I twisted around just in time to see—jerking out of sight behind a corner of the passage that gave to a small dining room—Guy Cudner’s scarred face. And as it disappeared a bullet from Orrett’s gun splattered the plaster from the wall where it had been.
I grinned at the thought of what must be going on in Orrett’s head as he lay sprawled out on the floor confronted by two Cudners. But he took a shot at me just then and I stopped grinning. Luckily, he had to twist around to fire at me, putting his weight on his wounded arm, and the pain made him wince, spoiling his aim.
Before he had adjusted himself more comfortably I had scrambled on hands and knees to Pigaitti’s kitchen door—only a few feet away—and had myself safely tucked out of range around an angle in the wall; all but my eyes and the top of my head, which I risked so that I might see what went on.
Orrett was now ten or twelve feet from me, lying flat on the floor, facing Cudner, with a gun in his hand and another on the floor beside him.
Across the room, perhaps thirty feet away, Cudner was showing himself around his protecting corner at brief intervals to exchange shots with the man on the floor, occasionally sending one my way. We had the place to ourselves. There were four exits, and the rest of Pigatti’s customers had used them all.
I had my gun out, but I was playing a waiting game. Cudner, I figured, had been tipped off to Orrett’s search for him and had arrived on the scene with no mistaken idea of the other’s attitude. Just what there was between them and what bearing it had on the Montgomery murders was a mystery to me, but I didn’t try to solve it now. I kept away from the bullets that were flying around as best I could and waited.