Flora went over to him, put her fingers on his wrist, held them there a couple of seconds, and nodded:
“You crazy son-of-a-gun,” she said in a tone that was more like maternal pride than anything else. “You’re good for a fight right now. And a damned good thing, too, because you’re going to get it.”
Red laughed—a triumphant laugh that boasted of his toughness—then his eyes turned to me. Laughter went out of them and a puzzled look drew them narrow.
“Hello,” he said. “I dreamed about you, but I can’t remember what it was. It was—Wait. I’ll get it in a minute. It was—By God! I dreamed it was you that plugged me!”
Flora smiled at me, the first time I had seen her smile, and she spoke quickly:
“Take him, Pogy!”
I twisted obliquely out of my chair.
Pogy’s fist took me in the temple. Staggering across the room, struggling to keep my feet, I thought of the bruise on the dead Motsa Kid’s temple.
Pogy was on me when the wall bumped me upright.
I put a fist—spat!—in his flat nose. Blood squirted, but his hairy paws gripped me. I tucked my chin in, ground the top of my head into his face. The scent Big Flora used came strong to me. Her silk clothes brushed against me. With both hands full of my hair she pulled my head back, stretching my neck for Pogy. He took hold of it with his paws. I quit. He didn’t throttle me any more than was necessary, but it was bad enough.
Flora frisked me for gun and blackjack.
“.38 special,” she named the caliber of the gun. “I dug a .38 special bullet out of you, Red.” The words came faintly to me through the roaring in my ears.
The little old man’s voice was chattering in the kitchen. I couldn’t make out anything he said. Pogy’s hands went away from me. I put my own hands to my throat. It was hell not to have any pressure at all there. The blackness went slowly away from my eyes, leaving a lot of little purple clouds that floated around and around. Presently I could sit up on the floor. I knew by that I had been lying down on it.
The purple clouds shrank until I could see past them enough to know there were only three of us in the room now. Cringing in a chair, back in a corner, was Nancy Regan. On another chair, beside the door, a black pistol in his hand, sat the scared little old man. His eyes were desperately frightened. Gun and hand shook at me. I tried to ask him to either stop shaking or move his gun away from me, but I couldn’t get any words out yet.
Upstairs, guns boomed, their reports exaggerated by the smallness of the house.
The little man winced.
“Let me get out,” he whispered with unexpected abruptness, “and I will give you everything. I will! Everything—if you will let me get out of this house!”
This feeble ray of light where there hadn’t been a dot gave me back the use of my vocal apparatus.
“Talk turkey,” I managed to say.
“I will give you those upstairs—that she-devil. I will give you the money. I will give you all—if you will let me go out. I am old. I am sick. I cannot live in prison. What have I to do with robberies? Nothing. Is it my fault that she-devil—? You have seen it here. I am a slave—I who am near the end of my life. Abuse, cursings, beatings—and those are not enough. Now I must go to prison because that she-devil is a she-devil. I am an old man who cannot live in prisons. You let me go out. You do me that kindness. I will give you that she-devil—those other devils—the money they stole. That I will do!”
Thus this panic-stricken little old man, squirming and fidgeting on his chair.
“How can I get you out?” I asked, getting up from the floor, my eye on his gun. If I could get to him while we talked. …
“How not? You are a friend of the police—that I know. The police are here now—waiting for daylight before they come into this house. I myself with my old eyes saw them take that Bluepoint Vance. You can take me out past your friends, the police. You do what I ask, and I will give you those devils and their moneys.”
“Sounds good,” I said, taking a careless step toward him. “But can I just stroll out of here when I want to?”
“No! No!” he said, paying no attention to the second step I took toward him. “But first I will give you those three devils. I will give them to you alive but without power. And their money. That I will do, and then you will take me out—and this girl here.” He nodded suddenly at Nancy, whose white face, still nice in spite of its terror, was mostly wide eyes just now. “She, too, has nothing to do with those devils’ crimes. She must go with me.”
I wondered what this old rabbit thought he could do. I frowned exceedingly thoughtful while I took still another step toward him.
“Make no mistake,” he whispered earnestly. “When that she-devil comes back into this room you will die—she will kill you certainly.”
Three more steps and I would be close enough to take hold of him and his gun.
Footsteps were in the hall. Too late for a jump.
“Yes?” he hissed desperately.
I nodded a split-second before Big Flora came through the door.
XIV
She was dressed for action in a pair of blue pants that were probably Pogy’s, beaded moccasins, a silk waist. A ribbon held her curly yellow hair back from her face. She had a gun in one hand, one in each hip pocket.
The one in her hand swung up.
“You’re done,” she told me, quite matter-of-fact.
My newly acquired confederate whined, “Wait, wait, Flora! Not here like this,
