“He had a piece of foreign money in his hand when he was hit. Know anything about it?”
“Yes. He got it here. One of our customers — a man named Van Pelt — came in to pay for some work we had done yesterday afternoon while the boss was here. When Van Pelt pulled out his wallet to pay his bill, this piece of Holland money — I don’t know what you call it — was among the bills. I think he said it was worth something like thirty-eight dollars. Anyway, the boss took it, giving Van Pelt his change. The boss said he wanted to show the Holland money to his boys — and he could have it changed back into American money later.”
“Who is this Van Pelt?”
“He’s a Hollander — is planning to open a tobacco importing business here in a month or two. I don’t know much about him outside of that.”
“Where’s his home, or office?”
“His office is on Bush Street, near Sansome.”
“Did he know that Newhouse had been sick?”
“I don’t think so. The boss didn’t look much different from usual.”
“What’s this Van Pelt’s full name?”
“Hendrik Van Pelt.”
“What does he look like?”
Before Soules could answer, three evenly spaced buzzes sounded above the rattle and whirring of the presses in the back of the shop.
I slid the muzzle of my gun — I had been holding it in my lap for five minutes — far enough over the edge of the desk for Ben Soules to see it.
“Put both of your hands on top of the desk,” I said.
He put them there.
The pressroom door was directly behind him, so that, facing him across the desk, I could look over his shoulder at it. His stocky body served to screen my gun from the view of whoever came through the door, in response to Soules’s signal.
I didn’t have long to wait.
Three men — black with ink — came to the door, and through it into the little office. They strolled in careless and casual, laughing and joking to one another.
But one of them licked his lips as he stepped through the door. Another’s eyes showed white circles all around the irises. The third was the best actor — but he held his shoulders a trifle too stiffly to fit his otherwise careless carriage.
“Stop right there!” I barked at them when the last one was inside the office — and I brought my gun up where they could see it.
They stopped as if they had all been mounted on the same pair of legs.
I kicked my chair back, and stood up.
I didn’t like my position at all. The office was entirely too small for me. I had a gun, true enough, and whatever weapons may have been distributed among these other men were out of sight. But these four men were too close to me; and a gun isn’t a thing of miracles. It’s a mechanical contraption that is capable of just so much and no more.
If these men decided to jump me, I could down just one of them before the other three were upon me. I knew it, and they knew it.
“Put your hands up,” I ordered, “and turn around!”
None of them moved to obey. One of the inked men grinned wickedly; Soules shook his head slowly; the other two stood and looked at me.
I was more or less stumped. You can’t shoot a man just because he refuses to obey an order — even if he is a criminal. If they had turned around for me, I could have lined them up against the wall, and, being behind them, have held them safe while I used the telephone.
But that hadn’t worked.
My next thought was to back across the office to the street door, keeping them covered, and then either stand in the door and yell for help, or take them into the street, where I could handle them. But I put that thought away as quickly as it came to me.
These four men were going to jump me — there was no doubt of that. All that was needed was a spark of any sort to explode them into action. They were standing stiff-legged and tense, waiting for some move on my part. If I took a step backward — the battle would be on.
We were close enough for any of the four to have reached out and touched me. One of them I could shoot before I was smothered — one out of four. That meant that each of them had only one chance out of four of being the victim — low enough odds for any but the most cowardly of men.
I grinned what was supposed to be a confident grin — because I was up against it hard — and reached for the telephone. I had to do something! Then I cursed myself! I had merely changed the signal for the onslaught. It would come now when I picked up the receiver.
But I couldn’t back down again — that, too, would be a signal — I had to go through with it.
The perspiration trickled across my temples from under my hat as I drew the phone closer with my left hand.
The street door opened! An exclamation of surprise came from behind me.
I spoke rapidly, without taking my eyes from the four men in front of me.
“Quick! The phone! The police!”
With the arrival of this unknown person — one of Newhouse’s customers, probably — I figured I had the edge again. Even if he took no active part beyond calling the police in, the enemy would have to split to take care of him — and that would give me a chance to pot at least two of them before I was knocked over. Two out of four — each of them had an even chance of being dropped — which is enough to give even a nervy man cause for thinking a bit before he jumps.
“Hurry!” I urged the newcomer.
“Yes! Yes!” he said — and in the blurred sound of the ‘s’ there was evidence of foreign birth.
Keyed up as I was, I didn’t need any more warning than that.
I threw myself sidewise — a blind tumbling away from the spot where I stood. But I wasn’t quite quick enough.
The blow that came from behind didn’t hit me fairly, but I got enough of it to fold up my legs as if the knees were hinged with paper — and I slammed into a heap on the floor...
Something dark crashed toward me. I caught it with both hands. It may have been a foot kicking at my face. I wrung it as a washerwoman wrings a towel.
Down my spine ran jar after jar. Perhaps somebody was beating me over the head. I don’t know. My head wasn’t alive. The blow that had knocked me down had numbed me all over. My eyes were no good. Shadows swam to and fro in front of them — that was all. I struck, gouged, tore at the shadows. Sometimes I found nothing. Sometimes I found things that felt like parts of bodies. Then I would hammer at them, tear at them. My gun was gone.
My hearing was no better than my sight — or not so good. There wasn’t a sound in the world. I moved in a silence that was more complete than any silence I had ever known. I was a ghost fighting ghosts.
I found presently that my feet were under me again, though some squirming thing was on my back and kept me from standing upright. A hot, damp thing like a hand was across my face.
I put my teeth into it. I snapped my head back as far as it would go. Maybe it smashed into the face it was meant for. I don’t know. Anyhow the squirming thing was no longer on my back.
Dimly I realized that I was being buffeted about by blows that I was too numb to feel. Ceaselessly, with head and shoulders and elbows and fists and knees and feet, I struck at the shadows that were around me...
Suddenly I could see again — not clearly — but the shadows were taking on colors; and my ears came back a little, so that grunts and growls and curses and the impact of blows sounded in them. My straining gaze rested upon a brass cuspidor six inches or so in front of my eyes. I knew then that I was down on the floor again.
As I twisted about to hurl a foot into a soft body above me, something that was like a burn, but wasn’t a burn, ran down one leg — a knife. The sting of it brought consciousness back into me with a rush.