“The table will go through the window,” I said. “We’ll chuck it as far as we can and hope the racket will lead ’em out there before they decide to look up here.”
Red and the girl were assuring each other that each was still all in one piece. He broke away from her to help me with the table. We balanced it, swung it, let it go. It did nicely, crashing into the wall of the building opposite, dropping down into a backyard to clang and clatter on a pile of tin, or a collection of garbage cans, or something beautifully noisy. You couldn’t have heard it more than a block and a half away.
We got away from the window as men bubbled out of Larrouy’s back door.
The girl, unable to find any wounds on O’Leary, had turned to Jack Counihan. He had a cut cheek. She was monkeying with it and a handkerchief.
“When you finish that,” Jack was telling her, “I’m going out and get one on the other side.”
“I’ll never finish if you keep talking—you jiggle your cheek.”
“That’s a swell idea,” he exclaimed. “San Francisco is the second largest city in California. Sacramento is the state capital. Do you like geography? Shall I tell you about Java? I’ve never been there, but I drink their coffee. If—”
“Silly!” she said, laughing. “If you don’t hold still I’ll stop now.”
“Not so good,” he said. “I’ll be still.”
She wasn’t doing anything except wiping blood off his cheek, blood that had better been let dry there. When she finished this perfectly useless surgery, she took her hand away slowly, surveying the hardly noticeable