The British voice:
“You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.”
Hook:
“What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”
The drawling British voice:
“It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”
Hook, blustering:
“Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! If you don’t like my style, to hell with you! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”
The young feminine voice:
“Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”
A rustle of papers, and the British voice:
“I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card among his things.”
The Quarres were listening to the conversation in the next room with as much interest as I, but Thomas Quarre’s eyes never left me, and his fat fingers never relaxed about the gun in his lap. His wife sipped tea, with her head cocked on one side in the listening attitude of a bird.
Except for the weapon in the old man’s lap, there was not a thing to persuade the eye that melodrama was in the room; the Quarres were in every other detail still the pleasant old couple who had given me tea and expressed sympathy for the elderly lady who had been injured.
The feminine voice from the next room:
“Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”
Hook:
“That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off, first thing!”
The feminine voice:
“And put our necks in the noose?”
Hook, scornfully:
“As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L. A. job, do you?”
The British voice:
“You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us — chances are — as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow — and that will give us all night to manage our disappearance.”
My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate. I felt better now, though far from gay; I had confidence in the drawling British voice; it was the voice of a man who habitually carries his point.
Hook, bellowing:
“Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat. He’s going to be knocked off!”
The feminine voice, disgustedly:
“Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”
The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold:
“There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die. If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible — because it’s that true.”
There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle. Beyond the portière, I knew, two men were matching glances in a battle of wills, which might any instant become a physical struggle, and my chances of living were tied up in that battle.
When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.
It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.
“We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up neatly. But remember — no foolishness. Don’t waste time questioning him — he’ll lie. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”
The portières parted and Hook came into the room — a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres:
“He wants you.”
They got up and went into the next room, and for a while an indistinguishable buzzing of whispers came from that room.
Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the high-backed chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the corner of a cushion that was too well-stuffed for my comfort. The ugly man was unnecessarily rough throughout; but I was a lamb. He wanted an excuse for drilling me, and I wanted above all else that he should have no excuse.
As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.
Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning.
“Elvira!” he called softly.
The portières bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”
“Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”
She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-grey eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness — though not for beauty — laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was beautiful; as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.
She laughed at me — a fat man all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the corner of a green cushion in my mouth — and she turned to the ugly man.
“What do you want?”
He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.
“What say we shake him?”
Her smoke-grey eyes lost their merriment and became hard and calculating.
“There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding — a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”
“Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”