The shot went off just below his window. It was a noise in the very room with him, like a hand clapped upon his ear, and he thought of Jimmy Needles, the shoulder holster on the silver breast, thought of Sybilline and the widow. Then he was out of the bed, across the room and running.
He reached the street before the gunshot sound had died, ran into the dawn bareheaded and in time to see the warbler flying straight up from the thick brown tree with its song turned into a high and piping whistle. There were the frozen headlamps and black dripping tires of a double-decker parked across the street; a cottage with a hound clamoring inside; a poster showing bunched horses on a turn; an empty cart drawn back from the road. And at the corner of the boarding house, sprawled on the stones, the body of a child in a bright-green dress and, crouched over it, the puffing constable. A wet and sluggish sun was burning far-off beyond the wet foliage and crooked roofs.
He stopped — arms flung wide — then ran at the constable.
Because he recognized the child — she had always been coming over a bridge for him — and because now there was smoke still circling out of the belly, smoke and a little blood, and she lay with one knee raised, with palms turned up. And the old man crouching with drawn gun, touching the body to see where his shot had gone, old man with a star of burst veins in the hollow of either cheek, with his warts, the old lips that were ventricles in the enormous face, with brass and serge and a helmet like a pot on the head — there was nothing he could do but smash his fist against that puffing face. He did, and sent the helmet rolling.
The mists were drifting off, the leaves uncurling, the helmet was rattling about the street. And he kept driving the man, fighting the constable farther and farther away from the dead child, watching one of the mournful and unsuspecting eyes turn green and slowly close. Scuffling, panting himself, trying to take his punches with care, aiming at the blood that had started between the two front teeth. Then suddenly the constable — old, with a neck of cow’s kidneys tied round by the high blue collar, and a nose that hooted in the struggle — gave it all back to him, blow for telling blow, finding his mark, punching in with the slobber and vehemence of his age. There was a straight look in his watering good eye, a quick and heavy hunching in the shoulders. His long hair, black and mixed with gray, went flying.
“Down you go, you little Cheapside gambler!”
The old man struck him full in the chest, once in the face, and once again on skin and cartilege of the aching chest. He fell, lay still — blindly reaching out for the little girl in green — and the constable drew back the boot furnished by the village constabulary and kicked him. After a moment of wheezing and blood-wiping, the old man strapped on the helmet, fixed his brass and replaced the warm revolver, took up his pipe from the mossy curb, and rubbing his arms and shins, disappeared to slowly climb the footbridge that was a hump of granite beneath the electric cables and ancient dripping trees.
It’ll be a jolly evening, Mike, he dreamed, and the sun was shining on his lip when Jimmy Needles came out and dragged him to the safety of the house.
8
SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS
Freak Accident Halts Famous Race …
Thousands Witness Collision at End of Day …
Fatal Crash Brings Solemn Cry from Crowd …
… A beautiful afternoon, a lovely crowd, a taste of bitters and light returning to the faces of heroic stone — one day there will be amusements everywhere, good fun for our mortality. He has whistled; he has flicked his cigarette away; alone amidst women he has gone off to a fancy flutter at the races. And redeemed, he has been redeemed — for there is no pathetic fun or mournful frolic like our desire, the consummation of the sparrow’s wings.…
In the paddock and only minutes before the running of the Golden Bowl on a fast track and brilliant afternoon — high above them now the sun was burst all out of shape — Michael Banks and Needles listened to the dying of the call to saddle. A plaster held Banks’ lips together at a comer of the mouth and impaired his speech; the jockey was sallow but Banks wore a large rose with leaves in his lapel; Lovely the stableboy kept whispering: “What a gorgeous crowd! Coo, what a gorgeous crowd!” They had tied down Rock Castle’s tongue and now the horse’s mouth was filled with a green scum. Round the paddock the crowd was twenty deep and silent, save for a rat-faced man at the spectator’s rail who several times cocked his eyebrows, pointed at the silver horse, and said: “Rock Castle? Go on, I wouldn’t take your money. Poor old nag.”
Farther down, a mare set up a drumming with her hind hoofs, then was calmed. Men attending in the paddock spoke soothing words; a black horse was being led in tight circles, again the chestnut mare was dancing.
Banks took the camel’s hair coat off the jockey’s back, bared the resplendent little figure to sun and crowd. “Well, Needles,” carefully hanging the coat on his arm, “Cowles always said he’d run like fire. Well, up you go, Needles.”
Before he could take the jockey’s leg in his hands, he heard the sounds of light and girlish hurrying, saw her stoop beneath the rail, saw the hair and the swinging coat similar to Needles’.
“Oh, good,” cried Annie, “you’ve not started off! I thought I’d bring you luck.”
“You can’t come in the paddock,” glancing about for the detectives, “you haven’t any business here!”
“Oh, but I have, I have.”
And Annie reached toward the jockey then, and even while Banks gripped the blown-out silken sleeve, she caught hold of Jimmy Needles’ face in both her hands, leaned down and kissed the tiny wrinkles of his lips. Drawing away, golden hair uncombed and a printed card dangling from her buttonhole, breeze carrying off her laugh: “Oh, haven’t I always wanted to? Haven’t I just wanted to?”
Somebody whistled in the crowd.
“Tell you what,” straightening the green glasses, cutting his profile across the sun, “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll make it up for the twenty years. A bit of marriage, eh? And then a ship, trees with limes on the branches, niggers to pull us round the streets, the Americas — a proper cruise, plenty of time at the bar, no gunplay or nags. Perhaps a child or two, who knows?”
Arm in arm, Larry and Little Dora, one tall and tough, the other squat and tough, strode along until they approached one hired car in a line of cars and, opening the rear doors, stooping, lifted Margaret from under a shabby quilt and off the floor, and, each gripping an arm and wrapping round her body the coat that belonged to Dora, started back still talking — now across Margaret’s hanging head — about the streets and niggers and limes of the Americas.
“Coo, what a gorgeous crowd!”
But even the crowd was fixed. There were no more islands of space between the stands and the white threads of the rails upon which the slovenly men were chalking, erasing, again chalking up their slates. Yet Thick had made a way for himself and could see all he needed to of the first turn; through long dark binoculars Sybilline watched the final turn; and in the center of the oval’s roses, crouched down between two bushes, armed and grinning, Sparrow waited for signs of trouble, ready to shoot or turn as best he could to any threatened portion of the course. Sparrow always liked a race.
Banks saw nothing of the crowd but kept his eyes on Sybilline. Not once did she glance his way — though he was watched. He was being watched all right. Among the men on the rail he noticed the three who had accosted him, and wondered whether they would fling their bombs into a crowd just to bring one man down.