BELL STEPPED from the Brown Palace elevator and walked to his suite. He pulled the key from his pant pocket and inserted it in the door lock. Before he could turn the key, the door slipped open a crack. The latch had not been fully engaged when the door had been closed.
Bell paused and tensed. His first thought was that the maid had forgotten to close the door and spring the bolt. It was a logical assumption, but an inner wisdom made him suspicious. The perception of something being not quite right had saved him on more than one occasion.
Bell had made many enemies during his years as a detective with Van Dorn. Several of the men he had captured and seen tried and sentenced to prison had vowed they would come after him. Three had tried and two had died.
If someone was waiting for him inside his room, it wouldn’t be with a gun, he reasoned. Gunshots would echo throughout the hotel and bring a dozen staff running. For a criminal to escape from the ninth floor, he either would have to wait for an elevator or run down the stairs, neither a good choice for a successful escape.
Bell was aware that he was probably overexaggerating the threat, which could very well be nonexistent. But he hadn’t survived this long without a suspicious mind. If someone was waiting inside his suite, he thought, they would do their dirty work with a knife.
He removed his hat and dropped it. Before it hit the carpet, his derringer was in his hand, an over-and-under, two-barrel, .41 caliber small handgun that packed a surprisingly heavy punch at close range.
Bell waggled the key in the door as if he was turning the lock. He pushed the door open and hesitated, staring around the foyer of the suite and the living room beyond before he entered. The smell of cigarette smoke greeted his nostrils, confirming Bell’s suspicions. He only rarely smoked a cigar and then only with brandy after a gourmet dinner. With the derringer in hand, he stepped into the suite. Death, like a third man, was waiting inside.
A man was sitting on a settee reading a newspaper. At Bell’s approach, he laid the paper aside and revealed a face as ugly as sin. The black hair was greasy and slicked flat. His face looked like it had been stomped on by a mule, and he had the body of a state fair prizewinning boar. His eyes were strangely soft and friendly, a guise that fooled many of his victims. Bell was not fooled; he could see the man had the strength to spring like a tiger.
“How did you get in?” Bell asked simply.
The stranger held up a key. “Skeleton key,” he said in a voice that came like a rock crusher. “I never leave home without one.”
“What is your name?”
“It won’t matter if you know my name. You’ll never get a chance to use it. But since you’ve asked, it’s Red Kelly.”
Bell’s photographic memory shifted into gear and the recollection of a report he’d once read came back. “Yes, the infamous Red Kelly, boxer, Barbary Coast saloonkeeper, and murderer. You fought a good battle against world champion James J. Corbett. I once studied a report on you in the event you ever wandered beyond the California border. This is a mistake on your part. You have protection from crooked politicians that keeps you from getting extradited for crimes in other states, but that won’t help you in Colorado. You’re subject to arrest here.”
“And who is going to arrest me?” said Kelly showing an expanse of gold teeth. “You?”
Bell stood loosely, waiting, and expecting a move from Kelly. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
“I know all about you, pretty boy,” said Kelly contemptuously. “You’ll bleed just like the other poor slobs I’ve put in the grave.”
“How many detectives and police?”
Kelly grinned nastily. “Three that I can remember. After a while, the numbers began to fade.”
“Your days of murder are over, Kelly,” Bell said calmly.
“That’ll be the day, pretty boy. If you think you can bully me with that popgun in your hand, you’re wasting your breath.”
“You don’t think I could kill you with it?” Bell said.
“You’d never get the chance,” Kelly retorted coldly.
There it was. Bell caught it instantly. The sudden shift in the eyes. He swung into a crouch and, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired a shot into the forehead of the man who was creeping up behind him from where he’d been, hidden by a curtain. The report reverberated out the open door and throughout the atrium of the hotel.
Kelly glanced at the body of his henchman with all the interest of a horse that had stepped on a prairie dog. Then he smiled at Bell. “Your reputation is well founded. You must have eyes in the back of your head.”
“You came to kill me,” said Bell evenly. “Why?”
“It’s a job, nothing more.”
“Who paid you?”
“Not necessary for you to know.” Kelly laid aside the paper and slowly got to his feet.
“Don’t try for the gun in the belt behind your back,” Bell said, the derringer as steady as a branch on an oak tree.
Kelly flashed his gold teeth again. “I don’t need a gun.”
He sprang forward, his powerful legs propelling across the room as if he had been shot from a cannon.
What saved Bell in those two seconds was the span between them, a good eight feet. Any less distance and Kelly would have been all over him like an avalanche. As it was, Kelly struck him like a battering ram, a glancing blow that knocked Bell sideways over a chair and onto the grass green carpet. But not before he pulled the trigger of the derringer and sent a bullet into Kelly’s right shoulder.
The brute was stopped in his tracks but did not fall. He was too powerful, too muscular, to fold with a bullet that did not penetrate his heart or brain. He
