He disappeared around the corner. I swung wide around it, to make him miss if he were flattened to the wall waiting for me. He wasn’t. He was a hundred feet ahead, going into a space between two warehouses. I went in after him, and out after him at the other end, making better time with my hundred and ninety pounds than he was making with his two-fifty.
He crossed a street, turning up, away from the waterfront. There was a light on the corner. When I came into its glare he wheeled and leveled his gun at me. I didn’t hear it click, but I knew it had when he threw it at me. The gun went past with a couple of feet to spare and raised hell against a door behind me.
McCloor turned and ran up the street. I ran up the street after him.
I put a bullet past him to let the others know where we were. At the next corner he started to turn to the left, changed his mind, and went straight on.
I sprinted, cutting the distance between us to forty or fifty feet, and yelped:
“Stop or I’ll drop you.”
He jumped sidewise into a narrow alley.
I passed it on the jump, saw he wasn’t waiting for me, and went in. Enough light came in from the street to let us see each other and our surroundings. The alley was blind—walled on each side and at the other end by tall concrete buildings with steel-shuttered windows and doors.
McCloor faced me, less than twenty feet away. His jaw stuck out. His arms curved down free of his sides. His shoulders were bunched.
“Put them up,” I ordered, holding my gun level.