Dallas said he’d see what he could do.
‘Let’s get this straightened out,’ Purvis went on. ‘Everyone of us has got to watch his step. You’ve got the toughest job, Ed, and you’ve got to handle it as if it were dynamite. We can’t afford to let them have the slightest idea we’re on to them. Our job is to find the jewels. We’re not employed by the police.
I want you to understand that. Whatever we find out, we keep to ourselves. If any of you find Baird you’re not to report him to the police. We want Baird to take us to the jewels, and he won’t do that if he’s in a cel .’
‘Isn’t that making us accessories after the fact?’ Dal as asked mildly.
‘We stand to pick up four hundred grand,’ Purvis pointed out. ‘I’l split one per cent of that among you operators. That’s a thousand bucks apiece. Would that make you forget such things as accessories after the fact?’
‘A thousand isn’t much,’ Dal as said, scarcely believing his ears, but quick to bargain. ‘As I’ve got the heaviest job, how about making it two for me and one for the rest of them?’
Purvis shook his head.
‘No, that wouldn’t be fair to the others, but I tel you what I’l do. I’l give a cheque for five thousand to the first one of you who walks into my office and tells me where the jewels are.’
‘Do the big thing,’ Dal as said, ‘and give the boys a lit le confidence. Make it cash.’
X
The distant sound of an approaching police siren penetrated Baird’s brain. It grew louder until it filled the inside of his head with a vibrating scream of warning.
With an effort he forced back his eyelids and looked into darkness. He felt weak and cold, and there was a stiff, tight feeling of pain down his right side.
He turned his head. There was an open window to his left. He could see the dark night sky, pin-pointed with the white brilliance of the stars. The faint haze of reflected light from the street lamps climbed the wall of the building and outlined the cross sections of the window.
Below, a car skidded with a squeal of tortured tyres to a standstill. The siren died down in a slow and reluctant wail of sound. Car doors opened and slammed. Feet ran across the street.
Baird suddenly realised there was someone standing against the wall, looking cautiously out of the window into the street: a woman.
It was too dark in the room to see much of her: she seemed small, and her hair hung loose to her shoulders. She was pressing her hands to her breasts, and she stood very still.
More police sirens wailed in the distance. A car started up suddenly close by, and drove away with a noisy change of gears. A dog began to bark furiously.
Baird lifted his head, his hand groped for his gun holster, but it wasn’t there. He felt light-headed and weak, but the sound of the approaching sirens was like a spur to him, and he made an effort to sit up.
The woman at the window heard him and looked quickly in his direction.
‘Don’t move,’ she said, her voice coming across the intervening space in a frightened whisper.
‘They’re down there: hundreds of them.’
Baird got one foot to the floor. The bed on which he was lying creaked under his weight. He raised himself on his elbow. Pain rode through him, bringing him out in a cold sweat. He struggled against it, but it proved too much for him, and he dropped back on to the pillow, his mind seething with vicious, frustrated rage.
He was bad all right, he thought. He remembered the last time he had been shot. It had been nothing to this. This time he was cooked. He must have bled like a pig. The great strength he had always relied on to see him through in a jam had deserted him: he couldn’t have pul ed the wings off a fly.
More cars squealed to a standstill; sirens died down, car doors opened and slammed. A murmur of voices came up from the street.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked. His voice was so weak he didn’t recognise it. It was almost as if some other person had spoken.
‘They’re searching the houses,’ she said, not moving from the window. ‘They are split ing into groups of five, and each group is taking a house.’
Baird snarled into the darkness.
‘Where’s my gun? Where’ve you put it?’
‘It’s on the bed by your side.’ She didn’t look in his direction, but continued to stare down into the street, as if what she saw there held her with an irresistible fascination.
Feverishly he groped over the crumpled coverlet. His fingers closed round the butt of the Colt. He managed to lift it, but the effort made him pant.
‘You’d bet er get out,’ he said. ‘Go and tel them I’m here if you want to. They won’t get me alive.’
This time she turned her head and looked in his direction, although he knew she couldn’t see him in the dark.
‘They may not come here,’ she said. ‘If they do, I can tel them I haven’t seen you. They wouldn’t force their way in here, would they?’
For a moment he couldn’t believe he had heard aright.
‘Of course they would. They won’t take your word. Besides, I left blood in the passage. They’l find that.’
‘I’ve cleaned it up,’ she said simply. ‘It didn’t take long.’
Again he had a feeling he was dreaming this, and he peered at her, trying to see through the darkness.
‘You cleaned it up?’ His voice revealed his suspicious surprise. ‘Why? What’s your game? Don’t you know you’l
