“Get downstairs,” Bender told Patton. He said to the taxi driver: “Take him to the car and if he tries any monkey business let him have it.”
“Sure,” the driver said.
“—!” Patton swore and then erupted a stream of obscenity.
Bender stooped down and picked up the dead man. He worked him over his shoulder, followed Patton and the driver to the car. He flopped the dead man in the back.
Bender went back to get the other man. The driver had beaten him into unconsciousness and Bender couldn't tell how badly he was hurt. As he came back to the car the people surged around him and headlights flooded the road as all the traffic stopped. There were shouts and murmurs and the discord of excitement.
Bender paid no attention. He put the other man in the back and told Patton to get in front. Patton swore again and crawled in. The driver put the gun in his pocket and got under the wheel.
“Just what the hell is this raid?” Patton gritted.
“Nothing,” Bender said. “You tried to get funny—that's all. Now you're going to jail.”
He got in the back and spread the men out so he could sit down.
On his right side was a dead man, on his left an unconscious man and both heads were down with their chins on their chests.
Patton swore again and said: “You killed a man, you big—” and Bender reached around with his hand and slapped him on the side of the head.”
“Pipe down,” he said; “or I'm liable to bump you.”
The driver grinned and cut on the switch. “He's piped,” he said.
“What'd you hit that guy with?” Bender asked.
“A spring leaf,” the driver said. “I was mad and I guess I hit him too hard.”
“Yeah,” Bender said dryly. “I guess I owe you a dinner for that. Let's be rolling.”
The crowd gathered around the car. One man came in close, stuck his head under the top, saw the men in the back seat and said:
“Well, I'll be—! Looks like a cyclone hit 'em.”
“You said it, brother,” the driver clipped over his shoulder.
The car jerked away down the road, rolled a few hundred feet and pulled into a dirt road. The driver reversed it, turned around and started back.
A puff of smoke vomited from the Fishtail Club and a roll of flame pushed out and licked its way upward.
“—!” Patton cried. “The place is one fire! The place is on fire!”
Bender looked out and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said; “the cook must of left in a hurry.”
Patton kept raving like a mad man and would have jumped out of the car but he knew that would be exactly what Tom Bender wanted for the big Ranger was waiting for a chance to mow him down.
When he returned to the hotel forty-five minutes later the main street was nearly deserted. The great wide glow that had spread over the heavens had attracted everybody and the fire had become the chief interest.
Bender went to sleep with his automatic under his pillow.
But his sleep was fuddled and semiconsciously he knew why. He had gone to bed wound up and taut and that was bad business. It had happened before and he had had bad dreams but even while he was having the dreams he was conscious of the reason. He always told himself the next time he got in a fight he would sit around and cool off before he went to bed but always in the morning he had forgotten.
Only half asleep, he heard noises. Somebody was raising the windows.
He lay still and prized his eyelids up a little and saw two shadowy forms coming through from the fire-escape. In a moment they were still and he lay there, hardly breathing, until the white beam of a flashlight struck him in the face.
He had the impulse to jump up and cover them but he had sense enough to fight that back because he knew they were waiting for him and ready and he wasn't.
They slowly walked over and he could tell from the way they held the light that they were nervous too.
They came close by the bed and he could hear them breathing. They were snorting like horses after a run and making enough racket to wake the dead. Whoever it was certainly was overanxious. When the light went out this time Bender opened his right eye and saw a man above him big as all outdoors and got a gleam of something steely in his hand.
The man was fixing to knife him.
Like a flash he slid out of bed backwards, pulling his automatic out from under the pillow with him and when his foot struck the floor he knew this was no time to play around.
He flicked his gun down and squeezed the trigger a couple of times and in the light of the explosion he saw an agonized face and imagined he could hear the bullets thud home with a soft plunk like he had shot a piece of liver.
He dropped down quickly to use the bed as a barricade but before he could hide himself or fire at the second man there was another crack, sharper and more staccato than his, and a finger of flame reached out and went through his right arm and he knew he was shot.
He fell to the floor and tried to push his gun over to his left hand but his right hand wouldn't respond. He had a frantic moment and his arm was numb and dead and somehow he got the crazy idea that he had been sleeping on it and that it was asleep. Then he knew that couldn't be... so he reached over with his left hand and got the automatic and stuck his hand up to rub out the other assailant.
The assailant could see better than he could and he fired again over the bed, the bullet singing by Tom Bender's head and biting off a lot of plaster behind him.
Bender turned the nose of his automatic down and got the bead and then crack—crack came from the window sill. The man across the bed spun around like a toy top and fell with a loud noise and somebody jumped down off the sill and ran into the room.
Bender crawled up saying: “Who is it? Who is it?”
“Cap'n? Cap'n?” the man said.
Bender switched on the light on the table by the bed and there stood the taxi driver, gun in hand, his cap on side-wise and excitement in his eyes.
“For—sake!” Bender rasped. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I saw 'em, I saw 'em,” he said. “I knew they were up to something so I followed 'em up the fire-escape. When Botchey shot at you I located him and gave him the works.”
Bender swore and grinned.
“By—!” he said in a nasty bass, “you're the—guardian angel I ever had.”
The taxi driver came over and said: “Look—you're shot!” Blood was pouring down Bender's forearm and the upper part of his pajama sleeves was stained crimson.
“Yeah,” he said. “Call a doctor or something for these guys.”
The taxi driver went to the telephone and Bender went around the bed.
Botchey Miller on his side on the floor, a hole in his temple and one in his neck, but he was still breathing. Bender had to pull the other man off the bed to identify him, and he slid to the floor in a heap.
It was Jim Lovell, the chief of police. His right hand relaxed and stretched out and came close to a six-inch stiletto that lay gleaming on the floor. Lovell was hit once below the right eye and the bullet had ranged upward and come out at the back of his head.
Bender pitched his gun on the bed and sat down and looked at the men. Then he picked up the stiletto and held it up. The taxi driver came over and Bender said: “They was fixing to park that in my back.”
The taxi driver nodded. Bender squinted his eyes and stared at him. He wrapped his left fingers around his right arm just below the shoulder and squeezed hard to try to stop some of the pain.