“Yessir,” said Ducklin. He went pattering down the stairs. Left alone, Martineau took the revolver from his pocket. “Now then, Don my boy,” he said as he went toward the skylight, “we’ll see what we can do for you.”
He climbed onto the two tables and stooped beneath the open window. It was propped open to an angle of forty-five degrees by an iron bracket. He put out his head for a fraction of a second, looking in one direction only. Then he looked around the tilted window. The section of sloping roof was deserted. He climbed out onto the slates.
This was no roof with a strong parapet like that of the hotel across the alley. If a man slipped on the slates, there was only a narrow iron rain trough to stop him from falling into the street below. But beyond this outer slope there was another bay of the roof, where two sections of slates sloped down to a gutter. That was half of the roof. Another inner bay and an outer slope made up the other half.
Martineau approached the crest of the outer slope. Before he showed his head against the sky he looked up at the roof of the Royal Lancaster, but Ducklin was not yet in position. He decided that he could not afford to wait for Ducklin. He reached up and put his fingers over a ridge tile, then he pulled himself up and took two quick looks. The first inner bay was empty. He scrambled over with relief. Now, at least, he could not roll off the roof.
He looked up again, and saw Ducklin staring down. The man’s red face was redder than ever with excitement, and his prominent blue eyes were popping. The inspector could see the color of them even at that distance.
“In the next bay,” the detective bellowed. “Behind the chimney stack.”
There was the sharp crack of Starling’s pistol, and stone dust flew from the parapet. Ducklin discreetly bobbed down out of sight.
“That’s four,” Martineau muttered. “He has at least six left.”
He did not relish the idea of looking over into the next bay and being sniped from behind the chimney stack. What was Starling doing there anyway? Was he going to fight it out from there? Or was he looking for a way down?
He crawled up the slates and raised his head just high enough for him to see the top of the chimney stack. It was at the end of the bay, overlooking a two-story drop onto the sloping roof of an adjoining brush factory.
He walked along the gutter to the end of the bay, then he got on his hands and knees to look over. Starling was doing the same thing. Martineau pulled back out of sight as Starling fired.
“Hard cheddar, Don,” the inspector called mockingly. “You need some practice with that thing.”
Starling’s reply was a mouthful of lurid invective, and Martineau grinned. He had seen what he wanted to see. There were no fall pipes on that side of the building, but the chimney stack itself jutted like a buttress into the adjoining property, and it was roughly masoned. A descent could perhaps be made by means of fingers and toes, but it would be a hazardous task even for a good climber.
“If you try to climb down that stack, I’ve got you,” he called. “You can’t get away.”
“I’ll get away, you swaggering monkey,” Starling shouted, evidently beside himself with rage.
Martineau pondered. Why not make the man fight? It was an even chance. It might mean promotion, or it might mean a vacant inspectorship in the Granchester City Police. It was sometimes an advantage for a man to have no children. He could take chances with an easy conscience.
“I’ve sent for some more men,” he shouted. “If you want to have a bash you’ll have to do it now. There’s only you and me on this roof.”
Apparently he was not believed. The shouted reply more than suggested that he was a liar.
“Come on, Don,” he urged, not caring a great deal what happened. “I’m waiting for you.”
If Starling accepted the challenge, and proved himself the better man with a gun, who would be sorry? Julia, for a few weeks, until she saw somebody who might make her a second husband. Lucky Lusk? For a day or two. His mates on the force? There would be an even balance of open regret about his death and secret pleasure in a sensation. Life must go on, and men soon forget. Every sergeant in the C.I.D. would contribute toward a wreath, and hope to be promoted into the vacancy made by the death of an inspector. Ducklin up there would express his sorrow in a very ostensible sort of way, and hope to be promoted into the place of the sergeant who was made inspector.
Martineau turned his head and looked up. Ducklin was kneeling behind the parapet. Only part of the red face could be seen. The blue eyes were gazing intently in the direction of the chimney stack.
The inspector wondered why Starling was sitting still. That was not his way at all. If there was a move to be made, he would make it. One thing seemed obvious. He hesitated to start making the difficult climb down the chimney stack while there was a policeman on the roof with him. Did he think that the police were murderers? Did he think that a policeman would shoot him or dislodge him while he was making the climb?
“I didn’t know you were windy,” Martineau taunted. “You must be getting old. Scared of a fight with one copper!”
“I’m not scared of you, you bastard,” came the reply.
“Of course you are. You know I can always lick you. It’s all right making threats when you know I can’t touch you. What about it now, when there’s just the two of us?”
Starling did not reply, but Ducklin up above appeared to go suddenly crazy with excitement. “Look out, look out!” he screeched. “He’s coming!”
Martineau took Furnisher’s old revolver from his pocket, and thumbed the safety catch. He grinned, because he felt curiously irresponsible. This was it, the last encounter. Don Starling was coming, because he had remembered that Harry Martineau was never a bar. And possibly he expected to meet an unarmed man.
Looking up Martineau saw fingers appear on the apex of the roof. They were followed by the head and shoulders, hands and arms of Starling.
Both men fired. Martineau felt a hard blow on his chest, and he was knocked backward against the slope of the bay. He saw the pistol fly out of Starling’s hand and go spinning in the air above and behind him: a mediocre shot but an extremely lucky one.
Starling disappeared in pursuit of the pistol. Martineau sat up. There was a feeling of numbness in his chest: no pain but a trickling uneasiness. He had no time to think about it. He scrambled up the slates and looked over the apex in time to see Starling stooping in the gutter in the next bay. He was picking up the pistol with his left hand. His right hand was a red ruin of blood.
Martineau fired and missed. Starling vainly squeezed an immovable trigger. Martineau could not steady his gun again, because he was seized by a sudden irrepressible need to rid his lungs of something by coughing. He clung to the ridge tile and coughed, and never took his eyes from Starling. The latter failed to free the damaged mechanism of the pistol and in anger he threw it at his enemy-a poor throw with the left hand-and fled. He ran along the bottom of the bay, hopping from side to side of the narrow gutter.
The coughing bout ended. Martineau spat bloody fluid onto the slates. Then he put the revolver in his pocket and went after his man.
With an injured hand it was impossible for Starling to climb down the chimney stack. The only thing he could do was to go over the edge at the end of the gutter, with the desperate intention of hanging for a moment by his hands and then dropping two stories to the roof of the brush factory. He swung his legs over, but he was holding the coping with his head and shoulders above it when Martineau tackled him.
The inspector flung himself full length. He appeared to reach for Starling’s throat, but his big hands did not seek the windpipe. He grasped great handfuls of the coat at the lapels, and held them stiff-armed. Starling could go neither forward nor back.
The brown eyes blazed into the slightly glazed, calm, relentless gray ones. The fugitive struck once, and once only, with his wounded right hand. Then he let go of the coping and punched with his left. Hampered by the coping, he could not put much weight behind the blows, but they stung Martineau. Still keeping his arms rigid, the inspector wriggled and pushed his way forward. There was a second of dreadful strain when, with all his captive’s weight suspended, the edge of the coping seemed about to break the ulna bones of his forearms, and then his own head and shoulders were over the edge. Lying flat in the gutter, he had Starling hanging straight down below him, suspended by the lapels of his coat. Starling’s left hand could no longer reach the face which looked down at him.