Once a sharp yelp told us that the purple Frana—who had fled rearward when Maurois and Big Chin arrived—had got in trouble with the searchers. There was only that one yelp, and it stopped with a suddenness that suggested trouble for the dog.
The two men spent nearly an hour in the other rooms. They didn’t find anything. Their hands, when they joined us again, held nothing but the cutlery.
X
“I said to you it was not here,” Inés told them triumphantly. “Now will you—?”
“You can’t tell me nothing I’ll believe.” The Kid snapped his knife shut and dropped it in his pocket. “I still think it’s here.”
He caught her wrist, and held his other hand, palm up, under her nose.
“You can put ’em in my hand, or I’ll take ’em.”
“They are not here! I swear it!”
His mouth lifted at the corner in a savage grimace.
“Liar!”
He twisted her arm roughly, forcing her to her knees. His free hand went to the shoulder-strap of her orange gown.
“I’ll damn soon find out,” he promised.
Billie came to life.
“Hey!” he protested, his chest heaving in and out. “You can’t do that!”
“Wait, Kid!” Maurois—putting his sword-cane together again—called. “Let us see if there is not another way.”
The Whosis Kid let go of the woman and took three slow steps back from her. His eyes were dead circles without any color you could name—the dull eyes of the man whose nerves quit functioning in the face of excitement. His bony hands pushed his coat aside a little and rested where his vest bulged over the sharp corners of his hipbones.
“Let’s me and you get this right, Frenchy,” he said in his whining voice. “Are you with me or her?”
“You, most certainly, but—”
“All right. Then be with me! Don’t be trying to gum every play I make. I’m going to frisk this dolly, and don’t think I ain’t. What are you going to do about it?”
The Frenchman pursed his mouth until his little black mustache snuggled against the tip of his nose. He puckered his eyebrows and looked thoughtfully out of his one good eye. But he wasn’t going to do anything at all about it, and he knew he wasn’t. Finally he shrugged.
“You are right,” he surrendered. “She should be searched.”
The Kid grunted contemptuous disgust at him and went toward the woman again.
She sprang away from him, to me. Her arms clamped around my neck in the habit they seemed to have.
“Jerry!” she screamed in my face. “You will not allow him! Jerry, please not!”
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t think it was exactly genteel of the Kid to frisk her, but there were several reasons why I didn’t try to stop him. First, I didn’t want to do anything to delay the unearthing of this “stuff” there had been so much talk about. Second, I’m no Galahad. This woman had picked her playmates, and was largely responsible for this angle of their game. If they played rough, she’d have to make the best of it. And, a good strong third, Big Chin was prodding me in the side with a gun-muzzle to remind me that I couldn’t do anything if I wanted to—except get myself slaughtered.
The Kid dragged Inés away. I let her go.
He pulled her over to what was left of the bench by the electric heater, and called the Frenchman there with a jerk of his head.
“You hold her while I go through her,” he said.
She filled her lungs with air. Before she could turn it loose in a shriek, the Kid’s long fingers had fit themselves to her throat.
“One chirp out of you and I’ll tie a knot in your neck,” he threatened.
She let the air wheeze out of her nose.
Billie shuffled his feet. I turned my head to look at him. He was puffing through his mouth. Sweat polished his forehead under his matted red hair. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn his wolf loose until the “stuff” came to the surface. If he would wait a while I might join him.
He wouldn’t wait. He went into action when—Maurois holding her—the Kid started to undress the woman.
He took a step toward them. Big Chin tried to wave him back with a gun. Billie didn’t even see it. His eyes were red on the three by the bench.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” he rumbled. “You can’t do that!”
“No?” The Kid looked up from his work. “Watch me.”
“Billie!” the woman urged the big man on in his foolishness.
Billie charged.
Big Chin let him go, playing safe by swinging both guns on me. The Whosis Kid slid out of the plunging giant’s path. Maurois hurled the girl straight at Billie—and got his gun out.
Billie and Inés thumped together in a swaying tangle.
The Kid spun behind the big man. One of the Kid’s hands came out of his pocket with the spring-knife. The knife clicked open as Billie regained his balance.
The Kid jumped close.
He knew knives. None of your clumsy downward strokes with the blade sticking out the bottom of his fist.
Thumb and crooked forefinger guided blade. He struck upward. Under Billie’s shoulder. Once. Deep.
Billie pitched forward, smashing the woman to the floor under him. He rolled off her and was dead on his back among the furniture-stuffing. Dead, he seemed larger than ever, seemed to fill the room.
The Whosis Kid wiped his knife clean on a piece of carpet, snapped it shut, and dropped it back in his pocket. He did this with his left hand. His right was close to his hip. He did not look at the knife. His
