The boy was weakening. If he had been ten years older, he’d have taken my offer and thanked me for it. But he was young and she — now that I thought of it — was beautiful. The answer wasn’t hard to guess.
“But not to bump him off,” he said to her, in English, for my benefit. “We’ll lock him up in there where I was at.”
I suspected Flippo hadn’t any great prejudice against murder. It was just that he thought this one unnecessary, unless he was kidding me to make the killing easier.
The girl wasn’t satisfied with his suggestion. She poured more hot Italian at him. Her game looked surefire, but it had a flaw. She couldn’t persuade him that his chances of getting any of the loot away were good. She had to depend on her charms to swing him. And that meant she had to hold his eye.
He wasn’t far from me.
She came close to him. She was singing, chanting, crooning Italian syllables into his round face.
She had him.
He shrugged. His whole face said yes. He turned—
I knocked him on the noodle with my borrowed crutch.
The crutch splintered apart. Flippo’s knees bent. He stretched up to his full height. He fell on his face on the floor. He lay there, dead-still, except for a thin worm of blood that crawled out of his hair to the rug.
A step, a tumble, a foot or so of hand-and-knee scrambling put me within reach of Flippo’s gun.
The girl, jumping out of my path, was half-way to the door when I sat up with the gun in my hand.
“Stop!” I ordered.
“I shan’t,” she said, but she did, for the time at least. “I am going out.”
“You are going out when I take you.”
She laughed, a pleasant laugh, low and confident.
“I’m going out before that,” she insisted good-naturedly.
I shook my head.
“How do you purpose stopping me?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ll have to,” I told her. “You’ve got too much sense to try to run while I’m holding a gun on you.”
She laughed again, an amused ripple.
“I’ve got too much sense to stay,” she corrected me. “Your crutch is broken, and you’re lame. You can’t catch me by running after me, then. You pretend you’ll shoot me, but I don’t believe you. You’d shoot me if I attacked you, of course, but I shan’t do that. I shall simply walk out, and you know you won’t shoot me for that. You’ll wish you could, but you won’t. You’ll see.”
Her face turned over her shoulder, her dark eyes twinkling at me, she took a step toward the door.
“Better not count on that!” I threatened.
For answer to that she gave me a cooing laugh. And took another step.
“Stop, you idiot!” I bawled at her.
Her face laughed over her shoulder at me. She walked without haste to the door, her short skirt of grey flannel shaping itself to the calf of each grey wool-stockinged leg as its mate stepped forward.
Sweat greased the gun in my hand.
When her right foot was on the doorsill, a little chuckling sound came from her throat.
“Adieu!” she said softly.
And I put a bullet in the calf of her left leg.
She sat down — plump! Utter surprise stretched her white face. It was too soon for pain.
I had never shot a woman before. I felt queer about it.
“You ought to have known I’d do it!” My voice sounded harsh and savage and like a stranger’s in my ears. “Didn’t I steal a crutch from a cripple?”
The Meanest Man in Europe
by Roy Vickers
The first story to be offered to the American public about Fidelity Dove, Lady Larcenist Extraordinary, was “The Great Kabul Diamond” which your Editor included in his feminology, THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES. In this story the saint-faced and ethereal Fidelity invented a new way of stealing a world-famous diamond — by buying a house!
In “The Meanest Man in Europe” (B. H. — Before Hitler) our modem Miss Robin Hood invents a new way of forcing an old Scrooge to pay a hospital bill — by buying £50,000 worth of pearls!
Did we tell you about that amazing exploit in which Fidelity stole the entire landscape of Swallowsbath — complete with woods, hills, river, meadows, quarry, saw-mill and village? Yes, the whole countryside — and we don’t mean a painting! One of these issues we’ll bring you that one...
The case of Mr. Jabez Crewde gives us another reason to believe that Fidelity Dove was at this time developing a conscience. She did not make very much money out of Jabez Crewde. True, she cleared her expenses, which were, as usual, on the grand scale, and she paid herself and her staff well for their time. It was the Grey Friars Hospital which benefited chiefly by this exploit. You, if you are of those who refuse to believe that she had a spark of goodness in her, you may say that she simply indulged her sense of humour in making the meanest man in Europe subscribe twenty thousand pounds to a hospital.
Jabez Crewde deserved his title. He was worth close upon two hundred thousand pounds, which he had made as a financier — for which you can read moneylender, though he never took ordinary moneylenders’ risks. Moneylender’s interest — banker’s risk — that was the formula on which he had grown rich. He lived in a small, drab house in a drab quarter of Islington.
Fidelity would never have heard of him if he had not had a very mild attack of appendicitis. Feeling unwell one day, he had gone in his shabbiest clothes to the surgery of a struggling slum doctor. The doctor diagnosed appendicitis, and recommended an operation. Jabez was no physical coward, but he expressed the utmost horror. An operation would ruin him. So the doctor, having been persuaded to accept half a crown instead of his usual fee of five shillings, recommended the meanest man in Europe for free treatment at the Grey Friars Hospital.
It was a simple operation — the convalescence was short. It was during the latter period that Gorse, more or less by chance, got to know about it and related it to Fidelity. Fidelity crossed her hands across the bosom of her dream-grey gown and sadly shook her head.
“Avarice is the very leprosy of the soul,” she said. “I am revolted, Cuthbert.”
“For once I feel myself able to echo your sentiments,” said Gorse. “He’s worth about a couple of hundred thousand.”
“Those poor, underpaid doctors!” said Fidelity. “And the overworked nurses! And the needy cases crying for admission — or is it perhaps a wealthy hospital?”
“There’s a notice up saying if they don’t get twenty thousand in three months they will have to close a wing,” said Gorse.
“They have given their skill unstintingly to a suffering fellow creature. They have but cast their bread upon the waters—”
“Fidelity!” groaned Gorse. He would have died for Fidelity, as would any other member of her gang, but he alone believed her to be an utter humbug.
“My friend, you are always cruel to me, though you love me,” sighed Fidelity. “And because I love you, I must please you. Listen, and tell me if this pleases you.”
“I’m listening,” grunted Gorse, and waited.
Fidelity’s voice, when she spoke again, held the low call of birds at dusk.
“Tell Varley, our jeweller, to buy fifty thousand pounds’ worth of pearls from the best firms he can,” she said.
Gorse brightened.
“I thought you’d get down to brass tacks sooner or later, Fidelity!” he said, and left the room to carry out her order.
Jabez Crewde had the usual handful of spare-time agents, and it took no more than a few days for Fidelity to contrive that one of them should approach her. Within a week of her conversation with Gorse, she was sitting timidly in a dingy room in the drab house in Islington, which served Mr. Crewde for an office as well as a living-room.