Those were the last words he lived to utter. There was a sharp report, his head jerked up, an ugly splodge of red appeared just below his temple; without a moan he sagged and collapsed in a silent heap.
The men who were on top of Hemmingway sprang up in panic. Gasping from the pain in his stomach he rolled over. Framed in the side-entrance of the public-house he glimpsed Lavina. Her face was white as a sheet, but his automatic was clenched firmly in her hand and a trail of blue smoke still drifted from its barrel.
The roughs were staring at her. It takes a brave man to stand his ground when threatened with a loaded automatic; particularly when the person behind it has already demonstrated that he is prepared to kill with it. When that person is a woman, to take such a risk is no longer bravery, but madness. Hemmingway's attackers turned and fled; the two remaining thugs picked themselves up out of the gutter and took to their heels with equal swiftness. In less than a minute after the shot had been fired Hemmingway was standing on the pavement alone, with Lavina.
'God!' he panted, looking again at the tumbled figure on the driver's seat of the car. 'You've killed him 1'
'I'm sorry,' said Lavina in a small voice. She seemed a little stunned but not particularly upset. 'You know, it all happened so suddenly. I'd only just got my dress on when I heard the shouting and when I looked out of the window I saw them all attacking you. I simply grabbed up the gun, rushed downstairs and shot him. Funny, wasn't it?'
The fact that she had killed a man did not strike Hemmingway as at all funny. The little rat was probably no better than he should have been but, all the same, he was a human being and if Lavina was caught all sorts of unpleasant complications might ensue. The thugs had stopped farther down the street and were shouting. The Jewish girl had rushed out of the greengrocer's shop. Other people were running up the street from both directions to see what had happened. The fat landlord appeared in the doorway of the pub and after one look at the dead man in the driver's seat of the Rolls, began to blow shrilly upon a police whistle.
Lavina still held the gun and Hemmingway yelled to her:
'Don't let him grab you but throw him his money for the bedroom!' Then, turning to the car, he opened its door and dragged the dead body out on to the pavement.
Lavina held out one of the pound-notes that Hemmingway had left with her, but the landlord stopped blowing on his whistle to exclaim: 'I wouldn't soil me 'ands with it.'
It was no time to argue. Hemmingway was now in the driver's seat. As he called to her, she slipped round to the far side of the car and jumped in beside him. He let in the clutch and the big Rolls slid forward.
The roughs and a lot of other people were now barring their passage a hundred yards along the street, but Hemmingway sent the car charging straight at them. One flung a stone which starred the window, but when they saw that he was prepared to run them down they leapt aside and scattered. A moment later their shouted curses were fading in the distance.
'By Jove! That was a nasty business,' Hemmingway muttered.
'Horrible!' she agreed. 'Of course, I didn't really mean to do
it.'
'You knew my gun was loaded.'
'Yes. But except for the other night at the Dorchester, I don't think I've ever seen men fighting in earnest before. In a way that I can't quite explain, I felt as though I was back on a film set and we were all putting on an act. I was quite surprised myself when I saw that I'd killed him. I wonder if you can understand that?'
'I think so,' Hemmingway said slowly. 'My hurling that potato through your window had only just woken you from a deep sleep. I suppose you must have felt that the whole thing was a sort of nightmare.'
'In a way I did. But if I'd been fully conscious I believe I'd have shot him just the same.'
'What?' Hemmingway turned to stare at her for a second.
She nodded, and went on with that inexorable feminine realism which takes no count of ethics: 'You see, it was us or them, wasn't it? You were on the ground and it looked to me as though they were going to murder you, but I was scared that I might shoot you if I fired in that direction. The little fellow had started up the car and, if he had got away with it, I knew we'd both have been sunk. It just came to me in a flash that if I shot him that would scare the others out of their wits; so I aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.'
Hemmingway was quite staggered by the logic of her simple and effective reasoning. He knew there must be a catch in it somewhere but he couldn't argue about it, and she was probably right in believing that she'd saved his life; or at least saved him from serious injury. His laugh was a little uncertain as he said:
'Well, it was darned good shooting, anyhow.'
'Oh, no,' she demurred modestly. 'I was only about six feet from him; the poor little wretch didn't stand a chance.'
Hemmingway had turned south, into the Blackwall Tunnel, and was now running through it under the Thames. He was thinking what a mighty good job it was that there had been no police about; otherwise Lavina would certainly have been arrested for manslaughter in the first degree—and they were by no means out of the wood yet.
Fortunately, as it affected their situation at the moment, no private calls had been taken by the London telephone exchanges for the last twenty-four hours so that neither the landlord nor one of his neighbours could ring up the police, but the matter was certain to be reported as soon as they arrived on the scene. A description of themselves and the car would be given, and Mr. Guggenbaum's luxurious Rolls would be a very easy car to trace. Hemmingway wished now that he had contented himself with the Ford.
The question was: would the police be too occupied with other matters to wireless their speed-cars on the south side of the river to keep a look out for the Rolls? They were certainly much too busy to bother about ordinary motoring offences, hut to shoot a man dead and leave his body on the pavement was a very different business. He did not mention to Lavina his gloomy speculations about possible trouble to come. Instead, he asked her how she was feeling.
'Pretty mouldy,' she shrugged, 'and I must look like the Wrath of God. 1 lost my bag days ago in the riot at the Dor-
Chester so there's not a trace of make-up left on my face and I didn't even have a chance to wash when you fetched me out of bed just now. D'you think we could pull up somewhere where I could buy a comb and some powder and a lipstick?'
'No,' replied Hemmingway, 'I don't. And it doesn't matter much what your face looks like, anyhow. It's how you're feeling in yourself that I'm worried about.'
'Then you don't know much about women, my friend,' Lavina said with some asperity. 'A girl feels good or ill to exactly the extent she sees her face looking in a mirror. I caught one glimpse of mine in that lousy bedroom and I feel like Methuselah's wife dug up out of her grave.'
'Well, you'll feel better when you get down to the country.'
They had left the Tunnel, crossed Greenwich Marshes and were passing the Naval College when Lavina suddenly exclaimed :
'I say, what's happened to Derek?'
'I haven't the faintest idea and I don't damned well care,' Hemmingway said bluntly. While they sped on through South Street, across the main Blackheath road and uphill towards Lewisham, he proceeded to tell her of the extreme inconvenience which Derek had caused him.
'You don't like Derek, do you?' she said quietly, giving him a quick look from beneath half-lowered eyelids.
'I've no objection to him as a person but I don't suffer fools gladly at any time and I just hate having them around when I have to handle an emergency.'
'Poor Derek,' she sighed. 'And he's so good-looking, don't you think?'
'I've never even looked at him from that point of view. All I know is that he landed you in this mess and has given me one hell of a job to get you out of it.'