startled gasp.
‘Who’s that?’ Rico asked feverishly. ‘Who’s talking?’
‘Did Olin call on you?’ Baird said, stil keeping his voice low.
‘Yes,’ Rico said. ‘Get off the line, you fool! They may be listening in! They’re after you! Olin says he knows you did it! Don’t come near me! He’s after me too!’
‘Don’t lose your head,’ Baird said, seeing in his mind’s eye Rico’s twitching, terrified face. ‘They can’t prove anything. They’ve got to have proof…’
But he found himself speaking over a dead line. Rico had hung up.
Baird replaced the receiver. The muscle under his right eye was twitching. As he turned to leave the booth his quick, suspicious eyes spotted a movement at the drug-store entrance. He ducked down out of sight behind the panel of the booth door, his Colt jumping into his hand. He heard the drug-store door open and heavy feet walk over to the counter.
‘Police, Miss,’ a curt voice said. ‘Anyone been in here within the last few minutes?’
Baird eased back the safety catch. They must have spotted him while he was retreating down the alley. He wondered if there were any more of them outside.
He heard the girl say, ‘There was a big fel a in here about three minutes ago. He must have gone.’
‘In a brown suit?’ the detective asked. ‘A tal , broad-shouldered guy with a white, hard face?’
‘That’s right. He used the phone over there.’
‘Which way did he go?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him leave.’
There was a sudden sharp silence. Baird knew in a split second the detective would guess he was still in the pay booth. He didn’t hesitate. Reaching up, he took hold of the door handle, turned it gently and flung the door open.
He had a glimpse of a short, stocky man facing him, whose hand was flying to the inside of his coat.
He saw the girl in the white coat, jumping off her stool, her mouth opening, her eyes sick with terror.
The Colt boomed once as the detective got his gun out. The heavy slug smashed a hole in the detective’s face, hurling him violently back against the counter.
Baird shifted the gun to cover the girl as she screamed wildly. The fear of death wiped the pert sophistication, the undisciplined sensuality and the old-young worldliness from her face. She looked suddenly pathetically child-like as she huddled into the corner formed by the wall and the counter with no hope of escape. The rouge on her cheeks and the lipstick on her mouth brought a sharp picture into Baird’s mind of his sister when she was seven, plastering her face with a stolen lipstick, and laughing at his uneasy disapproval.
It was partly because of this sudden, bitter vision of his sister, and partly because he knew this girl mustn’t be al owed to give the police a description of him that he shot her.
He was able to watch without a qualm the girl arch her body in agony as the bullet hit her. She slithered along the wall, her eyes rolling back, her outstretched arm knocking over a row of Coke bottles that fell with a crash of breaking glass to the floor. As she disappeared behind the counter her breath came through her clenched teeth the way the breath leaves the body of a rabbit when its neck is broken.
Baird left the booth, looked swiftly around the drug store, spotted a door behind the counter, jumped over the counter and wrenched open the door.
Outside, not far away, he heard the shrill blast of a police whistle. He ran down a dimly lit passage and up more stairs. He was cold and unflurried, and his one thought was not to be seen. So long as no one saw him, Olin couldn’t pin the kil ings on him. Already his calculating brain was at work on an alibi that would fox Olin. As soon as he could safely do it, he must get rid of his gun. That, and that alone, so far, could take him into the gas-chamber.
Ahead of him he saw a glass panelled door that led to the roof of the building. As he opened it, he heard a sudden clamour of police sirens outside the building. He ran to the edge of the roof, and peered cautiously over it into the street below. It was alive with running police. Prowl cars were skidding to a standstill, and from them poured more police, guns in hand. Rushing around the corner came a truck, carrying a searchlight which went on before the truck came to a standstill. The great white beam of light flashed up the side of the building and lit up the roof with blinding intensity.
Baird didn’t hesitate. He swung up his Colt and fired down the long beam. There was a crash of glass and the light went out. The darkness that followed was as blinding as the previous intense light.
Someone down below let off with a sub-machine-gun, but Baird was already running across the roof to the shelter of some chimney stacks. He ducked behind them, looked right and left, decided to go for a higher roof, and bending double, ran swiftly to a steel ladder, swarmed up it and reached fresh shelter as the first of the police came bursting on to the lower roof.
Still unruffled, Baird made his way silently across the roof, keeping the chimney stacks between himself and the police. He could hear them whispering together, unwilling to show themselves, not sure if he was waiting for them or getting away.
‘Wel , get on with it!’ a voice bawled up from the street.
Looking down, Baird spotted Olin standing up in the middle of the street, gun in hand. He was glaring up at where his men were sheltering.
Baird was tempted to shoot Olin as he stood there, but realising his chance of escape depended on keeping the police foxed as to where he was, he resisted the temptation, and made his way across the roof to look below on the far side of the building.
Another roof, fifteen feet or so below him, stretched out in a gentle slope, terminating in a low wall.
There was no escape that way. He looked to his left. A higher roof seemed more inviting, and he could see a ladder that would take him up there.
