“Get up!”
The cold thing against my neck jabbed deep into the flesh.
I stood up.
“Frisk him,” the harsh voice came from behind.
The old man carefully laid his cigar down, came to me, and ran his hands over my body. Satisfied that I was unarmed, he emptied my pockets, dropping the contents upon the chair that I had just left.
Mrs. Quarre was pouring herself some more tea.
“Thomas,” she said; “you’ve overlooked that little watch pocket in the trousers.”
He found nothing there.
“That’s all,” he told the man behind me, and returned to his chair and cigar.
“Turn around, you!” the harsh voice ordered.
I turned and faced a tall, gaunt, rawboned man of about my own age, which is thirty-five. He had an ugly face—hollow-cheeked, bony, and spattered with big pale freckles. His eyes were of a watery blue, and his nose and chin stuck out abruptly.
“Know me?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’re a liar!”
I didn’t argue the point: he was holding a level gun in one big freckled hand.
“You’re going to know me pretty well before you’re through with me,” this big ugly man threatened. “You’re going to—”
“Hook!” a voice came from a portièred doorway—the doorway through which the ugly man had no doubt crept up behind me. “Hook, come here!”
The voice was feminine—young, clear, and musical.
“What do you want?” the ugly man called over his shoulder.
“He’s here.”
“All right!” He turned to Thomas Quarre. “Keep this joker safe.”
From somewhere among his whiskers, his coat, and his stiff white vest, the old man brought out a big black revolver, which he handled with no signs of either weakness or unfamiliarity.
The ugly man swept up the things that had been taken from my pockets, and carried them through the portières with him.
Mrs. Quarre smiled brightly up at me.
“Do sit down, Mr. Tracy,” she said.
I sat.
Through the portières a new voice came from the next room; a drawling baritone voice whose accent was unmistakably British; cultured British.
“What’s up, Hook?” this voice was asking.
The harsh voice of the ugly man:
“Plenty’s up, I’m telling you! They’re onto us! I started out a while ago; and as soon as I got to the street, I seen a man I knowed on the other side. He was pointed out to me in Philly five-six years ago. I don’t know his name, but I remembered his mug—he’s a Continental Detective Agency man. I came back in right away, and me and Elvira watched him out of the window. He went to every house on the other side of the street, asking questions or something. Then he came over and started to give this side a whirl, and after a while he rings the bell. I tell the old woman and her husband to get him in, stall him along, and see what he says for himself. He’s got a song and dance about looking for a guy what seen an old woman bumped by a street car—but that’s the bunk! He’s gunning for us. There ain’t nothing else to it. I went in and stuck him up just now. I meant to wait till you come, but I was scared he’d get nervous and beat it. Here’s his stuff if you want to give it the once over.”
The British voice:
“You shouldn’t have shown yourself to him. The others could have taken care of him.”
Hook:
“What’s the diff? Chances is he knows us all anyway. But supposing he didn’t, what diff does it make?”
The drawling British voice:
“It may make a deal of difference. It was stupid.”
Hook, blustering:
“Stupid, huh? You’re always bellyaching about other people being stupid. To hell with you, I say! If you don’t like my style, to hell with you! Who does all the work? Who’s the guy that swings all the jobs? Huh? Where—”
The young feminine voice:
“Now, Hook, for God’s sake don’t make that speech again. I’ve listened to it until I know it by heart!”
A rustle of papers, and the British voice:
“I say, Hook, you’re correct about his being a detective. Here is an identification card among his things.”
The Quarres were listening to the conversation in the next room with as much interest as I, but Thomas Quarre’s eyes never left me, and his fat fingers never relaxed about the gun in his lap. His wife sipped tea, with her head cocked on one side in the listening attitude of a bird.
Except for the weapon in the old man’s lap, there was not a thing to persuade the eye that melodrama was in the room; the Quarres were in every other detail still the pleasant old couple who had given me tea and expressed sympathy for the elderly lady who had been injured.
The feminine voice from the next room:
“Well, what’s to be done? What’s our play?”
Hook:
“That’s easy to answer. We’re going to knock this sleuth off, first thing!”
The feminine voice:
“And put our necks in the noose?”
Hook, scornfully:
“As if they ain’t there if we don’t! You don’t think this guy ain’t after us for the L.A. job, do you?”
The British voice:
“You’re an ass, Hook, and a quite hopeless one. Suppose this chap is interested in the Los Angeles affair, as is probable; what then? He is a Continental operative. Is it likely that his organization doesn’t know where he is? Don’t you think they know he was coming up here? And don’t they know as much about us—chances are—as he does? There’s no use killing him. That would only make matters worse. The thing to do is to tie him up and leave him here. His associates will hardly come looking for him until tomorrow—and that will give us all night to manage our disappearance.”
My gratitude went out to the British voice! Somebody was in my favor, at least to the extent of letting me live. I hadn’t been feeling very cheerful these last few minutes. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see these people who were deciding whether I was to live or die, made my plight seem all the more desperate.
