I raised my hands as high as I could without dropping my supporting crutch, meanwhile cursing myself for having been too careless, or too vain, to keep a gun in my hand while I talked to the girl.
So this was why she had come back to the house. If she freed the Italian, she had thought, we would have no reason for suspecting that he hadn’t been in on the robbery, and so we would look for the bandits among his friends. A prisoner, of course, he might have persuaded us of his innocence. She had given him the gun so he could either shoot his way clear, or, what would help her as much, get himself killed trying.
While I was arranging these thoughts in my head, Flippo had come up behind me. His empty hand passed over my body, taking away my own gun, his, and the one I had taken from the girl.
“A bargain, Flippo,” I said when he had moved away from me, a little to one side, where he made one corner of a triangle whose other corners were the girl and I. “You’re out on parole, with some years still to be served. I picked you up with a gun on you. That’s plenty to send you back to the big house. I know you weren’t in on this job. My idea is that you were up here on a smaller one of your own, but I can’t prove that and don’t want to. Walk out of here, alone and neutral, and I’ll forget I saw you.”
Little thoughtful lines grooved the boy’s round, dark face.
The princess took a step toward him.
“You heard the offer I just now made him?” she asked. “Well, I make that offer to you, if you will kill him.”