«That’s not thirty feet,» I said.
He gave me a sour look and went a few feet behind the bench. I grinned, then I stopped grinning.
His small hand darted so swiftly I could hardly follow it. Five darts hung in the gold center of the target in less than that made seconds. He stared at me triumphantly.
«Gosh, you’re pretty good, Master Trevillyan,» I grunted, and got my dollar out.
His small hand snapped at it like a trout taking the fly. He had it out of sight like a flash.
«That’s nothing,» he chuckled. «You ought to see me on our target range back of the garages. Want to go over there and bet some more?»
I looked back up the hill and saw part of a low white building backed up to a bank,
«Well, not today,» I said. «Next time I visit here maybe. So Dud O’Mara is not your dad. If I find him anyway, will it be all right with you?»
He shrugged his thin, sharp shoulders in a maroon sweater. «Sure. But what can you do the police can’t do?»
«It’s a thought,» I said, and left him.
I went on down the brick walk to the bottom of the lawns and along inside the hedge towards the gatehouse. I could see glimpses of the street through the hedge. When I was halfway to the lodge I saw the blue sedan outside. It was a small neat car, low-slung, very clean, lighter than a police car, but about the same size. Over beyond it I could see my roadster waiting under the pepper tree.
I stood looking at the sedan through the hedge. I could see the drift of somebody’s cigarette smoke against the windshield inside the car. I turned my back to the lodge and looked up the hill. The Trevillyan kid had gone somewhere out of sight, to salt his dollar down maybe, though a dollar shouldn’t have meant much to him.
I bent over and unsheathed the 7.65 Luger I was wearing that day and stuck it nose-down inside my left sock, inside my shoe. I could walk that way, if I didn’t walk too fast. I went on to the gates.
They kept them locked and nobody got in without identification from the house. The lodge keeper, a big husky with a gun under his arm, came out and let me through a small postern at the side of the gates. I stood talking to him through the bars for a minute, watching the sedan,
It looked all right. There seemed to be two men in it. It was about a hundred feet along in the shadow of the high wall on the other side. It was a very narrow street, without sidewalks. I didn’t have far to go to my roadster.
I walked a little stiffly across the dark pavement and got in, grabbed quickly down into a small compartment in the front part of the seat where I kept a spare gun. It was a police Colt. I slid it inside my under-arm holster and started the car.
I eased the brake off and pulled away. Suddenly the rain let go in big splashing drops and the sky was as black as Carrie Nation’s bonnet. Not so black but that I saw the sedan wheel away from the curb behind me.
I started the windshield wiper and built up to forty miles an hour in a hurry. I had gone about eight blocks when they gave me the siren. That fooled me. It was a quiet street, deadly quiet. I slowed down and pulled over to the curb. The sedan slid up beside me and I was looking at the black snout of a submachine gun over the sill of the rear door.
Behind it a narrow face with reddened eyes, a fixed mouth. A voice above the sound of the rain and the windshield wiper and the noise of the two motors said: «Get in here with us. Be nice, if you know what I mean.»
They were not cops. It didn’t matter now. I shut off the ignition, dropped my car keys on the floor and got out on the running board. The man behind the wheel of the sedan didn’t look at me. The one behind kicked a door open and slid away along the seat, holding the tommy gun nicely.
I got into the sedan.
«Okay, Louie. The frisk.»
The driver came out from under his wheel and got behind me. He got the Colt from under my arm, tapped my hips and pockets, my belt line.
«Clean,» he said, and got back into the front of the car.
The man with the tommy reached forward with his left hand and took my Colt from the driver, then lowered the tommy to the floor of the car and draped a brown rug over it. He leaned back in the corner again, smooth and relaxed, holding the Colt on his knee.
«Okay, Louie. Now let’s ride.»
FIVE
We rode — idly, gently, the rain drumming on the roof and streaming down the windows on one side. We wound along curving hill streets, among estates that covered acres, whose houses were distant clusters of wet gables beyond blurred trees.
A tang of cigarette smoke floated under my nose and the redeyed man said: «What did he tell you?»
«Little enough,» I said. «That Mona blew town the night the papers got it. Old Winslow knew it already.»
«He wouldn’t have to dig very deep for that,» Red-eyes said. «The buttons didn’t. What else?»
«He said he’d been shot at. He wanted me to ride him out of town. At the last moment he ran off alone. I don’t know why.»
«Loosen up, peeper,» Red-eyes said dryly. «It’s your only way out.»
«That’s all there is,» I said, and looked out of the window at the driving rain.
«You on the case for the old guy?»
«No. He’s tight.»
Red-eyes laughed. The gun in my shoe felt heavy and unsteady, and very far away. I said: «That might be all there is to know about O’Mara.»
The man in the front seat turned his head a little and growled: «Where the hell did you say that street was?»
«Top of Beverly Glen, stupid. Mulholland Drive.» «Oh, that. Jeeze, that ain’t paved worth a damn.» «We’ll pave it with the peeper,» Red-eyes said. The estates thinned out and scrub oak took possession of the hillsides.
«You ain’t a bad guy,» Red-eyes said. «You’re just tight, like the old man. Don’t you get the idea? We want to know everything he said, so we’ll know whether we got to blot you or no.»
«Go to hell,» I said. «You wouldn’t believe me anyway.»
«Try us. This is just a job to us. We just do it and pass on.»
«It must be nice work,» I said. «While it lasts.»
«You’ll crack wise once too often, guy.»
«I did — long ago, while you were still in Reform School. I’m still getting myself disliked.»
Red-eyes laughed again. There seemed to be very little bluster about him.
«Far as we know you’re clean with the law. Didn’t make no cracks this morning. That right?»
«If I say yes, you can blot me right now. Okay.»
«How about a grand pin money and forget the whole thing?»
«You wouldn’t believe that either.»
«Yeah, we would. Here’s the idea. We do the job and pass on. We’re an organization. But you live here, you got goodwill and a business. You’d play ball.»
«Sure,» I said. «I’d play ball.»
«We don’t,» Red-eyes said softly, «never knock off a legit. Bad for the trade.»
He leaned back in the corner, the gun on his right knee, and reached into an inner pocket. He spread a large tan wallet on his knee and fished two bills out of it, slid them folded along the seat. The wallet went back into his pocket.
«Yours,» he said gravely. «You won’t last twenty-four hours if you slip your cable.»
I picked the bills up. Two five hundreds. I tucked them in my vest. «Right,» I said. «I wouldn’t be a legit any more then, would I?»
«Think that over, dick.»
We grinned at each other, a couple of nice lads getting along in a harsh, unfriendly world. Then Red-eyes turned his head sharply.
«Okay, Louie, Forget the Mulholland stuff. Pull up.»
The car was halfway up a long bleak twist of hill. The rain drove in gray curtains down the slope. There was no ceiling, no horizon. I could see a quarter of a mile and I could see nothing outside our car that lived.