Crime Stories Page 34

  “What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.

  “He’s here.”

  “All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”

  From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of unfamiliarity.

  The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portieres with him.

  Mrs. Quarre smiled up at me. “Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.

  I sat.

  Through the portieres a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British. “What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.

  The harsh voice of the ugly man:

  “Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re on to us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remember his mug—he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car—but that’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it.”

  The British voice: “You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.” Hook: “What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”

  The drawling British voice: “It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”

  Hook, blustering: “Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”

  The young feminine voice: “Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”

  A rustle of papers, and the British voice: “I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card.”

  The feminine voice from the next room: “Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”

  Hook: “That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off!”

  The feminine voice: “And put our necks in the noose?”

  Hook, scornfully: “As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L.A. job, do you?”

  The British voice: “You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us—chances are—as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow.”

  My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate. I felt better now, though far from gay; I had confidence in the drawling British voice; it was the voice of a man who habitually carries his point.

  Hook, bellowing: “Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat.”

  The feminine voice, disgustedly: “Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”

  The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold: “There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible—because it’s that true.”

  There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle.

  When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.

  It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.

  “We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”

  The portieres parted and Hook came into the room—a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres, short and harsh:

  “He wants you.” They got up and went into the next room.

  Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the highbacked chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the comer of a cushion that was too well-stuffed.

  As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.

  Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning. “Elvira!” he called softly.

  The portieres bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through. “What?”

  “Come here.”

  “I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”

  “Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”

  She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-gray eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness—though not for beauty—laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.

  She laughed at me—a fat man, all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the comer of a green cushion in my mouth—and she turned to the ugly man. “What do you want?”

  He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.

  “What say we shake him?”

  Her smoke-gray eyes lost their merriment and became calculating.

  “There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding—a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”

  “Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”

  “How?”

  “Leave it to me, kid; leave it to me! If I swing it, will you go with me? You know I’ll be good to you.”

  She smiled contemptuously, I thought—but he seemed to like it.

  “You’re whooping right you’ll be good to me,” she said. “But listen, Hook: we couldn’t get away with it—not unless you get him. I know him! I’m not running away with anything that belongs to him unless he is fixed so that he can’t come after it.”

  Hook moistened his lips and looked around the room at nothing. Apparently he didn’t like the thought of tangling with the owner of the British d
rawl. But his desire for the girl was too strong for his fear.

  “I’ll do it!” he blurted. “I’ll get him! Do you mean it, kid? If I get him, you’ll go with me?”

  She held out her hand. “It’s a bet,” she said and he believed her.

  His ugly face grew warm and red and utterly happy, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. In his place, I might have believed her myself—all of us have fallen for that sort of thing at one time or another—but sitting tied up on the side-lines, I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous! There was a rough time ahead for Hook!

  “This is the lay—” Hook began, and stopped, tongue-tied.

  A step had sounded in the next room.

  Immediately the British voice came through the portieres, and there was exasperation to the drawl now:

  “This is really too much! I can’t”—he said reahly and cawnt—“leave for a moment without having things done all wrong. Now just what got into you, Elvira, that you must go in and exhibit yourself to our detective?”

  Fear flashed into her smoke-gray eyes, and out again, and she spoke airily. “Don’t be altogether yellow,” she said. “Your precious neck can get along all right without so much guarding.”

  The portieres parted, and I twisted my head around as far as I could get it for my first look at this man who was responsible for my still being alive. I saw a short fat man, hatted and coated for the street, and carrying a tan traveling bag in one hand.

  Then his face came into the yellow circle of light, and I saw that it was a Chinese face. A short fat Chinese, immaculately clothed in garments that were as British as his accent.

  “It isn’t a matter of color,” he told the girl—and I understood now the full sting of her jibe; “it’s simply a matter of ordinary wisdom.”

  His face was a round yellow mask, and his voice was the same emotionless drawl that I had heard before; but I knew that he was as surely under the girl’s sway as the ugly man—or he wouldn’t have let her taunt bring him into the room. But I doubted that she’d find this Anglicized Oriental as easily handled as Hook.

  “There was no particular need,” the Chinese was still talking, “for this chap to have seen any of us.” He looked at me now for the first time, with little opaque eyes that were like two black seeds. “It’s quite possible that he didn’t know any of us, even by description. This showing ourselves to him is the most arrant sort of nonsense.”

  “Aw, hell, Tai!” Hook blustered. “Quit your bellyaching, will you? What’s the diff? I’ll knock him off, and that takes care of that!”

  The Chinese set down his tan bag and shook his head.

  “There will be no killing,” he drawled, “or there will be quite a bit of killing. You don’t mistake my meaning, do you, Hook?”

  Hook didn’t. His Adam’s apple ran up and down with the effort of his swallowing and behind the cushion that was choking me, I thanked the yellow man again.

  Then this red-haired she-devil put her spoon in the dish.

  “Hook’s always offering to do things that he has no intention of doing,” she told the Chinese.

  Hook’s ugly face blazed red at this reminder of his promise to get the Chinese, and he swallowed again, and his eyes looked as if nothing would have suited him better than an opportunity to crawl under something. But the girl had him; her influence was stronger than his cowardice.

  He suddenly stepped close to the Chinese, and from his advantage of a full head in height scowled down into the round yellow face.

  “Tai,” the ugly man snarled; “you’re done. I’m sick and tired of all this dog you put on—acting like you was a king or something. I’m going to—”

  He faltered, and his words faded away into silence. Tai looked up at him with eyes that were as hard and black and inhuman as two pieces of coal. Hook’s lips twitched and he flinched away a little.

  I stopped sweating. The yellow man had won again. But I had forgotten the red-haired she-devil. She laughed now—a mocking laugh that must have been like a knife to the ugly man.

  A bellow came from deep in his chest, and he hurled one big fist into the round blank face of the yellow man.

  The force of the punch carried Tai all the way across the room, and threw him on his side in one comer.

  But he had twisted his body around to face the ugly man even as he went hurtling across the room—a gun was in his hand before he went down—and he was speaking before his legs had settled upon the floor—and his voice was a cultured British drawl.

  “Later,” he was saying; “we will settle this thing that is between us. Just now you will drop your pistol and stand very still while I get up.”

  Hook’s revolver—only half out of his pocket when the Oriental had covered him—thudded to the rug. He stood rigidly still while Tai got to his feet, and Hook’s breath came out noisily, and each freckle stood ghastly out against the dirty scared white of his face.

  I looked at the girl. There was contempt in the eyes with which she looked at Hook, but no disappointment.

  Then I made a discovery: something had changed in the room near her!

  I shut my eyes and tried to picture that part of the room as it had been before the two men had clashed. Opening my eyes suddenly, I had the answer.

  On the table beside the girl had been a book and some magazines. They were gone now. Not two feet from the girl was the tan bag that Tai had brought into the room. Suppose the bag had held the bonds from the Los Angeles job that they had mentioned. It probably had. What then? It probably now held the book and magazines that had been on the table. The girl had stirred up the trouble between the two men to distract their attention while she made a switch. Where would the loot be, then? I didn’t know, but I suspected that it was too bulky to be on the girl’s slender person.

  Just beyond the table was a couch, with a wide red cover that went all the way down to the floor. I looked from the couch to the girl. She was watching me, and her eyes twinkled with a flash of mirth as they met mine coming from the couch. The couch it was!

  By now the Chinese had pocketed Hook’s revolver, and was talking to him: “If I hadn’t a dislike for murder, and didn’t think that you will perhaps be of some value to Elvira and me in effecting our departure, I should certainly relieve us of the handicap of your stupidity now. But I’ll give you one more chance. I would suggest, however, that you think carefully before you give way to any more of your violent impulses.” He turned to the girl. “Have you been putting foolish ideas in our Hook’s head?”

  She laughed. “Nobody could put any kind in it.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said, and then came over to test the lashings about my arms and body.

  Finding them satisfactory, he picked up the tan bag, and held out the gun he had taken from the ugly man a few minutes before.

  “Here’s your revolver, Hook, now try to be sensible. We may as well go now. The old man and his wife will do as they were told. They are on their way to a city that we needn’t mention by name in front of our friend here, to wait for us and their share of the bonds. Needless to say, they will wait a long while—they are out of it now. But between ourselves there must be no more treachery. If we’re to get clear, we must help each other.”

  According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn’t. They passed me without even a farewell look, and went out of sight into the darkness of the hall.

  Suddenly the Chinese was in the room again, running tiptoe—an open knife in one hand, a gun in the other. This was the man I had been thanking for saving my life! He bent over me.

  The knife moved on my right side, and the rope that held that arm slackened its grip. I breathed again, and my heart went back to beating.

  “Hook will be back,” Tai whispered, and was gone.

  On the carpet, three feet in front of me, lay a revolver.

  The
street door closed, and I was alone in the house for a while.

  You may believe that I spent that while struggling with the red plush ropes that bound me. Tai had cut one length, loosening my right arm somewhat and giving my body more play, but I was far from free. And his whispered “Hook will be back” was all the spur I needed to throw my strength against my bonds.

  I understood now why the Chinese had insisted so strongly upon my life being spared. I was the weapon with which Hook was to be removed! The Chinese figured that Hook would make some excuse as soon as they reached the street, slip back into the house, knock me off, and rejoin his confederates. If he didn’t do it on his own initiative, I suppose the Chinese would suggest it.

  So he had put a gun within reach and had loosened my ropes as much as he could, not to have me free before he himself got away.

  This thinking was a side-issue. I didn’t let it slow up my efforts to get loose. The why wasn’t important to me just now—the important thing was to have that revolver in my hand when the ugly man came back.

  Just as the front door opened, I got my right arm completely free, and plucked the strangling cushion from my mouth. The rest of my body was still held by the ropes—held loosely—but held.

  I threw myself, chair and all, forward, breaking the fall with my free arm. The carpet was thick. I went down on my face, with the heavy chair atop me, all doubled up, but my right arm was free of the tangle, and my right hand grasped the gun. The dim light hit upon a man hurrying into the room—a glint of metal in his hand.

  I fired.

  He caught both hands to his belly, bent double, and slid out across the carpet.

  That was over. But that was far from being all. I wrenched at the plush ropes that held me, while my mind tried to sketch what lay ahead.

  The girl had switched the bonds, hiding them under the couch—there was no question of that. She had intended coming back for them before I had time to get free. But Hook had come back first, and she would have to change her plan. What more likely than that she would now tell the Chinese that Hook had made the switch? What then? There was only one answer: Tai would come back for the bonds—both of them would come. Tai knew that I was armed now, but they had said that the bonds represented a hundred thousand dollars. That would be enough to bring them back!