VIII
Fight interest went out of the woman’s face. Fear came in. Her fingers picked at her mouth.
“Ask who’s there,” I told her.
“Who—who is there?”
Her voice was flat and dry.
“Mrs. Keil,” came from the corridor, the words sharp with indignation. “You will have to stop this noise immediately! The tenants are complaining—and no wonder! A pretty hour to be entertaining company and carrying on so!”
“The landlady,” the dark woman whispered. Aloud: “I am sorry, Mrs. Keil. There will not be more noises.”
Something like a sniff came through the door, and the sound of dimming footsteps.
Inés Almad frowned reproachfully at Billie.
“You should not have done this,” she blamed him.
He looked humble, and at the floor, and at me. Looking at me, the purple began to flow back into his face.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I told this fella we ought to take a walk. We’ll do it now, and there won’t be no more noise here.”
“Billie!” her voice was sharp. She was reading the law to him. “You will go out and have attention for your hurts. If you have not won these fights, because of that am I to be left here alone to be murdered?”
The big man shuffled his feet, avoided her gaze and looked utterly miserable. But he shook his head stubbornly.
“I can’t do it, Inés,” he said. “Me and this guy has got to finish it. He busted my fingers, and I got to bust his jaw.”
“Billie!”
She stamped one small foot and looked imperiously at him. He looked as if he’d like to roll over on his back and hold his paws in the air. But he stood his ground.
“I got to,” he repeated. “There ain’t no way out of it.”
Anger left her face. She smiled very tenderly at him.
“Dear old Billie,” she murmured, and crossed the room to a secretary in a corner.
When she turned, an automatic pistol was in her hand. Its one eye looked at Billie.
“Now, lechón,” she purred, “go out!”
The red man wasn’t a quick thinker. It took a full minute for him to realize that this woman he loved was driving him away with a gun. The big dummy might have known that his three broken fingers had disqualified him. It took another minute for him to get his legs in motion. He went toward the door in slow bewilderment, still only half believing this thing was really happening.
The woman followed him step by step. I went ahead to open the door.
I turned the knob. The door came in, pushing me back against the opposite wall.
In the doorway stood Edouard Maurois and the man I had swatted on the chin. Each had a gun.
I looked at Inés Almad, wondering what turn her craziness would take in the face of this situation. She wasn’t so crazy as I had thought. Her scream and the thud of her gun on the floor sounded together.
“Ah!” the Frenchman was saying. “The gentlemen were leaving? May we detain them?”
The man with the big chin—it was larger than ever now with the marks of my tap—was less polite.
“Back up, you birds!” he ordered, stooping for the gun the woman had dropped.
I still was holding the doorknob. I rattled it a little as I took my hand away—enough to cover up the click of the lock as I pushed the button that left it unlatched. If I needed help, and it came, I wanted as few locks as possible between me and it.
Then—Billie, the woman and I walking backward—we all paraded into the sitting-room. Maurois and his companion both wore souvenirs of the row in the taxicab. One of the Frenchman’s eyes was bruised and closed—a beautiful shiner. His clothes were rumpled and dirty. He wore them jauntily in spite of that, and he still had his walking stick, crooked under the arm that didn’t hold his gun.
Big Chin held us with his own gun and the woman’s while Maurois ran his hand over Billie’s and my clothes, to see if we were armed. He found my gun and pocketed it. Billie had no weapons.
“Can I trouble you to step back against the wall?” Maurois asked when he was through.
We stepped back as if it was no trouble at all. I found my shoulder against one of the window curtains. I pressed it against the frame, and turned far enough to drag the curtain clear of a foot or more of pane.
If the Whosis Kid was watching, he should have had a clear view of the Frenchman—the man who had shot at him earlier in the evening. I was putting it up to the Kid. The corridor door was unlocked. If the Kid could get into the building—no great trick—he had a clear path. I didn’t know where he fit in, but I wanted him to join us, and I hoped he wouldn’t disappoint me. If everybody got together here, maybe whatever was going on would come out where I could see it and understand it.
Meanwhile, I kept as much of myself as possible out of the window. The Kid might decide to throw lead from across the alley.
Maurois was facing Inés. Big Chin’s guns were on Billie and me.
“I do not comprends ze anglais ver’ good,” the Frenchman was mocking the woman. “So it is when you say you meet wit’ me, I t’ink you say in New Orleans. I do not know you say San Francisc’. I am ver’ sorry to make ze mistake. I am mos’ sorry zat I keep you wait. But now I am here. You have ze share for me?”
“I have not.” She held her hands out in an empty gesture. “The Kid took those—everything from me.”
“What?” Maurois dropped his taunting smile and his vaudeville accent. His one open eye flashed angrily. “How could he, unless—?”
“He suspected us, Edouard.” Her mouth trembled with earnestness. Her eyes pleaded for belief. She was lying. “He had me followed. The day after I am there he comes. He takes all. I am afraid to wait for you. I fear your unbelief. You would not—”
“C’est incroyable!” Maurois was very excited over it. “I was on the first train south after our—our theatricals. Could the Kid have been on that train without my knowing it? Non! And how else could he have reached you before I? You are playing with me, ma petite Inés. That you did join the Kid, I do not doubt. But not in New Orleans. You did not go there. You came here to San Francisco.”
“Edouard!” she protested, fingering his sleeve with one brown hand, the other holding her throat as if she were having trouble getting the words out. “You cannot think that thing! Do not those weeks in Boston say it is not possible? For one like the Kid—or like any other—am I to betray you? You know me not more than to think I am like that?”
She was an actress. She was appealing, and pathetic, and anything else you like—including dangerous.
The Frenchman took his sleeve away from her and stepped back a step. White lines ringed his mouth below his tiny mustache, and his jaw muscles bulged. His one good eye was worried. She had got to him, though not quite enough to upset him altogether. But the game was young yet.
“I do not know what to think,” he said slowly. “If I have been wrong—I must find the Kid first. Then I will learn the truth.”
“You don’t have to look no further, brother. I’m right among you!”
The Whosis Kid stood in the passageway door. A black revolver was in each of his hands. Their hammers were up.