VII
Billie wasn’t long getting up to us. I opened the door when he rang, the woman standing beside me. He didn’t wait for an invitation. He was through the doorway before I had the door half opened. He glared at me. There was plenty of him!
A big, red-faced, red-haired bale of a man—big in any direction you measured him—and none of him was fat. The skin was off his nose, one cheek was clawed, the other swollen. His hatless head was a tangled mass of red hair. One pocket had been ripped out of his coat, and a button dangled on the end of a six-inch ribbon of torn cloth.
This was the big heaver who had been in the taxicab with the woman.
“Who’s this mutt?” he demanded, moving his big paws toward me.
I knew the woman was a goof. It wouldn’t have surprised me if she had tried to feed me to the battered giant. But she didn’t. She put a hand on one of his and soothed him.
“Do not be nasty, Billie. He is a friend. Without him I would not this night have escaped.”
He scowled. Then his face straightened out and he caught her hand in both of his.
“So you got away it’s all right,” he said huskily. “I’d a done better if we’d been outside. There wasn’t no room in that taxi for me to turn around. And one of them guys crowned me.”
That was funny. This big clown was apologizing for getting mangled up protecting a woman who had scooted, leaving him to get out as well as he could.
The woman led him into the sitting-room, I tagging along behind. They sat on the bench. I picked out a chair that wasn’t in line with the window the Whosis Kid ought to be watching.
“What did happen, Billie?” She touched his grooved cheek and skinned nose with her fingertips. “You are hurt.”
He grinned with a sort of shamefaced delight. I saw that what I had taken for a swelling in one cheek was only a big hunk of chewing tobacco.
“I don’t know all that happened,” he said. “One of ’em crowned me, and I didn’t wake up till a coupla hours afterwards. The taxi driver didn’t give me no help in the fight, but he was a right guy and knowed where his money would come from. He didn’t holler or nothing. He took me around to a doc that wouldn’t squawk, and the doc straightened me out, and then I come up here.”
“Did you see each one of those men?” she asked.
“Sure! I seen ’em, and felt ’em, and maybe tasted ’em.”
“They were how many?”
“Just two of ’em. A little fella with a trick tickler, and a husky with a big chin on him.”
“There was no other? There was not a younger man, tall and thin?”
That could be the Whosis Kid. She thought he and the Frenchman were working together?
Billie shook his shaggy, banged-up head.
“Nope. They was only two of ’em.”
She frowned and chewed her lip.
Billie looked sidewise at me—a look that said “Beat it.”
The woman caught the glance. She twisted around on the bench to put a hand on his head.
“Poor Billie,” she cooed; “his head most cruelly hurt saving me, and now, when he should be at his home giving it rest, I keep him here talking. You go, Billie, and when it is morning and your poor head is better, you will telephone to me?”
His red face got dark. He glowered at me.
Laughing, she slapped him lightly on the cheek that bulged around his cud of tobacco.
“Do not become jealous of Jerry. Jerry is enamored of one yellow and white lady somewhere, and to her he is most faithful. Not even the smallest liking has he for dark women.” She smiled a challenge at me. “Is it not so, Jerry?”
“No,” I denied. “And, besides, all women are dark.”
Billie shifted his chew to the scratched cheek and bunched his shoulders.
“What the hell kind of a crack is that to be making?” he rumbled.
“That means nothing it should not, Billie,” she laughed at him. “It is only an epigram.”
“Yeah?” Billie was sour and truculent. I was beginning to think he didn’t like me. “Well, tell your little fat friend to keep his smart wheezes to himself. I don’t like ’em.”
That was plain enough. Billie wanted an argument. The woman, who held him securely enough to have steered him off, simply laughed again. There was no profit in trying to find the reason behind any of her actions. She was a nut. Maybe she thought that since we weren’t sociable enough for her to keep both on hand, she’d let us tangle, and hold on to the one who rubbed the other out of the picture.
Anyway, a row was coming. Ordinarily I am inclined to peace. The day is past when I’ll fight for the fun of it. But I’ve been in too many rumpuses to mind them much. Usually nothing very bad happens to you, even if you lose. I wasn’t going to back down just because this big stiff was meatier than I. I’ve always been lucky against the large sizes. He had been banged up earlier in the evening. That would cut down his steam some. I wanted to hang around this apartment a little longer, if it could be managed. If Billie wanted to tussle—and it looked as if he did—he could.
It was easy to meet him halfway: anything I said would be used against me.
I grinned at his red face, and suggested to the woman, solemnly:
“I think if you’d dip him in blueing he’d come out the same color as the other pup.”
As silly as that was, it served. Billie reared up on his feet and curled his paws into fists.
“Me and you’ll take a walk,” he decided; “out where there’s space enough.”
I got up, pushed my chair back with a foot, and quoted “Red” Burns to him: “If you’re close enough, there’s room enough.”
He wasn’t a man you had to talk to much. We went around and around.
It was fists at first. He started it by throwing his right at my head. I went in under it and gave him all I had in a right and left to the belly. He swallowed his chew of tobacco. But he didn’t bend. Few big men are as strong as they look. Billie was.
He didn’t know anything at all. His idea of a fight was to stand up and throw fists at your head—right, left, right, left. His fists were as large as wastebaskets. They wheezed through the air. But always at the head—the easiest part to get out of the way.
There was room enough for me to go in and out. I did that. I hammered his belly. I thumped his heart. I mauled his belly again. Every time I hit him he grew an inch, gained a pound and picked up another horsepower. I don’t fool when I hit, but nothing I did to this human mountain—not even making him swallow his hunk of tobacco—had any visible effect on him.
I’ve always had a reasonable amount of pride in my ability to sock. It was disappointing to have this big heaver take the best I could give him without a grunt. But I wasn’t discouraged. He couldn’t stand it forever. I settled down to make a steady job of it.
Twice he clipped me. Once on the shoulder. A big fist spun me half around. He didn’t know what to do next. He came in on the wrong side. I made him miss, and got clear. The other time he caught me on the forehead. A chair kept me from going down. The smack hurt me. It must have hurt him more. A skull is tougher than a knuckle. I got out of his way when he closed in, and let him have something to remember on the back of his neck.
The woman’s dusky face showed over Billie’s shoulder as he straightened up. Her eyes were shiny behind their heavy lashes, and her mouth was open to let white teeth gleam through.
Billie got tired of the boxing after that, and turned the set-to into a wrestling match, with trimmings. I would rather have kept on with the fists. But I couldn’t help myself. It was his party. He grabbed one of my wrists, yanked, and we thudded chest to chest.
He didn’t know any more about this than he had about that. He didn’t have to. He was big enough and strong enough to play with me.
I was underneath when we tumbled down on the floor and began rolling around. I did my best. It wasn’t anything. Three times I put a scissors on him. His body was too big for my short legs to clamp around. He chucked me off as if he were amusing the baby. There was no use at all in trying to do things to his legs. No hold known to man could have held them. His arms were almost as strong. I quit trying.
Nothing I knew was any good against this monster. He was out of my range. I was satisfied to spend all that was left of my strength trying to keep him from crippling me—and waiting for a chance to outsmart him.
He threw me around a lot. Then my chance came.
I was flat on my back, with everything but one or two of my most centrally located intestines squeezed out. Kneeling astride me, he brought his big hands up to my throat and fastened them there.
That’s how much he didn’t know!
You can’t choke a man that way—not if his hands are loose and he knows a hand is stronger than a finger.
I laughed in his purple face and brought my own hands up. Each of them picked one of his little fingers out of my flesh. It wasn’t a dream at that. I was all in, and he wasn’t. But no man’s little finger is stronger than another’s hand. I twisted them back. They broke together.
He yelped. I grabbed the next—the ring fingers.
One of them snapped. The other was ready to pop when he let go.
Jerking up, I butted him in the face. I twisted from between his knees. We came on our feet together.
The doorbell rang.