“I’m going to turn around,” Nace said. Then he wheeled slowly.
He got his first close look at the girl. She made his head swim. Maybe it was her form. Or maybe it was her face, or red hair. Or her clothes; he couldn’t tell. In Broadway parlance, she had what it takes.
“You sold out to them!” Her husky voice was bitter. “I want to know who paid you. You can be a nice boy and talk here, or you can act stubborn and force me to use measures.”
Nace pulled smoke out of his pipe.
“It’d be easy to be nice to a baby like you.” He made it sound like an insult.
She bored the gun muzzle into his breast bone, said scathingly, “The great Lee Nace! The famous private detective Scotland Yard kept in England a year, on a fabulous salary, to study his methods! What a bust you turned out to be!”
“So you know me?” Nace mixed smoke with his words.
“That surprised you, did it?” she clipped. “I’ve seen your pictures. I’ve read some of the ballyhoo about you. That’s what led me to wire for you.”
Nace chewed his pipe slowly until it was half turned over in his teeth. “What’s your name?”
“Benna Franks. You saw it on the telegram.”
“I got no telegram from you.”
She didn’t believe him. “So that’s your story?”
Nace still held his Panama brim with both hands. “Believe it or not, Benna.”
“Are you going to tell me who bribed you not to work for me?” She gored him with the gun muzzle.
“Where’d you get the bribe idea, Benna?” His pipe turned the rest of the way over and was now upside down.
“You’ve been in town since noon. You didn’t call me, as my wire directed. It’s plain they bought you off.”
“Who’s they?”
Her gun gouged. “Quit stalling! Either you tell me who it was, or—!”
Nace blew through his pipe, suddenly and hard. Sparks spurted out, fell on the girl’s hand.
She gasped. Instinctively, her hand jerked back.
Nace’s hands left his hat brim with a speed that dazzled the eye. They reached the girl’s gun. A twist, and he had the weapon.
Benna Franks looked at her slender, tanned hands. The sparks had not burned them in the slightest. She slapped Nace — one, two, right hand, left hand.
Nace dropped his pipe. His ears rang as though full of sleigh bells. Rage smoked his pale eyes. He bent over and got his pipe, and when he straightened, the rage had subsided.
The girl whirled and ran. Nace grabbed, got her arm. He pulled her back hard enough to slam her against his chest. She opened her mouth to shriek. He cupped a hand over it. She bit his palm, but he stopped that by crowding a thumb hard against her nose.
He carried her down the street a few yards, so no one in the hotel would see them. She hissed, struggled, kicked. The perfume she used eddied faintly in his nostrils.
When she showed no sign of ceasing her exertions, he growled, “Lay off, Benna, or I’ll have to smack you down!”
The girl went on scuffling. Nace, watching her eyes, discovered she was looking behind him. He twisted hurriedly. He was just a fraction too late.
A man had glided up behind Nace and the girl. He gripped a wrench. It was all of iron, the sort of wrench which comes as factory equipment with most moderate-priced cars. He slammed it on top of Nace’s head.
Nace dropped.
The girl recoiled, unconsciously straightening her hair, saying hoarsely, “Fred! Fred! You didn’t hit hard enough to kill him?”
“Small loss if I did!” grated Fred.
Fred was almost as tall as Nace. He was thick in shoulders and neck. His face was handsome in a jaw-heavy sort of way.
“Go get in the car, honey,” Fred said. “I’ll bring this bum.”
He stopped to pick Nace up. He was entirely off guard.
Nace hung a beautiful right-hand jab on the point of Fred’s ample jaw. Stunned, Fred piled down on the detective. But he must have done some boxing in his time — he had sense enough to hold Nace’s arms.
Nace banged the top of his head against Fred’s head.
A strange wig of a contraption Nace wore was dislodged and fell off his head. The interesting part of this consisted of a steel skullcap, thin and light, but very stout. It bore thick blond hair and fitted over Nace’s close-cropped natural hair, which was the same color. This had kept the wrench blow on the head from harming Nace to any degree.
The red-headed girl had started for a coupe parked nearby. She came running back and hunted frantically for the wrench, which Fred had dropped.
Nace rolled Fred over, hit him again, then a second time. Fred sighed loudly, became limp.
Nace leaped to his feet. He saw the girl pick up the wrench, and started for her.
Fifty feet distant, a man stepped from behind a building and began firing a revolver at Nace as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.
THE rapidity of the man’s shooting made his aim erratic. The first bullet passed Nace’s head with a sucking smack of a sound. The second broke glass somewhere up the Mountain Town street.
Nace leaped sidewise, landed flat in the street gutter. He pulled himself along the gutter. A four-foot-wide park of grass lay between sidewalk and street pavement; a large maple tree grew out of this. Nace stood up behind this, drew the girl’s gun, got a bead on the man trying to kill him and pulled the trigger.
The gun hammer slapped down with an empty click. Nace tried again. The cylinder made a complete revolution to the accompaniment of more clicks.
The girl had been using an empty gun to menace him.
The man shooting at Nace reloaded his revolver. He resumed his barrage. Bark flew off the tree. Glancing bullets squawled. More windows broke. The powder thunder rolled and boomed in the Mountain Town street.
The gunman ran forward a little to shoot better, and Nace got a good look at him.
The fellow was short, extremely fat. He wore a long tan topcoat, a black-banded black hat. A white handkerchief was tied over his face.
The red-headed girl had seized the unconscious Fred. She dragged him to the coupe. She tried to get him into the seat, but it was too much for her strength. She dumped him on the floorboards, climbed over him, took the wheel.
The coupe sped away with Fred’s legs protruding from the door.
The masked gunman had made no effort to prevent her escape. He emptied his revolver again, and once more started to reload.
Nace flung the red-head’s empty pistol. The gunman, busy reloading, failed to see it coming. It hit him in the face, knocked him down.
The man got up and ran, still reloading the revolver.
Nace ran the opposite direction, across the street. He dived between two buildings, circled around the block and joined some excited natives who were racing to the sound of the shots.
No one, it developed, had more than a hazy idea of what had happened.
“I seen ’em from my window!” excitedly shouted a man who lived up the street. “There was a whole gang of ’em! They drove off in a couple of big touring cars! They was city gangsters, I’m bettin’!”
“Where’s Jan Hasser, the town constable?” somebody demanded.
“Here he comes.”
Constable Hasser galloped up. He was a thin, wrinkled man. His age was probably forty, but a stringy white moustache made him look sixty. He wore a shiny blue coat. He chewed black, sweet tobacco which he took from a yellow paper package.
“Dern city gunsters shootin’ each other up,” was his verdict.
Nace picked up his pipe without being noticed. He loaded the bowl, put a match flame to it, and went into the hotel trailing fragrant smoke.
“You just missed the excitement, Mister Leeds,” the sleek clerk told Lee Nace.