The blow, when it came, was rabid and with a sound like a paper bag full of water dropping from a third-floor window, but it wasn’t from Bristol to Bricky, it was from her own team-mate to Bristol. She staggered five or six steps back away from the commingled little group they made.
“Why, you—!” he grated. “I mighta known you’d do something like that! It’s as good as leaving your calling-card sticking out of his vest-pocket! I oughta slap you down to the soles of your feet!”
“She’s lying!” Joan Bristol shrilled, one side of her face slowly reddening as with an eczema. “I could swear I still saw it in my handbag after I got back here—!”
“Did you take it out to show it to him? Answer me! Did you? Yes or no?”
“Yes, I did... I... you know, as part of the build-up, to show him how bad I needed money. That was at the start, before he got tough about it. But I
Bricky shook her head, within his boa-constrictor-like grasp. “It fell out. It was for seventeen dollars and eighty-nine cents. It had ‘Past Due’ stamped on it, in sort of purple ink. It even had your room-number on it.”
He gave her a merciless shake. “Did you bring it here with you? What’d you do with it? Where is it?”
“I left it there where it was. I was afraid to touch anything. I left everything just the way I found it.”
Bristol closed in again, the sting of the punitive blow evidently lessened by now. “Don’t take her word for it, she may have brought it with her. Frisk her and see if it’s on her.”
“You do it, you’re a dame. You ought to know where — I’ll hold her.”
Her hands went quickly and thoroughly about their business. She missed it by inches. Bricky’s legs were tightly bound together at the feet, anyway. She held them that way, compact. It was within the top of one of her stockings, to the inside. The Bristol woman poked a finger down into each, at the outside of the leg.
“She hasn’t got it on her.”
“Then we’ll have to go back there and get it! We can’t leave it lying there, it’s a dead give-away. You chump, I ought to bust your neck lopsided for you!”
The threat glanced off his partner’s pelt unheeded. She was thinking. “Wait a minute, I’ve got the play, Griff,” she said in a rapid, bated voice. “We’ll take
He thought about it for a minute, brittle-eyed.
“It’s the only out for us, Griff. Rub out this detour by finishing her off where she started out from.”
He was starting to nod, faster and faster. He got through nodding — fast too — and sprang into action. “All right, fix her up to get her past that desk downstairs. She’s pie-eyed, see, and you’ve got to hold her up. I’ll still get him out of the way like I told you. We’re helping her home, that’s all. Leave her hands the way they are, just loosen her feet so she can move on them.”
They were numb from constriction, she couldn’t use them at first, even after they’d been freed.
Bristol took her own coat, slung it around Bricky’s shoulders, concealing the defection of her arms. That wasn’t particularly grotesque, there was a new style that had come over from London lately for women to wear their coats just that way, leaving their arms out of the sleeves.
“Take the towel off her chin,” the man said. “You’ll have to. Here, use this on her.”
He brought something out from behind, handed it over to Bristol. Something that glinted and was black. Probably the one that had been used on Graves.
It disappeared under the enshrouding coat, and Bristol’s hand ground it hard into Bricky’s spine, deep as a spinal anesthetic being administered with a snub-nosed, triggered needle.
“Now wait here with her. I’m going down ahead and get the car out of bed, and get rid of that stew down at the desk. Gimme about ten minutes, the garage is a couple blocks over. Better take the stairs.”
The door closed after him and the two women were left alone.
They didn’t speak; not a word passed between them. They stood there curiously rigid, one directly behind the other, the coat hooded between them, raised in the middle like a small tent with the passage of Bristol’s hand.
