“Let her go!” Hank said.
“You goddam fool.” Duke stared over his shoulder at him, his eyes gleaming and furious in the darkness. “Beat it, get moving!”
“Let her go!”
Duke swore savagely and released the girl. She stumbled away from him, and he turned on Hank, still swearing, and struck him viciously across the face with the back of his hand. Hank staggered under the power of the blow, and Duke moved after him, and said, “Get your fists up, kid.”
Hank looked away from him, his injured hand hanging limply at his side. He felt a stinging pain in his mouth, and then the sticky warmth of blood on his lips.
“No?” Duke said. “Take a beating and then turn around to be kicked in the tail. I had a hound like that once and I shot him.” Turning slightly, he glanced at the girl. He was breathing heavily but there was a little smile on his lips; the instant of violence had purged most of his anger and frustration. “No point in being upset,” he said. She was looking at the floor, her pale face in shadows, but he saw that her lips were trembling. “My brother always butts in where he isn’t wanted. Next time there won’t be any interruptions. That’s a promise, baby.” He moved toward the door, staring at Hank. “There hadn’t better be any interruptions, kid.” He stood for a second or so, watching both of them, and then he shrugged his big shoulders and walked out of the room.
“Are you all right?” Hank said.
“Why didn’t you kill him when you had the chance?” Her voice shook with anger and contempt.
“Stop thinking about that. It won’t help.”
“Nothing will help. They can’t let us live. It’s just a matter of time before they kill us.”
“That’s right, a matter of time,” Hank said. “But time is working for us, not them.” He took a step toward her. “Listen to me; they’re kidnapers. You know what that means? They’ll be dead within a month if the police get hold of them. And they know it. Every second we stay alive puts more pressure on them.” Hank glanced toward the closed door; he heard a footstep on the stairs. “They can’t afford one slip, one bad break. This isn’t Siberia. There are hikers, picnickers in these woods. I’ve got friends in town who might drop by. If the police are in on it, there are hundreds of men looking for you and the baby. A knock on that front door could put them straight into the death cell. And they’re sweating that out.” He gripped her shoulder with his good hand. “Hang on,” he said, in a low, urgent voice. “You’ve taken what they’ve handed you so far. You’ve got to keep taking it. Can you do it?”
She stared at him. and he saw the fear and doubt in her eyes. “Don’t you want to fight?” he said harshly. “Don’t you think I’ve got enough guts to help you?”
“No, it isn’t—” She turned swiftly from him and opened the door of the closet. A thin edge of light touched the clothes that hung there, his jackets, suits, odd slacks. “I saw this,” she said, putting her fingers on his army blouse. The gaudy rows of campaign ribbons and decorations gleamed in the ray of sunlight. “Don’t they mean something?”
“Maybe,” he said, staring at the three rows of ribbons. “Maybe they did.”
“I think they did,” she said.
A step sounded in the hall and the door swung inward. Grant stood there, staring at them with ominously alert eyes. In his right fist he held a gun. “Downstairs, you,” he said to Hank. “And keep away from her. This isn’t a college house party. You get out of line again and I’ll bust your other hand wide open. Remember that, Junior. Now move!”
Fourteen
Crowley came on his second lead shortly after his talk with Ellie Bradley. Since then he had been working in the study, fingerprinting every surface the telephone repairman night conceivably have touched; the phone itself yielded nothing, but he was hoping for prints in a less obvious place — around the window or desk perhaps, areas that weren’t dusted and handled every day.
He found a single print on a small black metal box attached to the floorboard behind the desk. The box contained the bell and telephone coil, he knew, an arrangement which was peculiar to older buildings. Crowley opened his fingerprint kit and removed a silver powder, white lifting tape, a brush and scissors. Then he went to work.
When he finally straightened up and turned he saw that Mrs. Jarrod was watching him from the doorway. “I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said, with her stiff, old-fashioned dignity. She was a woman, Crowley guessed, who had little tolerance for scatterbrains and idlers; she was direct and revelant, and she knew the difference between fact and guesswork. She wasn’t here out of curioosity, he was sure of that.
“I’ve been trying all morning to remember something else Kitty told me,” she said.
“Yes? What is it?”
“I–I can’t remember,” she said, and her plump cheeks became pink with annoyance. “I can’t quite get hold of it.”
“Well, that happens to all of us,” Crowley said easily. He lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the desk. “And the harder you try, the blanker your mind gets.”
“That’s it exactly.”
Crowley began replacing the fingerprint equipment, making each movement deliberate and casual. If he could get her mind onto something else the information she wanted might pop into her head. “Have you got a scissors?” he asked her.
“Why, yes, of course.”
“I don’t need it now. Later perhaps. Mine seems kind of dull.”
“You use a scissors in taking fingerprints?”
“Yes, to cut the lifting tape. First we powder the prints, then photograph them, then lift them with this tape which, as you can see, is about like the kind you use to repair an automobile tire. Then we put a cellophane cap over the tape to prevent smudging. And that’s it.”
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?”
“Just routine, that’s all.”
Mrs. Jarrod was frowning. “It was something about a nickname. There, I’ve got that much. The man told Kitty something about this nickname.”
“Good. That’s a start.”
“But I can’t remember what it was.”
“Let’s see now. Nicknames usually fall into categories, don’t they? How about physical characteristics? Fatty or Fatso, Slim, Tiny, Baldy, Blackie—” Crowley was speaking quietly and slowly. “Or Lefty perhaps. Then there’s Pudge, Specs, Four-eyes—”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
Crowley took a pull on his cigarette. “We’ll hit it, don’t worry. Was it unflattering? You know, like Gimpy or Creep or Humpy?”
But Mrs. Jarrod was shaking her head. “It’s just the opposite.”
“You mean flattering? Like Handsome or Big Boy or — let’s see — Romeo?”
“It’s not flattering. It’s — special. I thought when Kitty told me about it that it was pretty high-and-mighty for a j repairman.”
“High and mighty, eh?” Crowley frowned and took another deliberate pull on his cigarette. They were close; he could feel it. But he didn’t want to stampede her thoughts. “How about Champ then? Or Ace?”
“That’s it, that’s it. Ace!” Mrs. Jarrod suddenly shook her head irritably. “No, that’s not it. But it’s closer than anything else you’ve said.”
“Ace? How about cards? Ace, King, Queen. Jack — any of those fit?”