No answer. Furniture scraped in the sitting-room. Two guns went off together. A groaning broke out.
“I’ve got the stuff,” I whispered under cover of the groaning.
That brought an answer.
“Jerry! Ah, come here to me!”
The groans went on, but fainter, in the other room. I crawled toward the woman’s voice. I went on hands and knees, bumping as carefully as possible against things. I couldn’t see anything. Midway, I put a hand down on a soggy bundle of fur—the late purple Frana. I went on.
Inés touched my shoulder with an eager hand.
“Give them to me,” were her first words.
I grinned at her in the dark, patted her hand, found her head, and put my mouth to her ear.
“Let’s get back in the bedroom,” I breathed, paying no attention to her request for the loot. “The Kid will be coming.” I didn’t doubt that he had bested Big Chin. “We can handle him better in the bedroom.”
I wanted to receive him in a room with only one door.
She led me—both of us on hands and knees—to the bedroom. I did what thinking seemed necessary as we crawled. The Kid couldn’t know yet how the Frenchman and I had come out. If he guessed, he would guess that the Frenchman had survived. He would be likely to put me in the chump class with Billie, and think the Frenchman could handle me. The chances were that he had got Big Chin, and knew it by now. It was black as black in the sitting-room, but he must know by now that he was the only living thing there.