Then there were more shots, very loud, and more than three. Holes appeared in the door, splinters of wood peppered my face, and all of a sudden a sledge-hammer hit my side and spun me away from the door. I sat down hard on the Cobbles, felt the Magnum squirt from my fingers. On hands and knees I groped for it. Just as my fingers closed on the butt, the door opened.
Piaget stood there. He blinked, not seeing me right away. I was down. He stared out at the rain, his eyes wide with disbelief. He had a gun in one hand and a crutch in the other, supporting his weight. I wondered if they could see him from the far side of the square, and decided they could. But I was kneeling in their line of fire and they didn’t know where Francesca was.
Then Piaget saw me. He fired wildly, once, over my head. I was light-headed. Warm wetness trickled down my side. “Here I am,” I said, my voice sounding thin and foolish and a little drunk: I shot twice. The first big Magnum slug hit his middle, slamming him to his knees. The second entered his’ left cheek and made a mess of the back of his head.
I saw Francesca. I heard footsteps pounding on the cobblestones. Then Francesca and the footsteps went away.
A week later, Axel Spade was at my bedside. “Pleasant room,” he said, “and a lot of sunshine. Private, too.”
He didn’t look at me. He was staring out the window.
“You’re paying for it,” I said.
“The doctor says you will be on your feet tomorrow and out of the hospital in three or four days.”
“The day I’m on my feet, that’s the day I leave.”
“Haven’t you earned a rest? They feared for your life at first. But somehow the bullet missed both your liver and your lungs.”
“I’m a hollow man,” I said.
He was still looking out the window. “You almost bled to death.”
“What’s so interesting out there, Mr. Spade?”
“What? Out there? Nothing.”
I shifted my weight. My bandaged side itched. I scratched it.
He said: “The money was recovered from Italy, all but a few thousand which Howard Ridgway had with him. They haven’t been able to find the body.” He stuck a cigar in his mouth but did not light it. “As I had promised, Inspector Deladier made the recovery.”
“Turn around,” I said. “Look at me before you ask the favor.”
He sighed. He turned around. “Light the damn thing,” I said. He lit his cigar. “Seen Francesca?”
“Yes.”
“And asked her what you’re going to ask me?”
“Yes. We argued. Finally she agreed. But she was bitter. She gave me back my engagement ring. It is over between us.”
“I never saw her wearing it,” I said. “Now ask me. We don’t even have to break an engagement.”
Spade looked out the window again. “Helen is in Italy,” he said. “In Rapallo. With friends. Her future depends on you. Of course you know that.”
I said nothing.
“Ridgway is dead. He could have tried to—do it to you and Francesca by himself. He needed ho help.”
“He got help. You want to say it, or shall I?”
He waited a long time before speaking. Finally he said: “Very well. Helen was with him above Flegère. She was going to help him, to kill you and Francesca.” He mopped the back of his neck with a silk handkerchief. He was sweating. “To shoot you in the back. I know that, you know it, Francesca knows it, and of course Helen does.”
If he had offered me a bribe, I think I would have turned him down. He was loaded with dough, and maybe I wanted to play God a little and show him money couldn’t buy everything. But he turned suddenly from the window, and there were tears in his eyes. “She is my daughter, five marriages and my only child. She is wild, but she can be good. I know she can. Give her the chance. Must I get down on my knees and beg you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want your pound of flesh; Spade. She was in the chalet. We’ll let it go at, that.”
He smiled. I didn’t smile. “You want some advice?”
“Yes, I know,” he said rapidly, earnestly. “There are things that can be done, doctors, psychiatrists, she can be calmed down, she will be a good girl and a fine woman.”
In the end I kept my advice to myself. It wasn’t really advice anyway. I was feeling mean, mean as Francesca when she broke the engagement, and restless with a week’s forced inactivity. Axel Spade left, almost bowing out the door. He shut it softly behind him, and then I said out loud:
“Keep her on a leash.”
Francesca and I finished our wine. It was an incredibly good bottle of Château Auson, vintage 1949. Francesca sighed and smiled. I patted my stomach. The lunch had been almost as good as the Château Auson. It was our first day back in Chamonix. The sky was bright, but outside the window of the dining room fat flakes of snow were falling gently.
More skiing this afternoon, caro?” Francesca asked. “We could try Brevant.” She pouted. “But no, no, you must be tired. The doctor said—”
“You know what you can do with the doctor.”
“Then you are’ not tired, caro?”
“I am very definitely not tired.”
She smiled the radiant Francesca Artemi smile. “But you do not wish to ski?”
“Later, maybe. The doctor did a great job sewing me up.”
“Yes?”
We went upstairs to look at my scars.
THE END
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copyright©1963 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
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Francesca Page 16