Parker gathered up the Terrier, got back to his feet, and lurched over to the door. He opened it, and saw light. Down at the far end of the hall there was a staircase the front staircase, not the one they’d come up and light was coming up from there. And, dimly, party noises.
Parker looked at his watch. Twenty to twelve. He’d been out for over three hours. Kapor was home, the party was going on.
He thought it out, came to a decision, and sat down on the floor next to the door. He kept the door slightly open, so he could hear when the party ended, be warned if anybody came upstairs.
When he pulled his shirt out of his trousers, so he could look at the wound, the pain suddenly intensified, almost blacking him out again. A kind of green darkness closed in all around him, like a camera lens closing. He leaned his back against the wall and breathed deeply until the green darkness went away. Then he looked at the wound.
The bullet had ploughed a deep furrow in the flesh along his side, just above the belt. His whole side was discoloured, grey and purplish and black, and sensitive to the touch, like a Charley horse. The furrowed flesh was ragged, and smeared with dried blood. Fresh blood still oozed sluggishly from the wound. As far as he could tell, the bullet wasn’t in him, but had scored his side and kept on going.
So he’d come out of it better than Handy. All he had was a pain in the side. It wouldn’t even disable him badly, once a doctor had seen to it.
He looked at his watch again. Ten to twelve. The party was still going on. To his right he could hear the shallow, laboured breathing of Handy. If the party lasted too long, Handy wouldn’t make it.
His left arm was stiffening up. The fingers wouldn’t work right. He transferred the Terrier to his left hand, so he could get out a cigarette, and the hand wouldn’t hold on to the gun. It fell to the carpet, Parker cursed under his breath, and left it there. He lit a cigarette, and leaned his head back against the wall, and sat there with the cigarette in his mouth, listening to the party noises and Handy’s uneven breathing. His feet were out in front of him, and his arms were hanging at his sides, the hands resting palm up on the floor. A pins-and-needles feeling kept running up and down his left side and down his left arm. His fingers on that side felt like sausages, thick and unresponsive.
The seconds limped by, dragging sacks, forming into long lines. Every line took for ever to form, and then was only one more minute. Parker lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of the old one. Then that cigarette was smoked down, and he lit another fresh one. And again.
They were happy as hell downstairs.
This was six. Six times in his life he’d been shot. And this was the second time he’d been left for dead. The first time, it had been a heavier slug, and well aimed, but it had hit his belt buckle instead of his stomach, and he’d managed to crawl away from that one with only the loss of appetite for a while. In England, in forty-four, an MP had winged him when he’d taken a truckful of stolen tyres through a roadblock. And three other times it had happened. He was almost as shot up as Tom Mix.
He tried to lift his left arm so he could look at his watch, but the arm felt as though it had been injected full of lead. He reached over with his right hand and grabbed his left wrist and lifted. It was a quarter after one. The sweep-second hand was in no hurry; the other two hands were just painted on.
They were too happy down there. Why the hell didn’t they go home?
What if Kapor decided to show somebody all his pretty statues?
Parker grimaced, and reached over with his right hand to pick up the Terrier. He held it in his lap, and smoked, and waited. Whenever he finished a cigarette, he butted it against the wall board. There weren’t any ashtrays handy.
Handy sounded like he was snoring. Blood in his throat, probably. So maybe he wouldn’t make it, and the fat bastard would be batting five hundred.
It was getting quieter downstairs. He lifted his hand again to look at his watch, and it was twenty to two. He felt as though he’d been sitting here for days. The burning had lessened in his side, and so had the pins and needles. Now there was a dull numbness, with a low throbbing pain behind it.
Quieter and quieter. He reached up and, grabbing the doorknob, pulled himself upright. The green darkness closed in again, and he waited, leaning against the wall next to the doorway, until slowly it faded away again. The cigarettes hadn’t helped; they’d just made him more lightheaded.
When he could take a chance on walking, he went through the doorway and lurched across to the opposite wall, so he could lean his right side against it. He moved along, more slowly than he wanted, until he got to the head of the stairs. He peered around the edge of the wall, and he was looking down at the big front hall, with a parquet floor. The front door was open, and people were leaving. Kapor was smiling and nodding, and telling them all good-bye. They were speaking a lot of different languages, French, and German and some others. Nobody was speaking English.
It took them a long while to clear out. Two or three loudmouthed women in furs took the longest. Then the front door closed at last, and only Kapor and his butler-bodyguard were left standing in the hall.
Kapor said something, and the bodyguard bowed and went away. They were both wearing formal dress, like waiters. Kapor yawned, patted his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he took out a flat gold cigarette case and took his time lighting a cigarette. When he finally had it going, he turned around and started up the stairs.
He was short and slender and a dandy, with a hawk face and ferret eyes. His hands and face were so pale they looked as though they’d been dusted with flour. He didn’t see Parker until he was all the way to the top of the stairs. When he saw Parker, and the gun, he opened his mouth wide without making any sound.
Parker said, “Keep it soft. Walk ahead of me to the trophy room.”
“The what?”
“The statues,” Parker said.
Sudden alarm showed on Kapor’s face, and then was wiped away again. “What are you doing here?”
“We’ll talk. In the trophy room.”
“Shall I shout for help?”
