Hook, bellowing:
“Let me tell you something, brother: that guy’s going to be knocked off! That’s flat! I’m taking no chances. You can jaw all you want to about it, but I’m looking out for my own neck and it’ll be a lot safer with that guy where he can’t talk. That’s flat. He’s going to be knocked off!”
The feminine voice, disgustedly:
“Aw, Hook, be reasonable!”
The British voice, still drawling, but dead cold:
“There’s no use reasoning with you, Hook, you’ve the instincts and the intellect of a troglodyte. There is only one sort of language that you understand; and I’m going to talk that language to you, my son. If you are tempted to do anything silly between now and the time of our departure, just say this to yourself two or three times: ‘If he dies, I die. If he dies, I die.’ Say it as if it were out of the Bible—because it’s that true.”
There followed a long space of silence, with a tenseness that made my not particularly sensitive scalp tingle. Beyond the portière, I knew, two men were matching glances in a battle of wills, which might any instant become a physical struggle, and my chances of living were tied up in that battle.
When, at last, a voice cut the silence, I jumped as if a gun had been fired; though the voice was low and smooth enough.
It was the British voice, confidently victorious, and I breathed again.
“We’ll get the old people away first,” the voice was saying. “You take charge of our guest, Hook. Tie him up neatly. But remember—no foolishness. Don’t waste time questioning him—he’ll lie. Tie him up while I get the bonds, and we’ll be gone in less than half an hour.”
The portières parted and Hook came into the room—a scowling Hook whose freckles had a greenish tinge against the sallowness of his face. He pointed a revolver at me, and spoke to the Quarres:
“He wants you.”
They got up and went into the next room, and for a while an indistinguishable buzzing of whispers came from that room.
Hook, meanwhile, had stepped back to the doorway, still menacing me with his revolver; and pulled loose the plush ropes that were around the heavy curtains. Then he came around behind me, and tied me securely to the high-backed chair; my arms to the chair’s arms, my legs to the chair’s legs, my body to the chair’s back and seat; and he wound up by gagging me with the corner of a cushion that was too well-stuffed for my comfort. The ugly man was unnecessarily rough throughout; but I was a lamb. He wanted an excuse for drilling me, and I wanted above all else that he should have no excuse.
As he finished lashing me into place, and stepped back to scowl at me, I heard the street door close softly, and then light footsteps ran back and forth overhead.
Hook looked in the direction of those footsteps, and his little watery blue eyes grew cunning.
“Elvira!” he called softly.
The portières bulged as if someone had touched them, and the musical feminine voice came through.
“What?”
“Come here.”
“I’d better not. He wouldn’t—”
“Damn him!” Hook flared up. “Come here!”
She came into the room and into the circle of light from the tall lamp; a girl in her early twenties, slender and lithe, and dressed for the street, except that she carried her hat in one hand. A white face beneath a bobbed mass of flame-colored hair. Smoke-grey eyes that were set too far apart for trustworthiness—though not for beauty—laughed at me; and her red mouth laughed at me, exposing the edges of little sharp animal-teeth. She was beautiful; as beautiful as the devil, and twice as dangerous.
She laughed at me—a fat man all trussed up with red plush rope, and with the corner of a green cushion in my mouth—and she turned to the ugly man.
“What do you want?”
He spoke in an undertone, with a furtive glance at the ceiling, above which soft steps still padded back and forth.
“What say we shake him?”
Her smoke-grey eyes lost their merriment and became hard and calculating.
“There’s a hundred thousand he’s holding—a third of it’s mine. You don’t think I’m going to take a Mickey Finn on that, do you?”
“Course not! Supposing we get the hundred-grand?”
“How?”
“Leave it to me, kid; leave it to me! If I swing it, will you go with me? You know I’ll be good to you.”
She smiled contemptuously, I thought—but he seemed to like it.
“You’re whooping right you’ll be good to me,” she said. “But listen, Hook: we couldn’t get away with it—not unless you get him. I know him! I’m not running away with anything that belongs to him unless he is fixed so that he can’t come after it.”
Hook moistened his lips and looked around the room at nothing. Apparently he didn’t like the thought of tangling with the owner of the British drawl. But his desire for the girl was too strong for his fear of the other man.
“I’ll do it!” he blurted. “I’ll get him! Do you mean it, kid? If I get him, you’ll go with me?”
She held out her hand.
“It’s a bet,” she said, and he believed her.
His ugly face grew warm and red and utterly happy, and he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. In his place, I might have believed her myself—all of us have fallen for that sort of thing at one time or another—but sitting tied up on the sidelines, I knew that he’d have been better off playing with a gallon of nitro than with this baby. She was dangerous! There was a rough time ahead for this Hook!
“This is the lay—” Hook began, and stopped, tongue-tied.
A step had sounded in the next room.
Immediately the British voice came through the portières, and there was an edge of exasperation to the drawl now:
“This
