empty.
Handy caught Parker’s eye, and pointed at the floor. Parker nodded. Still moving cautiously and silently, they went back to the kitchen. The first door they tried opened on to the pantry, but the second showed cellar stairs angling away to the left. Light came up from below, and the sound of someone talking, softly and conversationally. And there was another sound, a steady scraping and chuffing, slow and rhythmic.
Handy already had the .380 out. Parker unlimbered the Terrier, and led the way down. The stairs angled sharply to the left, and then went straight down the rest of the way, towards the rear wall of the house, so that most of the basement was behind Parker as he came down. He came halfway, then crouching on the stairs, ducked his head under the banister and looked back at the rest of the cellar.
Three hundred-watt bulbs were spaced along under the I-beam that ran down the middle of the ceiling. All were unshielded, and all were lit, throwing the dirt-floored cellar in stark, almost shadowless, relief. An old coal furnace hulked on one side, with its squat oil converter crouched in front of it. Several barrels of trash were standing alongside two deep metal sinks.
Down at the other end, the fat man was digging his own grave, while three men surrounded him, watching. Two of the three stood silently, pistols in their hands. The third had brought a kitchen chair down with him or had someone bring it down for him and was sitting comfortably on it, his back to Parker. He seemed nattily dressed, and he was the one doing the talking, a steady soft flow of easy conversation, a monologue almost, in a language Parker didn’t recognize. It was guttural, but not in a Germanic way.
Handy had seen too. He grinned and motioned for them to go back upstairs, but Parker shook his head. Handy looked puzzled and leaned forward to whisper. “They’re getting rid of the competition. Why not let them?”
Parker whispered back, “If there’s more than a statue in Kapor’s house, I want to know what it is and where to find it. The fat man knows.”
Handy shrugged. “I’ll take the one on the left.”
They leaned out on different sides of the suitcase, showing only their heads and gun hands. The shots roared out in that confined space like a cauvette blowing up.
Before the two gunmen had hit the ground, the talkative one was out of his chair, spinning around, a flat white automatic coming out from under his coat. Parker and Handy both fired again, and the automatic sailed into the air as he toppled backward into the grave Menlo had only half dug.
Menlo, again moving faster than any fat man should, threw himself off to the side and rolled over against the side wall. But when there weren’t any more shots, he got to his feet cautiously. His white shirt was a sweaty, dirty mess, his black trousers rumpled and baggy. He was barefoot, and his face and hands were also covered with dirt. He stood peering towards the stairs until Parker and Handy moved towards him, and then suddenly he smiled. “Ah!” he said. “How glad I am I did not pause to kill you at poor Clara’s.”
“Let’s go,” Parker said.
“So soon? But I have not yet expressed my appreciation. You have saved my life!”
“We’ll talk later, what do you say?” Handy added.
Menlo looked around at the three scattered bodies. “There is much in what you say,” he said. “Have you dealt with the chauffeur?”
“We won’t have to. Come on.”
“Most certainly.”
Parker went first, and then Menlo, with Handy last. They filed upstairs to the kitchen, and as Parker reached for the storm door, Menlo said, “Please! Would you take me away in such a condition?”
“You can wash up later,” Handy said.
“But my shoes! My coat! My personal possessions!”
“Come on,” said Parker.
“Let him get his stuff,” Handy said. “What the hell?”
“You watch him, then.”
“Sure.”
Parker waited in the kitchen. They were gone two minutes by the kitchen clock, and when they came back Menlo was wearing shoes and a topcoat. The topcoat was too tight for him, making him look like somebody on a Russian reviewing stand. He was carrying a black attache case covered with good leather.
Parker pointed at it. “What’s in there?”
“I checked it,” Handy said. “Just clothes and a flask.”
“And a toothbrush,” Menlo added. His face was still dirty, and when he smiled he looked like the fat boy in a silent movie comedy. “I am most proud of my teeth.”
“Let’s go.”
They went out the back way and down the block to their car. Parker got behind the wheel, and Handy and Menlo sat in back. “Where do we go from here?” Handy asked.
“Back to the hotel.”
“What if they come looking there again?”
Parker shook his head. “The only ones who looked were Menlo’s people. And Menlo doesn’t have people any more. Do you, Menlo?”
Menlo smiled again with mock wistfulness, and spread dirty hands. “Only you,” he replied. “My two newly found friends.”
Parker started the car. When they crossed the intersection, the Continental was still waiting out front the
