“How do I know you really got the key?” he asked.
Then I knew I had him.
“What would be the sense to all this if I didn’t have it?”
“It’s not on the roof, it ain’t in your clothes. Where is it, damn you?”
“Give me the gun,” I said.
He stamped his feet some more, flapped his arms, looked colder than ever. I didn’t feel a thing. I was numb from head to foot. All of a sudden, he sobbed. He blubbered like the nasty little embryo he was. Then he threw the gun down on the roof beside me.
I had a lot of will power and a little hope, but hardly any strength. The hardest thing I ever did was to turn over, so I could put my hand around the gun butt. I imagined it felt warm — from his hand.
“Get my clothes,” I told him. “Hurry it up — I’m almost finished.”
He was on the receiving end this time. He was so anxious to save his own life that he helped me into my pants and shirt and even took off his overcoat and put it around me.
I managed to stand up, with his help, but then I pushed him away. It was a weak push — a gnat could have done as well — but all the kid needed was the implication. He stepped away.
I staggered over to the door, let myself slide down. Now came the dangerous part. Once I had the key, he wasn’t going to be easy to handle. My fingers were numb, but I could still feel the metal pencil clipped to the pocket of my coat, and I got it free.
I put the end of the pencil under the door, tilted it, pulled it toward me. After a few hair-raising failures, I saw the key glistening like a diamond as I dragged it from under the door.
He was yelling something. My fingers closed around the key, clumsily, but I’d put my left hand inside the overcoat long enough to get the blood circulating sluggishly, and I could manipulate them. My other hand seemed completely numb and held the gun only because my fingers were frozen around it.
“You shoved it under the door!” he shrilled. “Damn you! Under the door! Under the door! It was there all the time!”
“You’re smart,” I said. “Like your old man, you’re smart. Why didn’t you find it, smart guy?”
He came toward me. I fired the gun. At least it went off, though I had no real sensation of pulling the trigger. The slug missed him, but it straightened things out in his mind. He had no desire to die.
I got the door open, and the warm air that came up felt like the blast from a furnace. I let it fan all around me until my skin started tingling.
“Mr. Landin,” the kid was saying. “Please, Mr. Landin — I’m cold! I’m dying I’m so cold!”
I let him go first, and not out of politeness. My thigh, my whole body, was giving me fits. The wound was beginning to bleed again. We reached the bottom of the stairs and went on out into and corridor.
I picked up one of the bricks that had held the door open, and I smashed it against his skull as hard as I could. A blow with the gun wouldn’t have been as effective.
I let him lie there, because there was nothing else I could do. I moved toward my office down the hall. I knew I had only a few seconds left. I made my legs travel faster. Miracle of miracles — I was inside! I picked up the phone. My finger found the slot for the operator, and I dialed. I thought the end of my finger was going to break off.
Then they came — as I thought they might — the shakes! I began shivering from head to foot. The police understood me, but it took what seemed like a long while to get the words around my chattering teeth.
They fed me whiskey from a bottle in my office — only after they got me to the hospital, was I given hot coffee. The wound wasn’t too bad. I’d be up and out of there in a few days — that’s what they told me.
As it turned out, the doctors were right. They put young Jigger Abbott in the prison ward of the same hospital, and he didn’t get out for two-and-a-half weeks. It seems he had caught pneumonia.