garage could have been a man. I put an arm out in the moonlight and beckoned. The shadow came toward me—Mickey Linehan. Andy MacElroy’s head peeped around the back of the house. I beckoned again and he followed Mickey.
I returned to the open window.
Papadopoulos and Flora—a rabbit and a lioness—stood looking at the guns of Carey and Jack. They looked again at me when I appeared, and a smile began to curve the woman’s full lips.
Mickey and Andy came up and stood beside me. The woman’s smile died grimly.
“Carey,” I said, “you and Jack stay as is. Mickey, Andy, go in and take hold of our gifts from God.”
When the two operatives stepped through the window—things happened.
Papadopoulos screamed.
Big Flora lunged against him, knocking him at the back door.
“Go! Go!” she roared.
Stumbling, staggering, he scrambled across the room.
Flora had a pair of guns—sprung suddenly into her hands. Her big body seemed to fill the room, as if by willpower she had become a giantess. She charged—straight at the guns Jack and Carey held—blotting the back door and the fleeing man from their fire.
A blur to one side was Andy MacElroy moving.
I had a hand on Jack’s gun-arm.