“Suit yourself. But if you want to play it that way I’ll have to take you both in.”
He smiled with indrawn lips and stood up.
The girl thrust herself in between us, facing him.
“This is a swell time to be dummying up,” she spit at him. “Pop off, you lightweight, or I will. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to take the fall with you.”
“Shut up,” he said in his throat.
“Shut me up,” she cried.
He tried to, with both hands. I reached over her shoulders and caught one of his wrists, knocked the other hand up.
She slid out from between us and ran around behind me, screaming:
“Joe does know her. He got the things from her. She’s at the St. Martin on O’Farrell Street—her and Babe McCloor.”
While I listened to this I had to pull my head aside to let Joe’s right hook miss me, had got his left arm twisted behind him, had turned my hip to catch his knee, and had got the palm of my left hand under his chin. I was ready to give his chin the Japanese tilt when he stopped wrestling and grunted:
“Let me tell it.”
“Hop to it,” I consented, taking my hands away from him and stepping back.
He rubbed the wrist I had wrenched, scowling past me at the girl. He called her four unlovely names, the mildest of which was “a dumb twist,” and told her: