“That may be,” the Frenchman replied; “but you do not expect me to believe that you and Inés are not friends? Didn’t I see you leaving here this afternoon?”
“You seen me, all right,” the Kid agreed; “but if my rod hadn’t of got snagged in my flogger you wouldn’t have seen nothing else. But I ain’t got nothing against you now. I thought you and her had ditched me, just as you think me and her done you. I know different now, from what I heard while I was getting in here. She twisted the pair of us, Frenchy, just like we twisted the boob. Ain’t you got it yet?”
Maurois shook his head slowly.
What put an edge to this conversation was that both men were talking over their guns.
“Listen,” the Kid asked impatiently. “We was to meet up in Chi for a three-way split, wasn’t we?”
The Frenchman nodded.
“But she tells me,” the Kid went on, “she’ll connect with me in St. Louis, counting you out; and she ribs you up to meet her in New Orleans, ducking me. And then she gyps the pair of us by running out here to Frisco with the stuff.
“We’re a couple of suckers, Frenchy, and there ain’t no use of us getting hot at each other. There’s enough of it for a fat two-way cut. What I say is let’s forget what’s done, and me and you make it fifty-fifty. Understand, I ain’t begging you. I’m making a proposition. If you don’t like it, to hell with you! You know me. You never seen the day I wouldn’t shoot it out with you or anybody else. Take your pick!”
The Frenchman didn’t say anything for a while. He was converted, but he didn’t want to weaken his hand by coming in too soon. I don’t know whether he believed the Kid’s words or not, but he believed the Kid’s guns. You can get a bullet out of a cocked revolver a lot quicker than out of a hammerless automatic. The Kid had the bulge there. And the Kid had him licked because the Kid had the look of one who doesn’t give a damn what happens next.
Finally Maurois looked a question at Big Chin. Big Chin moistened his lips, but said nothing.
Maurois looked at the Kid again, and nodded his head.
“You are right,” he said. “We will do that.”
“Good!” The Kid did not move from his door. “Now who are these plugs?”
“These two” — Maurois nodded at Billie and me — “are friends of our Inés. This” — indicating Big Chin — “is a confrere of mine.”
“You mean he’s in with you? That’s all right with me.” The Kid spoke crisply. “But, you understand, his cut comes out of yours. I get half, and no trimming.”
The Frenchman frowned, but he nodded in agreement.
“Half is yours, if we find it.”
“Don’t get no headache over that,” the Kid advised him. “It’s here and we’ll get it.”
He put one of his guns away and came into the room, the other gun hanging loosely at his side. When he walked across the room to face the woman, he managed it so that Big Chin and Maurois were never behind him.
“Where’s the stuff?” he demanded.
Inés Almad wet her red mouth with her tongue and let her mouth droop a little and looked softly at the Kid, and made her play.
“One of us is as bad as are the others, Kid. We all — each of us tried to get for ourselves everything. You and Edouard have put aside what is past. Am I more wrong than you? I have them, true, but I have not them here. Until tomorrow will you wait? I will get them. We will divide them among us three, as it was to have been. Shall we not do that?”
“Not any!” The Kid’s voice had finality in it.
“Is that just?” she pleaded, letting her chin quiver a bit. “Is there a treachery of which I am guilty that also you and Edouard are not? Do you—?”
“That ain’t the idea at all,” the Kid told her. “Me and Frenchy are in a fix where we got to work together to get anywhere. So we’re together. With you it’s different. We don’t need you. We can take the stuff away from you. You’re out! Where’s the stuff?”
“Not here! Am I foolish sufficient to leave them here where so easily you could find them? You do need my help to find them. Without me you cannot—”
“You’re silly! I might flop for that if I didn’t know you. But I know you’re too damned greedy to let ’em get far away from you. And you’re yellower than you’re greedy. If you’re smacked a couple of times, you’ll kick in. And don’t think I got any objections to smacking you over!”
She cowered back from his upraised hand.
The Frenchman spoke quickly.
“We should search the rooms first, Kid. If we don’t find them there, then we can decide what to do next.”
The Whosis Kid laughed sneeringly at Maurois.
“All right. But, get this, I’m not going out of here without that stuff — not if I have to take this rat apart. My way’s quicker, but we’ll hunt first if you want to. Your con-whatever-you-call-him can keep these plugs tucked in while me and you upset the joint.”
They went to work. The Kid put away his gun and brought out a long-bladed spring-knife. The Frenchman unscrewed the lower two-thirds of his cane, baring a foot and a half of sword-blade.
No cursory search, theirs. They took the room we were in first. They gutted it thoroughly, carved it to the bone. Furniture and pictures were taken apart. Upholstering gave up its stuffing. Floor coverings were cut. Suspicious lengths of wallpaper were scraped loose. They worked slowly. Neither would let the other get behind him. The Kid would not turn his back on Big Chin.
The sitting-room wrecked, they went into the next room, leaving the woman, Billie and me standing among the litter. Big Chin and his two guns watched over us.
As soon as the Frenchman and the Kid were out of sight, the woman tried her stuff out on our guardian. She had a lot of confidence in her power with men, I’ll say that for her.
For a while she worked her eyes on Big Chin, and then, very softly:
“Can I—?”
“You can’t!” Big Chin was loud and gruff. “Shut up!”
The Whosis Kid appeared at the door.
“If nobody don’t say nothing maybe nobody won’t get hurt,” he snarled, and went back to his work.
The woman valued herself too highly to be easily discouraged. She didn’t put anything in words again, but she looked things at Big Chin — things that had him sweating and blushing. He was a simple man. I didn’t think she’d get anywhere. If there had been no one present but the two of them, she might have put Big Chin over the jumps; but he wouldn’t be likely to let her get to him with a couple of birds standing there watching the show.
Once a sharp yelp told us that the purple Frana — who had fled rearward when Maurois and Big Chin arrived — had got in trouble with the searchers. There was only that one yelp, and it stopped with a suddenness that suggested trouble for the dog.
The two men spent nearly an hour in the other rooms. They didn’t find anything. Their hands, when they joined us again, held nothing but the cutlery.
X
“I said to you it was not here,” Inés told them triumphantly. “Now will you—?”
“You can’t tell me nothing I’ll believe.” The Kid snapped his knife shut and dropped it in his pocket. “I still think it’s here.”
He caught her wrist, and held his other hand, palm up, under her nose.
“You can put ’em in my hand, or I’ll take ’em.”
“They are not here! I swear it!”
His mouth lifted at the corner in a savage grimace.
“Liar!”
He twisted her arm roughly, forcing her to her knees. His free hand went to the shoulder-strap of her orange gown.