“Your clothes are locked in my closet, Lynda. There’s the key. Go get dressed. Maybe you’ve got work to do.”
“No!” Peter said.
Krakow grinned. “Shut up, guy. You stopped having anything to do with this the minute you said the name Daniels.”
Lynda walked out of the room and across the hall. Krakow lit a cigarette. Time passed slowly. Time of nightmare. “What are you going to do?” Peter asked.
Krakow yawned. “I’m tired of you and sick of this filthy little town. I’m going to grab back the fifteen thousand and leave. The hell with it. You crossed me up and I cross you up. Lynda is your problem. When she gets dressed, I’ll save her to turn loose on your redheaded crow if I have to. You just aren’t smart, junior.”
Through bloodless lips Peter said, “What about the police?”
“In the first place, they’ll cover the joint, front and rear. They’ll send this Robina up with the hick cop idea that if she doesn’t show in fifteen minutes, they come up after her. They haven’t got enough to go on to come up here with her. I think I can talk her into telling them it was all a big mistake and to please go away now.”
“You seem pretty confident about what they’ll do.”
“After a few years you get to know how they think.” He held up his hand and listened to the distant clang of an elevator door. “That’ll be baby. You let her in when she knocks.”
There was a hesitant knock on the door. Peter turned the knob to open it. As soon as the catch was released, the door crashed in at him, driving violently back.
As he fell, he rolled, catching one quick glimpse of Krakow’s contorted face. The automatic made a thin crack which was swallowed up by the harsh heavy boom of a heavier gun.
Peter looked up at Krakow. The small man sagged back against the wall and grinned foolishly. His knees bent and he slowly slid down so that he was sitting on his heels. He coughed once, almost apologetically.
“Told them this was a lousy idea,” he said to Peter. “Fooled me. Redhead fooled me. Private talent. Didn’t know — had — any around. It is to laugh.”
He coughed again, gave a start of surprise and agony, and slid over onto his side, blood frothing in the comer of his mouth.
Peter scrambled up. A wide young man with a dark, bitter face holstered the thirty-eight he held in his big hand. He gave a casual glance at Peter, walked in and dropped heavily onto one knee beside Krakow.
“Too good,” he said softly.
Peter turned toward the door, saw the startled face of Chief Daniels and the taut, alarmed face of Robina Bray.
Daniels said in his high fussy voice, “You’re perfectly all right. I heard the first shot. He fired the first shot. Self-defense.”
Peter hurried to Robina, took her hands in his. She was shaking.
“I was afraid you were hurt, Peter. It would have been my fault. Last night I got these men by phone in Moines and hired them. They’re — investigators. I gave them the whole story before I came to work this morning. When you got the call from this man, I phoned them. I told them to use their own judgment. They took the money!”
The one who fired the shot said, “I’m Regan. Don’t fret about the dough, Hume. We’ve got it all intact to hand back to you.”
Suddenly Peter remembered Lynda. He looked beyond Robina, saw the door to 413 ajar, ran to it and flung it open. The room was empty!
He turned to Reagan. “The woman — she’s insane. Annaly! She’s gone after Annaly!”
“Relax, Hume,” Regan said. “I brought along one of our boys and posted him at your girl’s house. Sorry I had to clip you. I thought it would bring things out in the open.”
Peter said, “We better get over there. Fast!”
“Sure, Hume. Sure. But Miss Owen’s okay. I guarantee it.”
Regan, Robina and Peter went down in the elevator, leaving Daniels with Krakow’s body. Peter ran over to the desk. “Did a woman with a on her face leave here a few minutes ago?”
“Miss Stanley? Yes, sir. She caught a cab right out in front.”
Regan’s car was around the corner. He walked with exasperating slowness. Peter wanted to tug at his arm. The car was a small black sedan. Regan got behind the wheel, Robina and Peter beside him.
“I tell you everything’s okay,” Regan said. “If the woman is a nut, we’ll get her committed. Relax, Hume.”
Robina patted the back of Peter’s hand. “She’ll be okay, lad.”
As they rounded the corner onto the quiet street where Annaly lived, Regan pointed ahead and said, “See? There’s George. Right on the job.”
Suddenly he leaped closer to the windshield and squinted ahead. He gasped and the car jumped ahead. He pulled it into the curb in a screaming stop and piled out.
George was a lanky man in a tan suit and dirty white shoes. He stood on the sidewalk, rocking from side to side and making a whimpering noise like a whipped child. He held his hands cupped over his eyes.
As they ran toward him, he took his hands down, and his mouth twisted into an inverted smile, the gesture of a person trying to open eyes that are stuck together.
But where his eyes should have been were pockets of torn, ragged tissue, wet with blood and fluid which ran down his lean, tan cheeks.
Robina screamed and turned her face toward Peter’s jacket. Regan was cursing in a low, almost monotonous tone. The thirty-eight was in his hand as he pounded up the front steps. Robina braced herself, walked to George and took his arm.
“George,” she said, “your eyes are hurt. Take it easy. I’ll get you into the house and we’ll phone a doctor.”
“A woman,” George said brokenly. “She stopped and asked me where she could find somebody whose name I couldn’t catch. She was smiling. She had a scar on her face and neck. When I leaned closer to her to catch the name — she j-jabbed — and the lights went out.”
Peter followed Regan into the house. The house seemed still. Too still. The silence of death. Suddenly, from upstairs, there was a choked, ragged scream.
“Come on!” Regan yelled. He took the stairs three at a time, slamming off the wall at the turn in the staircase.
At the top he paused, listened intently and then smashed his shoulder into a closed door. The frame splintered and the door crashed open. Looking beyond him, Peter saw Annaly cowering in a corner, seated on the floor, her pale hair disordered.
Lynda stood above her, holding a small kitchen knife upraised. She turned an empty face toward the door. The eyes were flakes of coal. The scar glowed red. She looked at Regan without interest as he said, “Drop it, lady!”
Ignoring the gun in Regan’s hand, Peter threw himself straight at the two women. The knife drove down toward Annaly’s face. His outstretched hand thrust against her wrist, deflecting the knife. It tore through Annaly’s pale hair, but did not harm her.
Lynda was enormously strong with the unbelievable strength of madness. He dimly heard Regan yelling to him to stand aside. Somehow he found her wrist, held it tight. She tried to spin away from him, but he managed to retain his hold.
They rolled away from the corner, away from where Annaly was slumped in a dead faint. They both came to their feet at the same instant. Lynda yanked her hand free, drew the knife back.
In his mind it was as though the scene was suddenly taking place in slow motion. The blade was floating toward his belly and his balled fist was moving toward her jaw. Already he seemed to feel the hot, steaming pain of the thrust that would disembowel him.
The shock of the blow ran up his arm. The point of the knife touched him, and then moved away, falling from a limp hand as Lynda spun half around and dropped on her face, her hand against Annaly’s ankle.
He stood for a moment and looked down at Lynda, remembering the sultry warmth of the Calcutta nights, the more sultry warmth — of her lips...