“I’ll damn soon find out,” he promised.
Billie came to life.
“Hey!” he protested, his chest heaving in and out. “You can’t do that!”
“Wait, Kid!” Maurois — putting his sword-cane together again — called. “Let us see if there is not another way.”
The Whosis Kid let go of the woman and took three slow steps back from her. His eyes were dead circles without any color you could name — the dull eyes of the man whose nerves quit functioning in the face of excitement. His bony hands pushed his coat aside a little and rested where his vest bulged over the sharp corners of his hip-bones.
“Let’s me and you get this right, Frenchy,” he said in his whining voice. “Are you with me or her?”
“You, most certainly, but—”
“All right. Then be with me! Don’t be trying to gum every play I make. I’m going to frisk this dolly, and don’t think I ain’t. What are you going to do about it?”
The Frenchman pursed his mouth until his little black mustache snuggled against the tip of his nose. He puckered his eyebrows and looked thoughtfully out of his one good eye. But he wasn’t going to do anything at all about it, and he knew he wasn’t. Finally he shrugged.
“You are right,” he surrendered. “She should be searched.”
The Kid grunted contemptuous disgust at him and went toward the woman again.
She sprang away from him, to me. Her arms clamped around my neck in the habit they seemed to have.
“Jerry!” she screamed in my face. “You will not allow him! Jerry, please not!”
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t think it was exactly genteel of the Kid to frisk her, but there were several reasons why I didn’t try to stop him. First, I didn’t want to do anything to delay the unearthing of this “stuff” there had been so much talk about. Second, I’m no Galahad. This woman had picked her playmates, and was largely responsible for this angle of their game. If they played rough, she’d have to make the best of it. And, a good strong third, Big Chin was prodding me in the side with a gun-muzzle to remind me that I couldn’t do anything if I wanted to — except get myself slaughtered.
The Kid dragged Inés away. I let her go.
He pulled her over to what was left of the bench by the electric heater, and called the Frenchman there with a jerk of his head.
“You hold her while I go through her,” he said.
She filled her lungs with air. Before she could turn it loose in a shriek, the Kid’s long fingers had fit themselves to her throat.
“One chirp out of you and I’ll tie a knot in your neck,” he threatened.
She let the air wheeze out of her nose.
Billie shuffled his feet. I turned my head to look at him. He was puffing through his mouth. Sweat polished his forehead under his matted red hair. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn his wolf loose until the “stuff” came to the surface. If he would wait a while I might join him.
He wouldn’t wait. He went into action when — Maurois holding her — the Kid started to undress the woman.
He took a step toward them. Big Chin tried to wave him back with a gun. Billie didn’t even see it. His eyes were red on the three by the bench.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” he rumbled. “You can’t do that!”
“No?” The Kid looked up from his work. “Watch me.”
“Billie!” the woman urged the big man on in his foolishness.
Billie charged.
Big Chin let him go, playing safe by swinging both guns on me. The Whosis Kid slid out of the plunging giant’s path. Maurois hurled the girl straight at Billie — and got his gun out.
Billie and Inés thumped together in a swaying tangle.
The Kid spun behind the big man. One of the Kid’s hands came out of his pocket with the spring-knife. The knife clicked open as Billie regained his balance.
The Kid jumped close.
He knew knives. None of your clumsy downward strokes with the blade sticking out the bottom of his fist.
Thumb and crooked forefinger guided blade. He struck upward. Under Billie’s shoulder. Once. Deep.
Billie pitched forward, smashing the woman to the floor under him. He rolled off her and was dead on his back among the furniture-stuffing. Dead, he seemed larger than ever, seemed to fill the room.
The Whosis Kid wiped his knife clean on a piece of carpet, snapped it shut, and dropped it back in his pocket. He did this with his left hand. His right was close to his hip. He did not look at the knife. His eyes were on Maurois.
But if he expected the Frenchman to squawk, he was disappointed. Maurois’ little mustache twitched, and his face was white and strained, but:
“We’d better hurry with what we have to do, and get out of here,” he suggested.
The woman sat up beside the dead man, whimpering. Her face was ashy under her dark skin. She was licked. A shaking hand fumbled beneath her clothes. It brought out a little flat silk bag.
Maurois — nearer than the Kid — took it. It was sewed too securely for his fingers to open. He held it while the Kid ripped it with his knife. The Frenchman poured part of the contents out in one cupped hand.
Diamonds. Pearls. A few colored stones among them.
XI
Big Chin blew his breath out in a faint whistle. His eyes were bright on the sparkling stones. So were the eyes of Maurois, the woman, and the Kid.
Big Chin’s inattention was a temptation. I could reach his jaw. I could knock him over. The strength Billie had mauled out of me had nearly all come back by now. I could knock Big Chin over and have at least one of his guns by the time the Kid and Maurois got set. It was time for me to do something. I had let these comedians run the show long enough. The stuff had come to light. If I let the party break up there was no telling when, if ever, I could round up these folks again.
But I put the temptation away and made myself wait a bit longer. No use going off half-cocked. With a gun in my hand, facing the Kid and Maurois, I still would have less than an even break. That’s not enough. The idea in this detective business is to catch crooks, not to put on heroics.
Maurois was pouring the stones back in the bag when I looked at him again. He started to put the bag in his pocket. The Whosis Kid stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I’ll pack ’em.”
Maurois’ eyebrows went up.
“There’s two of you and one of me,” the Kid explained. “I trust you, and all the like of that, but just the same I’m carrying my own share.”
“But—”
The doorbell interrupted Maurois’ protest.
The Kid spun to the girl.
“You do the talking — and no wise breaks!”
She got up from the floor and went to the passageway.
“Who is there?” she called.
The landlady’s voice, stern and wrathfuclass="underline"
“Another sound, Mrs. Almad, and I shall call the police. This is disgraceful!”
I wondered what she would have thought if she had opened the unlocked door and taken a look at her apartment — furniture whittled and gutted; a dead man — the noise of whose dying had brought her up here this second time — lying in the middle of the litter.
I wondered — I took a chance.
“Aw, go jump down the sewer!” I told her.
A gasp, and we heard no more from her. I hoped she was speeding her injured feelings to the telephone. I might need the police she had mentioned.
The Kid’s gun was out. For a while it was a toss-up. I would lie down beside Billie, or I wouldn’t. If I could have been knifed quietly, I would have gone. But nobody was behind me. The Kid knew I wouldn’t stand still and quiet while he carved me. He didn’t want any more racket than necessary, now that the jewels were on hand.