“.38 special,” she named the caliber of the gun. “I dug a .38 special bullet out of you, Red.” The words came faintly to me through the roaring in my ears.
The little old man’s voice was chattering in the kitchen. I couldn’t make out anything he said. Pogy’s hands went away from me. I put my own hands to my throat. It was hell not to have any pressure at all there. The blackness went slowly away from my eyes, leaving a lot of little purple clouds that floated around and around. Presently I could sit up on the floor. I knew by that I had been lying down on it.
The purple clouds shrank until I could see past them enough to know there were only three of us in the room now. Cringing in a chair, back in a corner, was Nancy Regan. On another chair, beside the door, a black pistol in his hand, sat the scared little old man. His eyes were desperately frightened. Gun and hand shook at me. I tried to ask him to either stop shaking or move his gun away from me, but I couldn’t get any words out yet.
Upstairs, guns boomed, their reports exaggerated by the smallness of the house.
The little man winced.
“Let me get out,” he whispered with unexpected abruptness, “and I will give you everything. I will! Everything—if you will let me get out of this house!”
This feeble ray of light where there hadn’t been a dot gave me back the use of my vocal apparatus.
“Talk turkey,” I managed to say.
“I will give you those upstairs—that she-devil. I will give you the money. I will give you all—if you will let me go out. I am old. I am sick. I cannot