Ned Beaumont stood up. He picked up his overcoat. He took his cap out of his overcoat-pocket and, holding it in one hand, his overcoat over the other arm, said seriously: 'You'll be sorry.' Then he walked out in a dignified manner. The Kid's rasping laughter and Lee's shriller hooting followed him out.
Outside the Buckman Ned Beaumont started briskly down the street. His eyes were glowing in his tired face and his dark mustache twitched above a flickering smile.
At ti-me first corner he came face to face with Jack. He asked: 'What are you doing here?'
Jack said: 'I'm still working for you, far as I know, so I came along to see if I could find anything to do.'
'Swell. Find us a taxi quick. They're sliding out.'
Jack said, 'Ay, ay,' and went down the street.
Ned Beaumont remained on the corner. The front and side entrances of the Buckman could be seen from there.
In a little while Jack returned in a taxicab. Ned Beaumont got into it and they told the driver where to park it.
'What did you do to them?' Jack asked when they were sitting still.
'Things.'
'Oh.'
Ten minutes passed and Jack, saying, 'Look,' was pointing a forefinger at a taxicab drawing up to the Buckman's side door.
The Kid, carrying two traveling-bags, left the building first, then, when he was in the taxicab, Despain and the girl ran out to join him. The taxicab ran away.
Jack leaned forward and told his driver what to do. They ran along in the other cab's wake. They wound through streets that were bright with morning sunlight, going by a devious route finally to a battered brown stone house in west Forty-ninth Street.
Despain's cab stopped in front of the house and, once more, the Kid was the first of the trio out on the sidewalk. He looked up and down the street. He went up to the front door of the house and unlocked it. Then he returned to the taxicab. Despain and the girl jumped out and went indoors hurriedly. The Kid followed with the bags.
'Stick here with the cab,' Ned Beaumont told Jack.
'What are you going to do?'
'Try my luck.'
Jack shook his head. 'This is another wrong neighborhood to look for trouble in,' he said.
Ned Beaumont said: 'If I come out with Despain, you beat it. Get another taxi and go hack to watch the Buckman. If I don't come out, use your own judgment.'
He opened the cab-door and stepped out. He was shivering. His eyes were shiny. He ignored something that Jack leaned out to say and hurried across the street to the house into which the two men and the girl had gone.
He went straight up the front steps and put a hand on the door-knob. The knob turned in his hand. The door was not locked. He pushed it open and, after peering into the dim hallway, went in.
The door slammed shut behind him and one of the Kid's fists struck his head a glancing blow that carried his cap away and sent him crashing into the wall. He sank down a little, giddily, almost to one knee, and the Kid's other fist struck the wall over his head.
He pulled his lips back over his teeth and drove a fist into the Kid's groin, a short sharp blow that brought a snarl from the Kid and made him fall back so that Ned Beaumont could pull himself up straight before the Kid was upon him again.
Up the hallway a little, Bernie Despain was leaning against the wall, his mouth stretched wide and thin, his eyes narrowed to dark points, saying over and over in a low voice: 'Sock him, Kid, sock him Lee Wilshire was not in sight.
The Kid's next two blows landed on Ned Beaumont's chest, mashing him against the wall, making him cough. The third, aimed at his face, he avoided. Then he pushed the Kid away from him with a forearm against his throat and kicked the Kid in the belly. The Kid roared angrily and came in with both fists going, but forearm and foot had carried him away from Ned Beaumont and had given Ned Beaumont time to get his right hand to his hip-pocket and to get Jack's revolver out of his pocket. He had not time to level the revolver, but, holding it at a downward angle, he pulled the trigger and managed to shoot the Kid in the right thigh. The Kid yelped and fell down on the hallway floor. He lay there looking up at Ned Beaumont with frightened bloodshot eyes.
Ned Beaumont stepped back from him, put his left hand in his trousers-pocket, and addressed Bernie Despain: 'Come on out with me. I want to talk to you.' His face was sullenly determined.
Footsteps ran overhead, somewhere back in the building a door opened, and down the hallway excited voices were audible, but nobody came into sight.
Despain stared for a long moment at Ned Beaumont as if horribly fascinated. Then, without a word, he stepped over the man on the floor and went out of the building ahead of Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont put the revolver in his jacket-pocket before he went down the street-steps, but he kept his hand on it.
'Up to that taxi,' he told Despain, indicating the car out of which Jack was getting. When they reached the taxicab he told the chauffeur to drive them anywhere, 'just around till I tell you where to go.'
They were in motion when Despain found his voice. He said: 'This is a hold-up. I'll give you anything you want because I don't want to be killed, but it's just a hold-up.'
Ned Beaumont laughed disagreeably and shook his head. 'Don't forget I've risen in the world to be something or other in the District Attorney's office.'
'But there's no charge against me. I'm not wanted. You said—'
'I was spoofing you, Bernie, for reasons. You're wanted.'
'For what?'
'Killing Taylor Henry.'
'That? Hell, I'll go back and face that. What've you got against me? I had some of his markers, sure. And I left the night he was killed, sure. And I gave him hell because he wouldn't make them good, sure. What kind of case is that for a first-class lawyer to beat? Jesus, if I left the markers behind in my safe at some time before nine- thirty—to go by Lee's story—don't that show I wasn't trying to collect that night?'
'No, and that isn't all the stuff we've got on you.'
'That's all there could be,' Despain said earnestly.
Ned Beaumont sneered. 'Wrong, Bernie. Remember I had a hat on when I came to see you this morning?'
'Maybe. I think you did.'
'Remember I took a cap out of my overcoat-pocket and put it on when I left?'
Bewilderment, fear, began to come into the swarthy man's small eyes. 'By Jesus! Well? What are you getting at?'
'I'm getting at the evidence. Do you remember the hat didn't fit me very well?'
Bernie Despain's voice was hoarse: 'I don't know, Ned. For Christ's sake, what do you mean?'
'I mean it didn't fit me because it wasn't my hat. Do you remember that the hat Taylor was wearing when he was murdered wasn't found?'
'I don't know. I don't know anything about him.'
'Well, I'm trying to tell you the hat I had this morning was Taylor's hat and it's now planted down between the cushion-seat and the back of that brown easy-chair in the apartment you had at the Buckman. Do you think that, with the rest, would be enough to set you on the hot seat?'
Despain would have screamed in terror if Ned Beaumont had not clapped a hand over his mouth and growled, 'Shut up,' in his ear.
Sweat ran down the swarthy face. Despain fell over on Ned Beaumont, seizing the lapels of his coat with both hands, babbling: 'Listen, don't you do that to me, Ned. You can have every cent I owe you, every cent with interest, if you won't do that. I never meant to rob you, Ned, honest to God. It was just that I was caught short and thought I'd treat it like a loan. Honest to God, Ned. I ain't got much now, but I'm fixed to get the money for Lee's
