But I put the temptation away and made myself wait a bit longer. No use going off half-cocked. With a gun in my hand, facing the Kid and Maurois, I still would have less than an even break. That’s not enough. The idea in this detective business is to catch crooks, not to put on heroics.
Maurois was pouring the stones back in the bag when I looked at him again. He started to put the bag in his pocket. The Whosis Kid stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I’ll pack ’em.”
Maurois’ eyebrows went up.
“There’s two of you and one of me,” the Kid explained. “I trust you, and all the like of that, but just the same I’m carrying my own share.”
“But—”
The doorbell interrupted Maurois’ protest.
The Kid spun to the girl.
“You do the talking—and no wise breaks!”
She got up from the floor and went to the passageway.
“Who is there?” she called.
The landlady’s voice, stem and wrathful:
“Another sound, Mrs. Almad, and I shall call the police. This is disgraceful!”
I wondered what she would have thought if she had opened the unlocked door and taken a look at her apartment—furniture whittled and gutted; a dead man—the noise of whose dying had brought her up here this second time—lying in the middle of the litter.
I wondered—I took a chance.
“Aw, go jump down the sewer!” I told her.
A gasp, and we heard no more from her. I hoped she was speeding her injured feelings to the telephone. I might need the police she had mentioned.
The Kid’s gun was out. For a while it was a toss-up. I would lie down beside Billie, or I wouldn’t. If I could have been knifed quietly, I would have gone. But nobody was behind me. The Kid knew I wouldn’t stand still and quiet while he carved me. He didn’t want any more racket than necessary, now that the jewels were on hand.
“Keep your clam shut or I’ll shut it for you!” was the worst I got out of it.
The Kid turned to the Frenchman again. The Frenchman had used the time spent in this side-play to pocket the gems.
“Either we divvy here and now, or I carry the stuff,” the Kid announced. “There’s two of you to see I don’t take a Mickey Finn on you.”
“But, Kid, we cannot stay here! Is not the landlady even now calling the police? We will go elsewhere to divide. Why cannot you trust me when you are with me?”
Two steps put the Kid between the door and both Maurois and Big Chin. One of the Kid’s hands held the gun he had flashed on me. The other was conveniently placed to his other gun.
“Nothing stirring!” he said through his nose. “My cut of them stones don’t go out of here in nobody else’s kick. If you want to split ’em here, good enough. If you don’t, I’ll do the carrying. That’s flat!”
“But the police!”
“You worry about them. I’m taking one thing at a time, and it’s the stones right now.”
A vein came out blue in the Frenchman’s forehead. His small body was rigid. He was trying to collect enough courage to swap shots with the Kid. He knew, and the Kid knew, that one of them was going to have all the stuff when the curtain came down. They had started off by double-crossing each other. They weren’t likely to change their habits. One would have the stones in the end. The other would have nothing—except maybe a burial.
Big Chin didn’t count. He was too simple a thug to last long in his present company. If he had known anything, he would have used one of his guns on each of them right now. Instead, he continued to cover me, trying to watch them out of the tail of his eye.
The woman stood near the door, where she had gone to talk to the landlady. She was staring at the Frenchman and the Kid. I wasted precious minutes that seemed to run into hours trying to catch her eye. I finally got it.
I looked at the light-switch, only a foot from her. I looked at her. I looked at the switch again. At her. At the switch.
She got me. Her hand crept sidewise along the wall.
I looked at the two principal players in this button-button game.
The Kid’s eyes were dead—and deadly—circles. Maurois’ one open eye was watery. He couldn’t make the grade. He put a hand in his pocket and brought out the silk bag.
The woman’s brown finger topped the light-button. God knows she was nothing to gamble on, but I had no choice. I had to be in motion when the lights went. Big Chin would pump metal. I had to trust Inés not to balk. If she did, my name was Denis.
Her nail whitened.
I went for Maurois.
Darkness—streaked with orange and blue—filled with noise.
My arms had Maurois. We crashed down on dead Billie. I twisted around, kicking the Frenchman’s face. Loosened one arm. Caught one of his. His other hand gouged at my face. That told me the bag was in the one I held. Clawing fingers tore my mouth. I put my teeth in them and kept them there. One of my knees was on his face. I put my weight on it. My teeth still held his hand. Both of my hands were free to get the bag.
Not nice, this work, but effective.
The room was the inside of a black drum on which a giant was beating the long roll. Four guns worked together in a prolonged throbbing roar.
Maurois’ fingernails dug into my thumb. I had to open my mouth—let his hand escape. One of my hands found the bag. He wouldn’t let go. I screwed his thumb. He cried out. I had the bag.
I tried to leave him then. He grabbed my legs. I kicked at him—missed. He shuddered twice—and stopped moving. A flying bullet had hit him, I took it. Rolling over to the floor, snuggling close to him, I ran a hand over him. A hard bulge came under my hand. I put my hand in his pocket and took back my gun.
On hands and knees—one fist around my gun, the other clutching the silk sack of jewels—I turned to where the door to the next room should have been. A foot wrong, I corrected my course. As I went through the door, the racket in the room behind me stopped.
Huddled close to the wall inside the door, I stowed the silk bag away, and regretted that I hadn’t stayed plastered to the floor behind the Frenchman. This room was dark. It hadn’t been dark when the woman switched off the sitting-room lights. Every room in the apartment had been lighted then. All were dark now. Not knowing who had darkened them, I didn’t like it.
No sounds came from the room I had quit.
The rustle of gently falling rain came from an open window that I couldn’t see, off to one side.
Another sound came from behind me. The muffled tattoo of teeth on teeth.
That cheered me. Inés the scary, of course. She had left the sitting-room in the dark and put out the rest of the lights. Maybe nobody else was behind me.
Breathing quietly through wide-open mouth, I waited. I couldn’t hunt for the woman in the dark without making noises. Maurois and the Kid had strewn furniture and parts of furniture everywhere. I wished I knew if she was holding a gun. I didn’t want to have her spraying me.
Not knowing, I waited where I was.
Her teeth clicked on for minutes.
Something moved in the sitting-room. A gun thundered.
“Ines!” I hissed toward the chattering teeth.
No answer. Furniture scraped in the sitting-room. Two guns went off together. A groaning broke out.
“I’ve got the stuff,” I whispered under cover of the groaning.
That brought an answer.
“Jerry! Ah, come here to me!”
The groans went on, but fainter, in the other room. I crawled toward the woman’s voice. I went on hands and knees, bumping as carefully as possible against things. I couldn’t see anything. Midway, I put a hand down on a soggy bundle of fur—the late purple Frana. I went on.
Inés touched my shoulder with an eager hand.
“Give them to me,” were her first words.
I grinned at her in the dark, patted her hand, found her head, and put my mouth to her ear.
“Let’s get back in the bedr
oom,” I breathed, paying no attention to her request for the loot. “The Kid will be coming.” I didn’t doubt that he had bested Big Chin. “We can handle him better in the bedroom.”
I wanted to receive him in a room with only one door.
She led me—both of us on hands and knees—to the bedroom. I did what thinking seemed necessary as we crawled. The Kid couldn’t know yet how the Frenchman and I had come out. If he guessed, he would guess that the Frenchman had survived. He would be likely to put me in the chump class with Billie, and think the Frenchman could handle me. The chances were that he had got Big Chin, and knew it by now. It was black as black in the sitting-room, but he must know by now that he was the only living thing there.
He blocked the only exit from the apartment. He would think, then, that Inés and Maurois were still alive in it, with the spoils. What would he do about it? There was no pretense of partnership now. That had gone with the lights. The Kid was after the stones. The Kid was after them alone.
I’m no wizard at guessing the other guy’s next move. But my idea was that the Kid would be on his way after us, soon. He knew—he must know—that the police were coming; but I had him doped as crazy enough to disregard the police until they appeared. He’d figure that there would be only a couple of them—prepared for nothing more violent than a drinking-party. He could handle them—or he would think he could. Meanwhile, he would come after the stones.
The woman and I reached the bedroom, the room farthest back in the apartment, a room with only one door. I heard her fumbling with the door, trying to close it. I couldn’t see, but I got my foot in the way.
“Leave it open,” I whispered.
I didn’t want to shut the Kid out. I wanted to take him in.
On my belly, I crawled back to the door, felt for my watch, and propped it on the sill, in the angle between door and frame. I wriggled back from it until I was six or eight feet away, looking diagonally across the open doorway at the watch’s luminous dial.
The phosphorescent numbers could not be seen from the other side of the door. They faced me. Anybody who came through the door—unless he jumped—must, if only for a split-second, put some part of himself between me and the watch.
On my belly, my gun cocked, its butt steady on the floor, I waited for the faint light to be blotted out.
I waited a time. Pessimism: perhaps he wasn’t coming; perhaps I would have to go after him; perhaps he would run out, and I would lose him after all my trouble.
Ines, beside me, breathed quaveringly in my ear, and shivered.
“Don’t touch me,” I growled at her as she tried to cuddle against me.
She was shaking my arm.
Glass broke in the next room.
Silence.
The luminous patches on the watch burnt my eyes. I couldn’t afford to blink. A foot could pass the dial while I was blinking. I couldn’t afford to blink, but I had to blink. I blinked. I couldn’t tell whether something had passed the watch or not. I had to blink again. Tried to hold my eyes stiffly opened. Failed. I almost shot at the third blink. I could have sworn something had gone between me and the watch.
The Kid, whatever he was up to, made no sound.
The dark woman began to sob beside me. Throat noises that could guide bullets.
I lumped her with my eyes and cursed the lot—not aloud, but from the heart.
My eyes smarted. Moisture filmed them. I blinked it away, losing sight of the watch for precious instants. The butt of my gun was slimy with my hand’s sweat. I was thoroughly uncomfortable, inside and out.
Gunpowder burned at my face.
A screaming maniac of a woman was crawling all over me.
My bullet hit nothing lower than the ceiling.
I flung, maybe kicked, the woman off, and snaked backward. She moaned somewhere to one side. I couldn’t see the Kid—couldn’t hear him. The watch was visible again, farther away. A rustling.
The watch vanished.
I fired at it.
Two points of light near the floor gave out fire and thunder.
My gun-barrel as close to the floor as I could hold it, I fired between those points. Twice.
Twin flames struck at me again.
My right hand went numb. My left took the gun. I sped two more bullets on their way. That left one in my gun.
I don’t know what I did with it. My head filled up with funny notions. There wasn’t any room. There wasn’t any darkness. There wasn’t anything . . .
I opened my eyes in dim light. I was on my back. Beside me the dark woman knelt, shivering and sniffling. Her hands were busy—in my clothes.
One of them came out of my vest with the jewel-bag.
Coming to life, I grabbed her arm. She squealed as if I were a stirring corpse. I got the bag again.
“Give them back, Jerry,” she wailed, trying frantically to pull my fingers loose. “They are my things. Give them!”
Sitting up, I looked around.
Beside me lay a shattered bedside lamp, whose fall—caused by carelessness with my feet, or one of the Kid’s bullets—had KO’d me. Across the room, face down, arms spread in a crucified posture, the Whosis Kid sprawled. He was dead.
From the front of the apartment—almost indistinguishable from the throbbing in my head—came the pounding of heavy blows. The police were kicking down the unlocked door.
The woman went quiet. I whipped my head around. The knife stung my cheek—put a slit in the lapel of my coat. I took it away from her.
There was no sense to this. The police were already here. I humored her, pretending a sudden coming to full consciousness.
“Oh, it’s you!” I said. “Here they are.”
I handed her the silk bag of jewels just as the first policeman come into the room.
I didn’t see Inés again before she was taken back East to be hit with a life-sentence in the Massachusetts big house. Neither of the policemen who crashed into her apartment that night knew me. The woman and I were separated before I ran into anyone who did know me, which gave me an opportunity to arrange that she would not be tipped off to my identity. The most difficult part of the performance was to keep myself out of the newspapers, since I had to tell the coroner’s jury about the deaths of Billie, Big Chin, Maurois and the Whosis Kid. But I managed it. So far as I know, the dark woman still thinks I am Jerry Young, the bootlegger.
The Old Man talked to her before she left San Francisco. Fitting together what he got from her and what the Boston branch got, the history runs like this: A Boston jeweler named Tunnicliffe had a trusted employee named Binder. Binder fell in with a dark woman named Inés Almad. The dark woman, in turn, had a couple of shifty friends—a Frenchman named Maurois, and a native of Boston whose name was either Carey or Cory, but who was better known as the Whosis Kid. Out of that sort of combination almost anything was more than likely to come.
What came was a scheme. The faithful Binder—part of whose duties it was to open the shop in the morning and close it at night—was to pick out the richest of the unset stones bought for the holiday trade, carry them off with him one evening, and turn them over to Ines. She was to turn them into money.
To cover up Binder’s theft, the Whosis Kid and the Frenchman were to rob the jeweler’s shop immediately after the door was opened the following morning. Binder and the porter—who would not notice the absence of the most valuable pieces from the stock—would be the only ones in the shop. The robbers would take whatever they could get. In addition to their pickings, they were to be paid two hundred and fifty dollars apiece, and in case either was caught later, Binder could be counted on not to identify them.
That was the scheme as Binder knew it. There were angles he didn’t suspect.
Between Ines, Maurois and the Kid there was another agreement. She was to leave for Chicago with the stones as soon as Binder gave them to her, and wait there for Maurois and the Kid. She and the Frenchman would have been satisfied to run off and let Binder hold the sack. The Whosi
s Kid insisted that the hold-up go through as planned, and that the foolish Binder be killed. Binder knew too much about them, the Kid said, and he would squawk his head off as soon as he learned he had been double-crossed.
The Kid had his way, and he had shot Binder.
Then had come the sweet mess of quadruple and sextuple crossing that had led all three into calamity: the woman’s private agreements with the Kid and Maurois—to meet one in St. Louis and the other in New Orleans—and her flight alone with the loot to San Francisco.
Billie was an innocent bystander—or almost. A lumberhandler Inés had run into somewhere, and picked up as a sort of cushion against the rough spots along the rocky road she traveled.
RUFFIAN’S WIFE
Margaret Tharp habitually passed from slumber to clear-eyed liveliness without intermediate languor. This morning nothing was unusual in her awakening save the absence of the eight o’clock San Francisco boat’s sad hooting. Across the room the clock’s hands pointed like one long hand to a few minutes past seven. Margaret rolled over beneath the covers, putting her back to the sun painted west wall, and closed her eyes again.
But drowsiness would not come. She was definitely awake to the morning excitement of the next-door chickens, the hum of an automobile going toward the ferry, the unfamiliar fragrance of magnolia in the breeze tickling her cheek with loose hair-ends. She got up, slid feet into soft slippers, shoulders into bathrobe, and went downstairs to start toast and coffee before dressing.
A fat man in black was on the point of leaving the kitchen.
Margaret cried out, catching the robe to her throat with both hands.
Red and crystal glinted on the hand with which the fat man took off his black derby. Holding the doorknob, he turned to face Margaret. He turned slowly, with the smooth precision of a globe revolving on a fixed axis, and he managed his head with care, as if it balanced an invisible burden.
“You-are-Mrs.-Tharp.”
Crime Stories Page 62