She had to stop and explain that she hadn’t jumped on him, that she had been pushed into him by me, and that she was sorry and so was I.
“What’s happening?” I asked the newsboy when I could get a word in.
“Everything,” he boasted, as if some of the credit were his. “There must be a hundred of them, and they’ve blowed the bank wide open, and now some of ’em is in Medcraft’s, and I guess they’ll blow that up, too. And they killed Tom Weegan. They got a machine gun on a car in the middle of the street. That’s it shooting now.”
“Where’s everybody—all the merry villagers?”
“Most of ’em are up behind the Hall. They can’t do nothing, though, because the machine gun won’t let ’em get near enough to see what they’re shooting at, and that smart Bill Vincent told me to clear out, ’cause I’ve only got one leg, as if I couldn’t shoot as good as the next one, if I only had something to shoot with!”
“That wasn’t right of them,” I sympathized. “But you can do something for me. You can stick here and keep your eye on this end of the street, so I’ll know if they leave in this direction.”
“You’re not just saying that so I’ll stay here out of the way, are you?”
“No,” I lied. “I need somebody to watch. I was going to leave the princess here, but you’ll do better.”
“Yes,” she backed me up, catching the idea. “This gentleman is a detective, and if you do what he asks you’ll be helping more than if you were up with the others.”
The machine gun was still firing, but not in our direction now.
“I’m going across the street,” I told the girl. “If you—”