Fay didn’t know what to say; it was a dilemma. “No,” she said at last. “He’s my pa. I’ll handle him.”
Bees was outraged. “I’ll handle you!” he said angrily, and grabbed her arm again.
Fay cried out in pain. Luckner’s jaw tightened. He stepped forward and took Bees’ arm, twisting it until the man released the girl; then Luckner grabbed Bees by the collar and the seat of his pants, lifting a bit, and started to walk him police fashion down the hall toward the steps. Bees struggled against the undignified grip, his crotch painful from the pressure of the raised trousers. He reached for the shears in the holster at his side, managed to drag them free, and punched them backward in a desperate attempt to win release from the grip. The points narrowly missed Luckner. Luckner’s jaw tightened further; his eyes became mere slits.
“Why, you dirty bastard! You miserable afskeiding! Pull something on me, will you!” he said viciously, and swung Bees around roughly. He took the arm with the scissors and twisted until they fell to the floor. He kicked them away and kept on twisting. Bees cried out in pain and then screamed as the shoulder snapped, slumping to his knees and then sprawling on the floor. Fay screamed and tried to intervene, but Luckner roughly shoved her away, all else forgotten in his maddened rage. Bees was trying to sit up, whimpering in pain, holding his broken arm as tightly to his side as he could while he supported himself on his other arm. Luckner, cursing steadily in a mad monotone, kicked Bees first on the supporting arm, and when Bees collapsed with a loud cry of pain, Luckner kicked him on the broken shoulder. Bees screamed once and fainted, but Luckner continued to kick the inert body, making it jump grotesquely with each kick. Fay was holding her hands over her ears, her eyes wide with shock, screaming without stop. People were running up the stairs from the bar to see what was happening. The first man to reach the top of the stairs saw Luckner methodically kicking some man on the floor of the hallway, a steady stream of curses coming from him as he did so. The man on the stairs stopped abruptly; in the six months Luckner had been managing the Paris Hotel his reputation as a bad man to cross had been proven more than once. Fay saw the frightened faces of the people on the stairs and called to them, her voice tinged with hysteria.
“Stop him! Stop him!”
Nobody moved. Her hysteria increased.
“Then get Barney! Someone get Barney!”
One of the men turned and forced himself past the others on the stairs, running out into the street and down the road to Barney’s office in Commissioner Street. He burst in as Barney was examining a stone through his loupe, his eyeglasses up on his forehead, a digger sitting before him.
“Barney!”
Barney looked up and came to his feet at once, frightened by the urgency in the man’s voice. “What is it? What happened?”
“Luckner’s killing some man! Your wife is there, screaming!”
Barney called out to his nephew in the rear of the office. “Jack, take over!” He dashed out of the office and down the road, pounding along as fast as he could go with the other man running behind him. He ran into the hotel and forced his way through the crowd on the stairs, tearing at them, pressing through them. The scene that met his eyes when he came to the top was one of horror. Bees’ dead body lay on the hallway floor, his face barely recognizable, a bloody mask with one eye socket empty and staring blindly where Luckner’s heavy boot had torn the eyeball loose, flipping it away to lie somewhere in the shadowed hallway. The nose had been flattened to one side, a bloody smear, and one ear had almost been ripped off. The body itself was twisted obscenely, doll-like, most of the bones broken after death by the unceasing, merciless kicking. Fay, sobbing softly and incessantly, was slumped on the floor against one wall, her hands over her eyes to shut out the memory of that terrible scene. Luckner, the hot edge of his temper spent, was standing as in a daze, panting a bit from his effort.
Barney walked past the dead body, shouldered Luckner aside, and bent to pick Fay up in his arms. He carried her into their room and laid her on the bed. He covered her with the coverlet and bent to kiss her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
“Pa… he killed Pa…”
“I know, darling. Are you all right?”
She nodded slowly, still sobbing softly. He kissed her again, gently, tenderly. “I’ll be right back, darling.”
He walked out into the hall, closing the door softly behind him. He looked at the body a moment and then took off his jacket, laying it to cover the battered face of the dead man. Then he straightened up to look at Luckner. When he spoke his tone was almost conversational.
“You’re insane, do you know that?” he said.
Luckner didn’t bother to answer. He walked to the steps and pushed his way through the crowd still standing there stunned by what they had just witnessed. He walked behind the bar, took a bottle of whiskey and a glass and walked to a table, sitting down heavily. Barney picked up the pair of shears lying in the hallway, studied them a moment, and put them in his pocket. Then he followed Luckner down the stairs, people standing back for him, and went to stand before the other man. Luckner didn’t look up. Those in the audience stood away, holding their breath in view of the unexpected drama that had presented itself for their attention. Barney paid them no heed, considering Luckner evenly.
“How did it come to happen?”
Luckner shrugged as if it were unimportant. He poured himself a big drink from the bottle and drained it in one gulp. “He pulled something on me,” he said, still not looking up, and refilled his glass.
“A little old man. With these.” Barney took the shears from his pocket and tossed them on the table contemptuously. “You, the big, strong, hard Jap-trick expert from Tokyo and Cape Town. And you had to kick him to death to protect yourself.”
“He pulled them on me,” Luckner said stubbornly. “I don’t let anyone pull anything on me.”
Barney looked at him coldly. He reached over, took the bottle from the table and handed it to the bartender standing there watching. He turned back to Luckner. “Finish your drink and get out. And don’t come back.”
The liquor was beginning to have its effect on Luckner.
“Now listen, you little runt Jew,” he said, looking up at last, his temper beginning to return. “D’you know why you want me to get out and not come back? So’s you can cheat me out of what’s mine, like you been cheating me all the bloody months I’ve been here!” He sneered. “We split the profits fifty-fifty, do we? With you keeping the books? What a laugh! Sure we split — ninety-ten, and who do you think gets the ninety? Little Barney Barnato, that’s who!” He drained the glass with Barney watching and listening quietly. Luckner looked at the glass a moment and then tossed it into a corner of the room. “You don’t fool me, Isaacs, who wants to call himself Barnato so’s people might think he’s an Eye-tie instead of a kike! You don’t fool me, Isaacs! Fifty-fifty — Jew percentage!”
Barney fought against the flush of temper that rose in him.
“Just get out!” he said, his voice nearly cracking under his growing anger. His Cockney came back automatically. “What brass y’got comin’ ye’ll get, and not a farthing more! Y’killed a man, me wife’s pa, a poor addle-brained old crock what was a bit off his bean but couldn’t help hisself none. If I didn’t know them shears I’d seen them so often, and if I didn’t think he really pulled them on you — and I wonder what y’was doin’ to make him do somethin’ like that — I’d see you hang if it was the last thing I ever did fer the old man! Now get out!”
Luckner sneered, the liquor now fully at work, and his temper as well. All the frustration of having seen and desired Fay Barnato all those months without ever having had her, and with the chances of ever having her now sharply reduced by the unfortunate circumstances of his having killed the girl’s old man by pure chance, were in his voice.