“Orders from who?” I said.
“Never mind,” said Clarence. “Walk straight ahead.”
The barn wasn’t being used for anything. Empty stalls, empty bins, empty nails stuck in the walls, empty loft up above. Sunlight gleamed in cracks in the outer walls, filling the interior with soft vague indirect lighting as though we were underwater in a lagoon.
The left rear corner had been closed off into a tiny windowless room lined with rough-plank shelves. This was empty now, but not for long; Clarence pushed me in and shut the door behind me. I heard a hasp lock click shut. I was alone.
Now what? I supposed Clarence had decided he couldn’t do anything about me on his own account, and so he’d just locked me away here for safekeeping until he found out what was what from Mr. Gross. I also supposed Mr. Gross was the man higher up, the one Mr. Agricola had taken his orders from.
So it was Mr. Gross I should be trying to see, not Mr. Agricola.
Well, it didn’t look as though I’d get to see him. If anybody wanted to set up a Charlie Poole pool, I would put my money on the two guys in the black car for the next people I’d be seeing. And the last.
A rotting old barn like that, there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t escape from it. I kicked at one of the exterior walls, experimentally, and managed only to hurt my big toe. I hit my shoulder against the door, and hurt my shoulder. I hit my palm against one of the interior walls, and hurt my palm.
While there were still a few parts of me that didn’t hurt, I decided to quit.
How long would it take? Clarence and Mr. Gross would have to talk together, guardedly, on the telephone. Then Mr. Gross would have to get in touch with the two men in the black car, and they’d have to drive on out to Staten Island again. An hour at the least, maybe two hours.
I sat down on the dirt floor, and gave myself up to depression.
It was only fifteen minutes before I heard someone unlocking the door out there. I scrambled to my feet, and my mouth got dry while my palms got wet. I kept clearing my throat and clearing my throat; when that door opened, I was going to have to talk faster than I had ever talked before in my life. And I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say.
The door swung open at last, and it was Miss Althea standing there, as beautiful and improbable as a Disney heroine, but distorting her beauty was a terrible frown of grief and rage that stroked her face with heavy angry lines. In the right hand she raised toward me was, incredibly, a gun, a great big automatic. Her hand was barely large enough to hold it, and she had to bring her left hand up to help keep it steady.
“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing?”
“You killed my father,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with strain.
“No no,” I said. “No, I didn’t, no.”
“I’m going to kill you,” she said, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 9
The noise alone, in that confined space, was practically enough to kill me. The gunshot went POWwwrrrangingggg, reverberating around inside the tiny room and my tiny head like J. Arthur Rank falling over his gong.
I thought for sure I was shot, killed, done with. What confused me was that I wasn’t falling, down. I stood there, stunned, baffled, and all my mind was capable of doing was wondering why I wasn’t falling down.
Could it be I wasn’t shot?
POWwwrranginggg! She did it again, frowning now as much in concentration as in either rage or grief. Her tongue stuck out a corner of her mouth, her slender shoulders were hunched up with the effort, and she just kept squeezing that trigger.
Twice. Was it even remotely possible I was still alive? With no more than six feet separating us, with that huge piece of machinery spitting authoritative pieces of metal at me, was there any reason at all to suppose I was still alive?
Of course, the gun barrel was weaving back and forth like the head of a cobra. And it was certainly true that I still wasn’t falling. So maybe, just maybe now, maybe she was missing.
But could she keep missing forever? I was in front of her, six feet away. No matter how bad a shot she was, sooner or later one of those bullets she was sending out into the world was going to find a home in a portion of me.
I jumped her.
She was slender, but strong, and she had an amazing number of sharp edges. Her elbows, for instance, were very sharp, very sharp. So were her teeth, which were imbedded briefly in my wrist. So was her knee, which kept trying to prove she wasn’t a lady.
I was hampered not only by the sharp parts of her, but also by the soft parts, which I tried to avoid touching. But if you think you can take a gun away from a sharp-toothed sharp-elbowed girl without touching any soft parts, you’re crazy. I wouldn’t behave with an old girl friend in a movie balcony the way I behaved with Miss Althea. And believe me, I got no pleasure out of it. I found the whole incident embarrassing and painful and not a little dangerous.
Anyway, I finally got the gun. My left wrist was bleeding, where she’d bit me, and I was limping because she’d kicked me on the right shin, and my left eye was watering because she’d stuck her finger in it, and my kidneys would require a long quiet time to forget her elbows, but at least I had the gun.
She stood there in front of me, gasping for breath, glaring at me defiantly. High spots of color shone in her cheeks, and she was cupping her right hand with her left as though I’d hurt her.
“You’ll pay for this,” she said. Do I have to mention she said it through gritted teeth? I thought not.
“Now, listen,” I said. “I did not kill your father, I swear it. I never killed anybody in my life. Your father was trying to have me killed, if you want to come right down to it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“What about those two guys in the black car? They’re the ones that tried to do it.”
“Those are my father’s business associates,” she said.
“You’re darn right they are. And they—”
But that was as far as I got. The gunfire had apparently been heard in the house, because at that point the barn door burst open and Clarence came barreling in.
There’s a time for chivalry, and there’s a time for practicality. This was a time for practicality. I immediately ran around behind Miss Althea, grabbed her around the throat, stuck the gun in the delicately magnificent small of her back, and shouted, “One step closer and I plug her!” If my voice hadn’t gone falsetto about midway through that sentence, the whole performance would have been very impressive.
Nevertheless, it was impressive enough to stop Clarence in his tracks. “Let her go,” he said, but he knew I had the whip hand.
“Back on out of the barn,” I told him. “Go on, move.”
He backed on out of the barn, looking like Lon Chaney, Jr., making up his mind to turn into the Wolf Man. I followed, pushing Miss Althea ahead of me. I switched my grip from her neck to her arm, and out to the sunlight we went. I could feel her trembling, but whether from rage or fear I couldn’t tell.
Outside, there was another surprise. A tableau: Tim, still in his chauffeur’s uniform and now with the addition of his cap, holding a small pistol aimed at Artie Dexter, who stood sheepish and worried in the middle of the expanse of blacktop.
Artie Dexter!
First things first. I shouted, “Drop that gun! Drop it!”
Tim just gaped at me. So did Artie.
Clarence said, “Do like he says. He’s got a gun on Miss Althea.”
Artie said, “Charlie! What’s come over you, baby?”
Tim dropped the pistol.
“Pick it up, Artie,” I said.
“Right.”
To Clarence I said, “Is Mr. Gross coming out here?”