In a darkness which he could navigate only from memory, Luke took a flying leap, and came down heavily with both feet on the threshing canvas backing of the Scandinavian rug. He had aimed for where he hoped Fleet’s solar plexus would be, but no part of Fleet was ever going to be where one expected to find it. Nothing else so big could ever have been so elusive. He had foreseen the line of attack, and rolled himself under the table, swinging clear of the mouthfuls of exquisitely-dyed long-pile wool that had threatened to smother him. From under the table he lunged in a round swipe, found Luke’s left foot, and gripped like an octopus. Luke lifted his right foot, and stamped it down with all his weight on the wrist of the hand that held him. There were no rules. He hadn’t even known, until he began, whether he could fight or not. He had never fought since he was about ten years old. He wanted to cry out to Bunty to run, but he dared not, for fear one of the enemy should divert his attention to her in time. Surely, surely she would take her chance now, as he had begged her.
And Bunty had meant to; but it must have been out of some misconception of what she was, for things turned out quite differently. She launched herself towards the doorway, made a long controlled sweep of her left hand along the wall, and found the brass candlestick on top of the record player. The rounded candle-holder fitted snugly into her hand. She gripped it firmly, even took time to settle it comfortably. There seemed to be no haste, the gale that carried her accommodated itself to the speed of events, and made everything seem easy and leisurely, as though these happenings took their time from her, and not she from them. She paced out without hindrance the remaining yards to the door, seized the handle and hurled the door wide open, so that the wooden panels shuddered against the rubber door-stop. But when she ran, it was because the darkness was already beginning to pale for her, and the direction in which she ran was back into the room, towards the shapeless mêlée in the twilight there. She did not think at all, except with her blood and her bones. Bunty had lost herself in the gale-force wind of her own instincts, which had never been loose like this before, and probably never would be again.
Fleet’s long arm heaved convulsively under Luke’s foot, and a grunting curse jerked from under the uncurling edge of the rug. Then the right hand that held the Colt hooked itself round Luke’s knees and brought him down in a crashing fall on top of his adversary. The moment of alarm was already over, and Fleet still wanted him alive, and if possible undamaged. A suicide should not have the grazes and bruises of a stand-up fight all over him, it tends to complicate the proceedings of the coroner’s court. Bunty, one hand extended to catch at Luke’s sleeve and guide him to the doorway, had a precarious hold on him when he fell, but the fall dragged him out of her grasp. She circled the two threshing bodies on the floor, and could not distinguish friend from enemy. But the third presence, still erect, was now visible as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. Blackie, too, was circling the wrestlers, and probing forward into the untidy struggle with his gun hand. And Blackie was not in his master’s secrets, and by the shape and the movement and the long, steady, hissing breath of him he meant to shoot the instant the chance offered.
A head and shoulders reared out of the tangle on the floor. Someone got a foot to the ground and laboured to pull clear and spring erect, and by the slightness and shape of the shadow emerging from shadows Bunty knew him for Luke. So did Blackie, and took a rapid step to one side to have his target well clear of Fleet’s bulk when he fired. The movement took him nearer to Bunty, who had hung for one appalled instant torn between grabbing at Luke’s arm to pull him clear, and hurling herself at the weaving manikin who threatened him.
She chose Blackie. The brass candlestick, swung underhand with all her strength and fury behind it, took him fairly and squarely on the point of the right elbow. The blow had been designed only to sweep his gun hand upwards, but by luck it did much more. It hit his funny-bone with a tingling shock that paralysed him to the fingertips. The gun was jerked out of his hand, and flew jarring across the parquet floor. He uttered a weird, sharp yelp of pain that trailed off into incoherent curses, and went groping lamely after his weapon across the floor, like a crippled spider, one arm dangling.
Bunty swung the candlestick back, startled and exhilarated by success, and struck blindly at Fleet. The blow was smothered in a thick shoulder that rolled aside and rode it almost casually, and then a hand grasped the base of her weapon and pulled dexterously and sharply to jerk her off her feet. Instinctively she released her grip and let the thing go, springing back from too close contact. And then Luke had scrambled clear and was on his feet, and had her by the hand.
“Quick . . .run!”
Neither of them had heard, or could possibly have heard in that chaotic interlude, the labouring footsteps dragging their way down the stairs. They had forgotten Quilley. Fleet fired after them towards the door as he came to his knees, but the bullet plugged harmlessly into the lintel. It was the other shot that stopped them cold as they hurled themselves out into the hall, a shot that spat accurately into the wood blocks of the floor just before their feet, and flung them back in a frantic recoil against the balustrade of the staircase. It came from the corner just within the front door, out of absolute darkness, whereas they had one faint light upon them from the glass panel of the door, and another behind them from the open doorway of the living-room.
“Hold it right there!” said Quilley’s voice, faintly stirred this time with earnest zeal, for who was the useful one now? “I can see you, and you can’t see me. One step this way and I plug you.”
Luke recovered from the check in a moment, but a moment was too long. If they could not both get away, he could still break a way through for Bunty, and this time she would have to go, because there would be nothing left for her to do here, no one to salvage. He put her aside by the shoulder, flattening her into the shelter of the newel-post, and sprang for the armed darkness, diving low.
His arms found and circled Quilley’s knees, Quilley’s gun hand swung towards the ceiling, and down they went in an ugly, heavy fall in the corner beside the door, both heads jarred against the wall.
“Run, Bunty!” Luke panted, clawing his way along Quilley’s right arm towards the gun, and forcing the struggling wrist to point the barrel away into the wall.
The way was clear for her to reach the door, but time had already run out. The narrow hall was suddenly full of people. Blackie had an arm locked round Bunty’s neck, and his gun pressed left-handed into her back. And Fleet was lunging past them to reach Luke and Quilley and drag them apart. A faint, flickering pencil of light suddenly sprang up, scurrying through the living-room to shed a queasy pallor on the struggle, and after it a cone of steady light from Con’s long, rubber-cased torch came surging eagerly in. They were back from the jetty far too soon, and empty-handed, just in time to put the quietus on all hope of escape.
The beam of yellow light swung upwards and bounded along the ceiling, swung downwards again and danced over the glass panel of the door. The thick rubber case hit Luke low in the back of the head with a solid, sickening sound. His shoulders hunched oddly, he hung still for an instant, and then collapsed over Quilley like a discarded rag-doll, and lay in a motionless sprawl of arms and legs and lolling head, dead to the world.