his bald head. In the glare from the burning next-door house we could see that his face was cut, his clothes almost all torn off.
Stepping over wreckage, the bootlegger came slowly down tile steps to the sidewalk.
Reno called him a lousy fish-eater and shot him four times in face and body.
Pete went down. A man behind me laughed.
Reno hurled the remaining bomb through the doorway.
We scrambled into our car. Reno took the wheel. The engine was dead. Bullets had got to it.
Reno worked the horn while the rest of us piled out.
The machine that had stopped at the corner came for us. Waiting for it, I looked up and down the street that was bright with the glow of two burning buildings. There were a few faces at windows, but whoever besides us was in the street had taken to cover. Not far away, firebells sounded.
The other machine slowed up for us to climb aboard. It was already full. We packed it in layers, with the overflow hanging on the running boards.
We bumped over dead Hank O'Marra's legs and headed for home. We covered one block of the distance with safety if not comfort. After that we had neither.
A limousine turned into the street ahead of us, came half a block toward us, put its side to us, and stopped. Out of the side, gun-fire.
Another car came around the limousine and charged us. Out of it, gun-fire.
We did our best, but we were too damned amalgamated for good fighting. You can't shoot straight holding a man in your lap, another hanging on your shoulder, while a third does his shooting from an inch behind your ear.
Our other car--the one that had been around at the building's rear-- came up and gave us a hand. But by then two more had joined the opposition. Apparently Thaler's mob's attack on the jail was over, one way or the other, and Pete's army, sent to help there, had returned in time to spoil our get-away. It was a sweet mess.
I leaned over a burning gun and yelled in Reno's ear:
'This is the bunk. Let's us extras get out and do our wrangling from the street.'
He thought that a good idea, and gave orders:
'Pile out, some of you hombres, and take them from the pavements.'
I was the first man out, with my eye on a dark alley entrance.
Fat followed me to it. In my shelter, I turned on him and growled:
'Don't pile up on me. Pick your own hole. There's a cellarway that looks good.'
He agreeably trotted off toward it, and was shot down at his third step.
I explored my alley. It was only twenty feet long, and ended against a high board fence with a locked gate.
A garbage can helped me over the gate into a brick-paved yard. The side fence of that yard let me into another, and from that I got into another, where a fox terrier raised hell at me.
I kicked the pooch out of the way, made the opposite fence, untangled myself from a clothes line, crossed two more yards, got yelled at from a window, had a bottle thrown at me, and dropped into a cobblestoned back street.
The shooting was behind me, but not far enough. I did all I could to remedy that. I must have walked as many streets as I did in my dreams the night Dinah was killed.
My watch said it was three-thirty a. m. when I looked at it on Elihu Willsson's front steps.
XXVI. Blackmail
I had to push my client's doorbell a lot before I got any play on it.
Finally the door was opened by the tall sunburned chauffeur. He was dressed in undershirt and pants, and had a billiard cue in one fist.
'What do you want?' he demanded, and then, when he got another look at me: 'It's you, is it? Well, what do you want?'
'I want to see Mr. Willsson.'
'At four in the morning? Go on with you,' and he started to close the door.
I put a foot against it. He looked from my foot to my face, hefted the billiard cue, and asked:
'You after getting your kneecap cracked?'
'I'm not playing,' I insisted. 'I've got to see the old man. Tell him.'
'I don't have to tell him. He told me no later than this afternoon that if you come around he didn't want to see you.'
'Yeah?' I took the four love letters out of my pocket, picked out the first and least idiotic of them, held it out to the chauffeur, and said: 'Give him that and tell him I'm sitting on the steps with the rest of them. Tell him I'll sit here five minutes and then carry the rest of them to Tommy Robins of the Consolidated Press.'
The chauffeur scowled at the letter, said, 'To hell with Tommy Robins and his blind aunt!' took the letter, and closed the door.
