“Keep your clam shut or I’ll shut it for you!” was the worst I got out of it.
The Kid turned to the Frenchman again. The Frenchman had used the time spent in this side-play to pocket the gems.
“Either we divvy here and now, or I carry the stuff,” the Kid announced. “There’s two of you to see I don’t take a Micky Finn on you.”
“But, Kid, we cannot stay here! Is not the landlady even now calling the police? We will go elsewhere to divide. Why cannot you trust me when you are with me?”
Two steps put the Kid between the door and both Maurois and Big Chin. One of the Kid’s hands held the gun he had flashed on me. The other was conveniently placed to his other gun.
“Nothing stirring!” he said through his nose. “My cut of them stones don’t go out of here in nobody else’s kick. If you want to split ’em here, good enough. If you don’t, I’ll do the carrying. That’s flat!”
“But the police!”
“You worry about them. I’m taking one thing at a time, and it’s the stones right now.”
A vein came out blue in the Frenchman’s forehead. His small body was rigid. He was trying to collect enough courage to swap shots with the Kid. He knew, and the Kid knew, that one of them was going to have all the stuff when the curtain came down. They had started off by double-crossing each other. They weren’t likely to change their habits. One would have the stones in the end. The other would have nothing — except maybe a burial.
Big Chin didn’t count. He was too simple a thug to last long in his present company. If he had known anything, he would have used one of his guns on each of them right now. Instead, he continued to cover me, trying to watch them out of the tail of his eye.
The woman stood near the door, where she had gone to talk to the landlady. She was staring at the Frenchman and the Kid. I wasted precious minutes that seemed to run into hours trying to catch her eye. I finally got it.
I looked at the light-switch, only a foot from her. I looked at her. I looked at the switch again. At her. At the switch.
She got me. Her hand crept sidewise along the wall.
I looked at the two principal players in this button-button game.
The Kid’s eyes were dead — and deadly — circles. Maurois’ one open eye was watery. He couldn’t make the grade. He put a hand in his pocket and brought out the silk bag.
The woman’s brown finger topped the light-button. God knows she was nothing to gamble on, but I had no choice. I had to be in motion when the lights went. Big Chin would pump metal. I had to trust Inés not to balk. If she did, my name was Denis.
Her nail whitened.
I went for Maurois.
Darkness — streaked with orange and blue — filled with noise.
My arms had Maurois. We crashed down on dead Billie. I twisted around, kicking the Frenchman’s face. Loosened one arm. Caught one of his. His other hand gouged at my face. That told me the bag was in the one I held. Clawing fingers tore my mouth. I put my teeth in them and kept them there. One of my knees was on his face. I put my weight on it. My teeth still held his hand. Both of my hands were free to get the bag.
Not nice, this work, but effective.
The room was the inside of a black drum on which a giant was beating the long roll. Four guns worked together in a prolonged throbbing roar.
Maurois’ fingernails dug into my tongue. I had to open my mouth — let his hand escape. One of my hands found the bag. He wouldn’t let go. I screwed his thumb. He cried out. I had the bag.
I tried to leave him then. He grabbed my legs. I kicked at him — missed. He shuddered twice — and stopped moving. A flying bullet had hit him, I took it. Rolling over to the floor, snuggling close to him, I ran a hand over him. A hard bulge came under my hand. I put my hand in his pocket and took back my gun.
On hands and knees — one fist around my gun, the other clutching the silk sack of jewels — I turned to where the door to the next room should have been. A foot wrong, I corrected my course. As I went through the door, the racket in the room behind me stopped.
XII
Huddled close to the wall inside the door, I stowed the silk bag away, and regretted that I hadn’t stayed plastered to the floor behind the Frenchman. This room was dark. It hadn’t been dark when the woman switched off the sitting-room lights. Every room in the apartment had been lighted then. All were dark now. Not knowing who had darkened them, I didn’t like it.
No sounds came from the room I had quit.
The rustle of gently falling rain came from an open window that I couldn’t see, off to one side.
Another sound came from behind me. The muffled tattoo of teeth on teeth.
That cheered me. Inés the scary, of course. She had left the sitting-room in the dark and put out the rest of the lights. Maybe nobody else was behind me.
Breathing quietly through wide-open mouth, I waited. I couldn’t hunt for the woman in the dark without making noises. Maurois and the Kid had strewn furniture and parts of furniture everywhere. I wished I knew if she was holding a gun. I didn’t want to have her spraying me.
Not knowing, I waited where I was.
Her teeth clicked on for minutes.
Something moved in the sitting-room. A gun thundered.
“Inés!” I hissed toward the chattering teeth.
No answer. Furniture scraped in the sitting-room. Two guns went off together. A groaning broke out.
“I’ve got the stuff,” I whispered under cover of the groaning.
That brought an answer.
“Jerry! Ah, come here to me!”
The groans went on, but fainter, in the other room. I crawled toward the woman’s voice. I went on hands and knees, bumping as carefully as possible against things. I couldn’t see anything. Midway, I put a hand down on a soggy bundle of fur — the late purple Frana. I went on.
Inés touched my shoulder with an eager hand.
“Give them to me,” were her first words.
I grinned at her in the dark, patted her hand, found her head, and put my mouth to her ear.
“Let’s get back in the bedroom,” I breathed, paying no attention to her request for the loot. “The Kid will be coming.” I didn’t doubt that he had bested Big Chin. “We can handle him better in the bedroom.”
I wanted to receive him in a room with only one door.
She led me — both of us on hands and knees — to the bedroom. I did what thinking seemed necessary as we crawled. The Kid couldn’t know yet how the Frenchman and I had come out. If he guessed, he would guess that the Frenchman had survived. He would be likely to put me in the chump class with Billie, and think the Frenchman could handle me. The chances were that he had got Big Chin, and knew it by now. It was black as black in the sitting-room, but he must know by now that he was the only living thing there.
He blocked the only exit from the apartment. He would think, then, that Inés and Maurois were still alive in it, with the spoils. What would he do about it? There was no pretense of partnership now. That had gone with the lights. The Kid was after the stones. The Kid was after them alone.
I’m no wizard at guessing the other guy’s next move. But my idea was that the Kid would be on his way after us, soon. He knew — he must know — that the police were coming; but I had him doped as crazy enough to disregard the police until they appeared. He’d figure that there would be only a couple of them — prepared for nothing more violent than a drinking-party. He could handle them — or he would think he could. Meanwhile, he would come after the stones.
The woman and I reached the bedroom, the room farthest back in the apartment, a room with only one door. I heard her fumbling with the door, trying to close it. I couldn’t see, but I got my foot in the way.