Then I did another not at all heroic thing. I turned on all the lights in the room, lighted a cigarette (we all like to pose a little now and then), and sat down on the bed to await my capture. I might have stalked my enemies through the dark house, and possibly have nabbed them; but most likely I would simply have succeeded in getting myself shot. And I don’t like to be shot.
The girl found me.
She came creeping up the hall, an automatic in each hand, hesitated for an instant outside the door, and then came in on the jump. And when she saw me sitting peacefully on the side of the bed, her eyes snapped scornfully at me, as if I had done something mean. I suppose she thought I should have given her an opportunity to put lead in me.
“I got him, Tai,” she called, and the Chinese joined us.
“What did Hook do with the bonds?” he asked point blank.
I grinned into his round yellow face and led my ace.
“Why don’t you ask the girl?”
His face showed nothing, but I imagined that his fat body stiffened a little within its fashionable British clothing. That encouraged me, and I went on with my little lie that was meant to stir things up.
“Haven’t you rapped to it,” I asked; “that they were fixing up to ditch you?”
“You dirty liar!” the girl screamed, and took a step toward me.
Tai halted her with an imperative gesture. He stared through her with his opaque black eyes, and as he stared the blood slid out of her face. She had this fat yellow man on her string, right enough, but he wasn’t exactly a harmless toy.
“So that’s how it is?” he said slowly, to no one in particular. “So that’s how it is?” Then to me: “Where did they put the bonds?”
The girl went close to him and her words came out tumbling over each other:
“Here’s the truth of it, Tai, so help me God! I switched the stuff myself. Hook wasn’t in it. I was going to run out on both of you. I stuck them under the couch downstairs, but they’re not there now. That’s the God’s truth!”
He was eager to believe her, and her words had the ring of truth to them. And I knew that — in love with her as he was — he’d more readily forgive her treachery with the bonds than he would forgive her for planning to run off with Hook; so I made haste to stir things up again. The old timer who said “Divide to conquer,” or something of the sort, knew what he was talking about.
“Part of that is right enough,” I said. “She did stick the bonds under the couch — but Hook was in on it. They fixed it up between them while you were upstairs. He was to pick a fight with you, and during the argument she was to make the switch, and that is exactly what they did.”
I had him!
As she wheeled savagely toward me, he stuck the muzzle of an automatic in her side — a smart jab that checked the angry words she was hurling at me.
“I’ll take your guns, Elvira,” he said, and took them.
There was a purring deadliness in his voice that made her surrender them without a word.
“Where are the bonds now?” he asked me.
I grinned.
“I’m not with you, Tai. I’m against you.”
He studied me with his little eyes that were like black seeds for a while, and I studied him; and I hoped that his studying was as fruitless as mine.
“I don’t like violence,” he said slowly, “and I believe you are a sensible person. Let us traffic, my friend.”
“You name it,” I suggested.
“Gladly! As a basis for our bargaining, we will stipulate that you have hidden the bonds where they cannot be found by anyone else; and that I have you completely in my power, as the shilling shockers used to have it.”
“Reasonable enough,” I said, “go on.”
“The situation, then, is what gamblers call a standoff. Neither of us has the advantage. As a detective, you want us; but we have you. As thieves, we want the bonds; but you have them. I offer you the girl in exchange for the bonds, and that seems to me an equitable offer. It will give me the bonds and a chance to get away. It will give you no small degree of success in your task as a detective. Hook is dead. You will have the girl. All that will remain is to find me and the bonds again — by no means a hopeless task. You will have turned a defeat into more than half of a victory, with an excellent chance to make it a complete one.”
“How do I know that you’ll give me the girl?”
He shrugged.
“Naturally, there can be no guarantee. But, knowing that she planned to desert me for the swine who lies dead below, you can’t imagine that my feelings for her are the most friendly. Too, if I take her with me, she will want a share in the loot.”
I turned the lay-out over in my mind, and looked at it from this side and that and the other.
“This is the way it looks to me,” I told him at last. “You aren’t a killer. I’ll come through alive no matter what happens. All right; why should I swap? You and the girl will be easier to find again than the bonds, and they are the most important part of the job anyway. I’ll hold on to them, and take my chances on finding you folks again. Yes, I’m playing it safe.”
And I meant it, for the time being, at least.
“No, I’m not a killer,” he said, very softly; and he smiled the first smile I had seen on his face. It wasn’t a pleasant smile: and there was something in it that made you want to shudder. “But I am other things, perhaps, of which you haven’t thought. But this talking is to no purpose. Elvira!”
The girl, who had been standing a little to one side, watching us, came obediently forward.
“You will find sheets in one of the bureau drawers,” he told her. “Tear one or two of them into strips strong enough to tie up your friend securely.”
The girl went to the bureau. I wrinkled my head, trying to find a not too disagreeable answer to the question in my mind. The answer that came first wasn’t nice: torture.
Then a faint sound brought us all into tense motionlessness.
The room we were in had two doors: one leading into the hall, the other into another bedroom. It was through the hall door that the faint sound had come — the sound of creeping feet.
Swiftly, silently, Tai moved backward to a position from which he could watch the hall door without losing sight of the girl and me — and the gun poised like a live thing in his fat hand was all the warning we needed to make no noise.
The faint sound again, just outside the door.
The gun in TaI’s hand seemed to quiver with eagerness.
Through the other door — the door that gave to the next room — popped Mrs. Quarre, an enormous cocked revolver in her thin hand.
“Let go it, you nasty heathen,” she screeched.
Tai dropped his pistol before he turned to face her, and he held his hands up high — all of which was very wise.
Thomas Quarre came through the hall door then; he also held a cocked revolver — the mate of his wife’s — though, in front of his bulk, his didn’t look so enormously large.
I looked at the old woman again, and found little of the friendly fragile one who had poured tea and chatted about the neighbors. This was a witch if there ever was one — a witch of the blackest, most malignant sort. Her little faded eyes were sharp with ferocity, her withered lips were taut in a wolfish snarl, and her thin body fairly quivered with hate.
“I knew it,” she was shrilling. “I told Tom as soon as we got far enough away to think things over. I knew it was a frame-up! I knew this supposed detective was a pal of yours! I knew it was just a scheme to beat Thomas and me out of our shares! Well, I’ll show you, you yellow monkey! And the rest of you too! I’ll show the whole caboodle of you! Where are them bonds? Where are they?”
The Chinese had recovered his poise, if he had ever lost it.