn wanted to know if Numbers was going to surrender.
“Now I got to use this one,” Numbers said. “I got to answer that cop.” He went to the window and fired his last shot defiantly down the hill. Half a dozen guns responded but they didn’t come close.
Numbers came away from the window, still laughing.
“If you hadn’t made that crack,” Numbers said, “I’d of gone and messed up the figures myself.”
The reporter did not remember saying anything.
Numbers said, “These other guys didn’t mess them up after all. It’s just right, like I said.”
“What is?” the reporter asked.
“The whole account: I paid them seven years for one cop, and they owed me one for the old lady, and then I was one ahead of them.”
He laughed again and said, “So now it’s all gonna come out even.”
Then the man called Numbers opened the door and the blinding white of the searchlight poured in and he stepped out into it, the empty gun still in his hand, and him still laughing, and the reporter stayed on the floor holding on tightly to nothing at all — until the shooting stopped.
The Crooked Figures
by Phyllis Bentley
It’s a very serious responsibility to be a Detective-Inspector,” said Tarrant gloomily.
“Who is the blonde this time?” inquired Miss Phipps flippantly.
“She’s a brunette, and I’m going to marry her,” Tarrant blurted out.
Astonishment so distorted the little novelist’s features that her old-fashioned pince-nez slipped off her nose; they flew through the air on the end of their chain and came to rest with a click against the large black button on her bosom. Without her glasses Miss Phipps looked pinker, wilder, and more helpless than before; even her mop of white hair appeared to have become more disheveled.
Tarrant sighed as he looked at her; it seemed impossible that such a rabbit as Miss Marian Phipps appeared could be any help to him. That she had solved two of his most puzzling cases for him a few years before was surely a matter of chance, a pair of accidents; such an exterior as hers could not possibly hide a brain. Her eyes, however, now that he could see them without their enlarging lenses, were bright and kindly, and certainly he had found the solution of those earlier a flairs in mere conversation with Miss Phipps. He had come to try it again and he would try it again; he cared so much about this particular affair that anything was worth trying.
“It’s not a police case,” he managed, holding his head down. “It’s a matter of conscience.”
Miss Phipps looked grave.
“Tell me all about it, my dear boy,” she said. She drew the pince-nez firmly out to the end of their tether, and with an imperious gesture replaced them on her nose. “Who is the young lady? Have you known her long? Why is it suddenly so serious to be a Detective-Inspector?”
“Because she expects me to be able to solve this puzzle,” Tarrant muttered, his head still down. “At least, she doesn’t exactly expect it, but she hopes. And I hate to see her so troubled. She wants to know whether she ought to accept a legacy or not.”
“A legacy!” said Miss Phipps, perplexed. “But what possible objection can there be to accepting a legacy?”
“It’s twenty thousand pounds,” said Tarrant.
“Oh!” said Miss Phipps.
“From a man she only saw for five minutes in the Strand,” said Tarrant.
“Ah!” said Miss Phipps.
In spite of her efforts to conceal it, her discomfort was apparent in her voice. Tarrant looked up inquiringly.
“It isn’t at all what you think,” he said. “Mary isn’t like that at all. She’s incapable of telling a lie.”
“Tell me about her,” urged Miss Phipps kindly.
“I’ll tell you about her meeting with the man first, if you don’t mind,” said Tarrant. “Mary is a nurse; she was trained in New York, but has come over here for a few years’ English experience. She was in a hospital first, now she’s in a nursing home.”
“Is she American by birth?” inquired Miss Phipps.
“Yes. But her grandparents were north-country English before they emigrated,” said Tarrant. “But I’ll explain about all that later. Now, Mary was walking down the Strand in the rush hour one autumn evening — in point of fact,” Tarrant broke off, coloring, “she had just seen me off to Brittlesea from Charing Cross. I’d been up to New Scotland Yard unexpectedly on business, and as I had a little time to spare before my train, I called at the nursing home. Mary hadn’t much time before going on duty; I’m afraid she missed a meal to come out with me.”