“This ought to do it,” I said, and went down.
The girl came behind me, and then Red. The court into which we dropped was empty—a narrow cement passage between buildings. The bottom of the fire-escape creaked as it hinged down under my weight, but the noise didn’t stir anything. It was dark in the court, but not black.
“When we hit the street, we split,” O’Leary told me, without a word of gratitude for my help—the help he didn’t seem to know he had needed. “You roll your hoop, we’ll roll ours.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed, chasing my brains around in my skull. “I’ll scout the alley first.”
Carefully I picked my way down to the end of the court and risked the top of my hatless head to peep into the back street. It was quiet, but up at the corner, a quarter of a block above, two loafers seemed to be loafing attentively. They weren’t coppers. I stepped out into the back street and beckoned them down. They couldn’t recognize me at that distance, in that light, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t think me one of Vance’s crew, if they belonged to him.
As they came toward me I stepped back into the court and hissed for Red. He wasn’t a boy you had to call twice to a row. He got to me just as they arrived. I took one. He took the other.
Because I wanted a disturbance, I had to work like a mule to get it. These bimbos were a couple of lollipops for fair. There wouldn’t have been an ounce of fight in a ton of them. The one I had didn’t know what to make of my roughing him around. He had a gun, but he managed to drop it first thing, and in the wrestling it got kicked out of reach. He hung on while I sweated ink jockeying him around into position. The darkness helped, but even at that it was no cinch to pretend he was putting up a battle while I worked him around behind O’Leary, who wasn’t having any trouble at all with his man.
Finally I made it. I was behind O’Leary, who had his man pinned against the wall with one hand, preparing to sock him again with the other. I clamped my left hand on my playmate’s wrist, twisted him to his knees, got my gun out, and shot O’Leary in the back, just below the right shoulder.
Red swayed, jamming his man into the wall. I beaned mine with the gun butt.
“Did he get you, Red?” I asked, steadying him with an arm, knocking his prisoner across the noodle.
“Yeah.”
“Nancy,” I called.
She ran to us.
“Take his other side,” I told her. “Keep on your feet, Red, and we’ll make the sneak OK.”
The bullet was too freshly in him to slow him up yet, though his right arm was out of commission. We ran down the back street to the corner. We had pursuers before we made it. Curious faces looked at us in the street. A policeman a block away began to move our way. The girl helping O’Leary on one side, me on the other, we ran half a block away from the copper, to where I had left the automobile Jack and I had used. The street was active by the time I got the machinery grinding and the girl had Red stowed safely in the back seat. The copper sent a yell and a high bullet after us. We left the neighborhood.
I didn’t have any special destination yet, so, after the necessary first burst of speed, I slowed up a little, went around lots of corners, and brought the bus to rest in a dark street beyond Van Ness Avenue.
Red was drooping in one corner of the back, the girl holding him up, when I screwed around in my seat to look at them.
“Where to?” I asked.
“A hospital, a doctor, something!” the girl cried. “He’s dying!”
I didn’t believe that. If he was, it was his own fault. If he had had enough gratitude to take me along with him as a friend I wouldn’t have had to shoot him so I could go along as nurse.
“Where to, Red?” I asked him, prodding his knee with a finger.
He spoke thickly, giving me the address of the Stockton Street hotel.
“That’s no good,” I objected. “Everybody in town knows you bunk there, and if you go back, it’s lights out for yours. Where to?”
“Hotel,” he repeated.
I got up, knelt on the seat, and leaned back to work on him. He was weak. He couldn’t have much resistance left. Bulldozing a man who might after all be dying wasn’t gentlemanly, but I had invested a lot of trouble in this egg, trying to get him to lead me to his friends, and I wasn’t going to quit in the stretch. For a while it looked as if he wasn’t weak enough yet, as if I’d have to shoot him again. But the girl sided with me, and between us we finally convinced him that his only safe bet was to go somewhere where he could hide while he got the right kind of care. We didn’t actually convince him—we wore him out and he gave in because he was too weak to argue longer. He gave me an address out by Holly Park.
Hoping for the best, I pointed the machine thither.
XII
The house was a small one in a row of small houses. We took the big boy out of the car and between us to the door. He could just about make it with our help. The street was dark. No light showed from the house. I rang the bell.
Nothing happened. I rang again, and then once more.
“Who is it?” a harsh voice demanded from the inside.
“Red’s been hurt,” I said.
Silence for a while. Then the door opened half a foot. Through the opening a
