The man catapulted over Tony Quinn’s head, crashed full length on the floor.
Quinn was on him instantly, clubbing with the butt of the .45.
He never did see anything but the sudden shadow which appeared on the floor at his side.
The rest was bright and blinding light, a dazzling eruption with no sound accompanying it at all...
Faraway drums. Distant trumpets. A wailing voice, somewhere in the darkness, becoming steadily louder as the drums and trumpets approached:
He swam up out of the black depths to consciousness. The coin-slot radio across the room was blasting at top volume:
Someone was dousing water over his head. He was flat on his back, his head resting on a pillow. He twisted his face away from the cascading coldness, blinked dazedly at the bright bulb in the ceiling. It must be dark, then. He’d been dead to the world for five hours or more!
They’d moved him while he was unconscious. Cottage 10 hadn’t been papered with this atrocious purple-rose pattern at his side. He blinked again. The fat woman loomed monstrously at the side of the bed. She splashed beer on his head from the glass pitcher in her hamlike fist.
She bent over him, a cigarette drooping from one corner of her small, pretty mouth. She took the cigarette between two pudgy fingers, put it so close to his left eye he recoiled instinctively from the heat.
“You want to wake up and make like the birdies, or do ya need a little more stimulant?” The puffy eyes were venomous.
Tony tried to roll over on the bed, but he couldn’t move his arms. “I don’t feel much like singing, Maggie, but I always like to oblige a lady.”
“No kidding!” She touched the tip of the cigarette lightly against his eyelid so he jerked his head away with the painful reflex. “You’ll oblige me by telling me what ya did with Lulie, then.”
So Silk had managed to stay undercover all this time. Maybe now that it was dark, he’d even been able to spirit the sexy come-on away in his car.
“I’m the one who’s in the dark, about her, Maggie.”
“Don’t gimme that guff.”
“Truth. Soon’s she found out I was wise to her, she went out the bathroom window of that cottage. I haven’t seen her since.”
She poked the cigarette at him savagely. He rolled his head. The glowing tip ground into his cheek-bone. “Y’won’t see anything, any more. If ya don’t give me the straight — and give it fast!”
“There are worse things than being blind, Maggie. Things such as having a couple of murders on your conscience.”
She laughed nastily. “Shows how much you legal beagles know. The first two or three just sorta whet ya appetite. F’r instance, it ain’t gonna add to my mental burden none whatever to, watch you turn into cold meat. Only a matter of whether you wanta go quick and easy, or the hard way.”
“I’m in no hurry about going. Longer I wait, more chance there is that some state troopers might even pick Lulie up, squeeze a confession out of her. She got a first-class scare when I told her how much we knew about the operations of your butcher business.”
“You son of a bitch!” She struck at him viciously with the pitcher.
He rolled his head but the heavy glass half stunned him, so her words came through a tremendous roaring inside his head.
“Lulie wouldn’t ever run out on her ma! No matter what!” She raised her voice. “Hey!”
Tony heard the bathroom door open, but there was no answering voice.
Maggie cried. “This stubborn bastard won’t squeak! He don’t seem to give a damn what happens to him! See if he feels the same way about her!”
Still no reply. Rut the roaring in Tony’s ears decreased enough for him to hear familiar footsteps on the tiled floor of the bathroom. He couldn’t be mistaken about that deliberate pacing, even though now the man had taken only three or four steps, probably toward the shower compartment.
A high, keening moan of anguish came from the bathroom.
Carol! She was still alive! What unimaginable things might that devil be doing to her? To make Tony talk. Well, he would!
“Maggie, I’ll make a deal with you.” He couldn’t give Silk away, even to save Carol, but he might convince these cold-blooded killers he could make them a fair trade, nevertheless.
“Oke! Where’s Lulie?”
“She’ll be safe, and so will you and the hush-hush boy in the bathroom, if you let Miss Baldwin go. You won’t be, if you don’t. Because she’s the only one who can save the three of you from the chair!”
“Bullshoes!” Maggie sneered.
“Fact! She’s special investigator in my office. She prepared the presentment against you for the Grand Jury tomorrow.” Tony held his breath to listen for more moaning, but there was not the slightest sound from the bathroom.
Maggie was shrill. “Presentment, my backside!”
“Yes. A bill of particulars. Relating how you and Lulie decoyed three wanted criminals — maybe more — here to Ravenwood, forced them to sign checks, ransom notes, so on.”
“Ho, ho!” she jeered. “A lot of particulars there’ll be. Nobody’s even identified the bodies, and never will!”
“Oh, sure. Not even a phony identification by false bridgework could prevent the truth coming out on that. The bit of cocktail napkin tying up your bar to one of the dead men, the testimony of that dick at the Koppner House — the Pittsburg cops will have him in custody by now — even the forged signatures on the checks presented to the hanks and honored so readily by the gent hiding there in the bathroom, they’re all in that bill of particulars Miss Baldwin made out.”
The assistant cashier of the Vulcan First National Bank came out of the bathroom, still maintaining his deliberate and dignified pace. “I warned you, Maggie. We have been shillyshallying with Mr. Quinn much too long already. It’s time to put an end to this.”
Tony looked up at Drummond. “Past time, if you ask me. It’s too late to save my own life — I realize that. But it’s not too late for you to make a bargain — your life and Maggie’s for Miss Baldwin’s.”
Drummond smiled skeptically. “I don’t think we need to fear any indictment on the basis of such — shall we say, sketchy — evidence as you have been able to prepare.”
“I think you have.” Tony’s sharp ears had caught a slight skreeking sound as if someone were scratching chalk on glass, or using a glass cutter. It came from the rear of the cottage. It could be Carol, trying to get loose from her bonds, of course. But it might also be Silk, working on that bathroom window from outside. “Unless Miss Baldwin or I countermand the order for that presentment, it will go before the blue ribbon panel tomorrow and then Lulie, among others, will know what happened to her father.”
Maggie slapped him across the mouth with her huge hand. “Nothing happened to him!”
“Oh, yes. He’s dead. You killed him.”
Quinn swallowed blood from the cut his own teeth had made on his lips. He was going to have to do some gambling now, and if he guessed wrong it might be “Lights Out” for him and for Carol within minutes. But there was no alternative; he had to stall.
And he had some grounds for his guesswork. They wouldn’t have trusted a kid like Lulie unless she had close ties to someone in this murder ring, and Drummond wasn’t the kind of man to allow his daughter to take such chances.
“You wouldn’t have been so free about mentioning John Wizlow’s name unless you’d been sure I couldn’t check up on what you said about his accompanying Prosser to the bank.” He saw the assistant cashier’s eyes narrow. “You couldn’t have been sure I wouldn’t do that unless you knew Jack-the-Wrecker was beyond my reach. You knew he was dead, because you killed him, and when Lulie reads that in the newspapers, I wouldn’t give a beer-cap for your chance of living out the week, Drummond.”