didn’t stand in corners and knock down people one after the other like a machine, while a scrawny little bozo up at the other end fed them to you. It was too damned silly! I had enough!
I passed up my hiding place, put down the pipe and found another spot to crouch in, under some shelves, near the steps. I hunkered down there with a gun in each fist. This game I was playing in was—it had to be—gummy around the edges. I wasn’t going to stay put any longer.
Flora came down the steps. Two steps behind her the little man trotted.
Flora had a gun in each hand. Her gray eyes were everywhere. Her head was down like an animal’s coming to a fight. Her nostrils quivered. Her body, coming down neither slowly nor swiftly, was balanced like a dancer’s. If I live to a million I’ll never forget the picture this handsome brutal woman made coming down those unplaned cellar stairs. She was a beautiful fight-bred animal going to a fight.
She saw me as I straightened.
“Drop ’em!” I said, but I knew she wouldn’t.
The little man flicked a limp brown blackjack out of his sleeve and knocked her behind the ear just as she swung her left gun on me.
I jumped over and caught her before she hit the cement.
“Now, you see!” the old man said gleefully. “You have the money and you have them. And now you will get me and that girl out.”
“First we’ll stow this with the others,” I said.
After he had helped me do that I told him to lock the cell door. He did, and I took the key with one hand, his neck with the other. He squirmed like a snake while I ran my other hand over his clothes, removing the blackjack and a gun, and finding a money-belt around his waist.