Four hands got hold of Shayne and rolled him over on his back. He kept himself limp, eyes closed. A beer and garlic breath flowed into his nostrils. Close to his face, Joe muttered doubtfully, “I dunno, Leroy. Sometimes I don’t know my own stren’th when I swing a sap.”
“He’s still breathing,” Leroy said crisply.
They drew aside and held a whispered conversation. Shayne braced himself for whatever was coming. They were afraid to question Phyllis, and as long as they thought he was unconscious they’d probably leave her alone. But there’d be hell to pay if they once got his eyes open.
He heard stealthy movement beside him, then a glass of cold water was unexpectedly dashed in his face.
“That did it,” Leroy chuckled. “I swear I saw him jump. He’s playing dead. I know how to fix that.”
Shayne heard the scratch of a match. Heat came close to his left eyelid, unbearably close, singeing his shaggy brows. His head jerked involuntarily. He sat up and opened his eyes.
Leroy stepped backward and produced his. 45. The barrel was sawed off close to the cylinder, making it a handy and deadly pocket gun. Leroy’s eyes were ruthless, the eyes of a killer who delights in his work. He surveyed Shayne coldly and said, “I don’t want to use this. I won’t unless you make me.”
Shayne turned his head to look at Phyllis. She had stopped struggling to free herself. Her black eyes were dilated, luminous with encouragement. The top part of her robe had spread apart, revealing her smooth throat and the beginning swell of young breasts.
Shayne wrenched his eyes away from hers. Joe stood close beside him with a grin on his brutal face. He swung a short, leather-covered blackjack suggestively.
Shayne said, “All right. It looks like your party, boys. What the hell do you want?”
Leroy smiled thinly. “That’s using your head for something besides a target for Joe’s sap. All we want is what Jim Lacy handed you this afternoon.”
Shayne waggled his aching head and tenderly felt the lump on the side of his jaw. He muttered, “My brains still feel like hash. How’s for a drink to straighten me out? There’s a bottle on the table-and have one yourselves.”
“Sure. Pour him a drink,” Leroy directed. “But you lay off the stuff, Joe. This mug’s supposed to be pretty smart and we don’t want to make any more mistakes.” He moved back a pace and settled himself in a chair, balancing his baby cannon carefully on one knee and not taking his eyes off Shayne for an instant.
Joe went to the table and picked up the bottle of cognac. He scowled at the label and said, “Maybe there is a trick to it, Leroy. This ain’t no drinking liquor I ever heard of. Says cog-nack on the bottle.”
“That’s stuff the Frenchies make out of wine,” Leroy explained. “Pour him a slug of it.”
Shayne took the glassful Joe offered him and drank it down gratefully. He hunched forward and drew his feet up under him, sat cross-legged. He said, “A cigarette is all I need right now.”
Leroy nodded. “We’re not bad guys if you play it smart. Light him a cig, Joe.”
Joe gave him a lighted cigarette. Shayne inhaled deeply. Smoke trailed thinly from his nostrils as he said, “I haven’t seen you boys around before.”
“No,” Leroy agreed. “I guess you haven’t.”
“Sure you’re not making a mistake by barging in this way and getting rough?” Shayne persisted.
“We’re not making any mistake, shamus. You’ll be making a bad one if you don’t fork over that hicky Lacy gave you this afternoon.”
Shayne shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You better find out pretty quick.”
Shayne said, “Lacy was dead when he reached my office.”
“We won’t argue that angle. Maybe he was. Then you took it off him before the cops got there.”
Shayne shook his head again. “The cops got to him before I did. Read the papers.”
“Don’t stall us,” Leroy advised him with cold ferocity. “The cops found less than ten bucks on him. We know he was carrying folding money. Whoever lifted the jack lifted something else at the same time. We don’t give a damn about the money. We want that something else.”
“What?” asked Shayne with interest. Bare-legged and bare-torsoed, he looked peculiarly mild and harmless as he sat on the floor hunched forward, squinting at Leroy, but Leroy’s gun did not relax its vigilance for an instant. “What,” Shayne repeated, “did Jim Lacy have on him that you boys want so badly?”
“You know damn well,” Joe broke in heatedly. “We want his part of-”
“Shut up,” Leroy snarled. “If Shayne’s got it, he knows what it is we’re after. If he hasn’t got it, there’s no good in wising him up.”
“Try the cops,” Shayne suggested. “They’re the ones who went over Lacy and cleaned him.”
“The paper didn’t say anything about them finding what we want.”
Shayne laughed in Leroy’s face. “And the paper reported he had only about ten bucks on him, too,” he jeered. “Hell! get wise. Just because a man wears a uniform doesn’t mean he hasn’t got sticky fingers.”
“Maybe so,” objected Joe. “But the cops wouldn’t of known-”
“Shut up,” Leroy snarled again at his burly companion. “We didn’t come here for an argument,” he told Shayne. “Maybe you didn’t get to Jim Lacy first. Maybe you don’t know what we’re after.” He got up slowly, holding his gun level. “But we’re not leaving here till we’ve found out for certain. Stand behind him, Joe, and let him have it if he makes a move or lets out a yelp. Easy, though. I don’t want him passed out this time. I want him to keep his eyes open and see this.”
Joe took a spread-legged stance behind Shayne, his eyes glittering humidly as Leroy moved around behind Phyllis’s chair. Shayne’s head pivoted slowly, his eyes following the gunman’s movements.
Phyllis’s eyes were wide and staring. They implored her redheaded husband to remain calm and not consider her.
“She’s a cute little trick,” said Leroy softly. He patted Phyllis under the chin, then tweaked the top of her robe into a wider V.
“Mighty nice stuff for a lousy private dick to stake out all for himself,” he went on in a dangerously soft voice. “Why not divvy up with your pals, shamus? Maybe that’s what you’re going to do, huh? Joe and me, now, we don’t get a look at anything this nice very often.”
Sweat streamed from Shayne’s rocklike face. He remained hunched forward, motionless, but muscles writhed beneath the bare skin of his back like a litter of snakes in the hot sun. He could hear Joe breathing loudly behind him with a sharp, slobbering sound. Phyllis’s eyes held his. Without speaking, she was crying out to him that she didn’t matter, that they couldn’t hurt her.
“Watch him, Joe,” Leroy counseled sharply. “He’s not going to take much more of this. How about it, Shayne? Do you talk, or do I untie this gal’s belt and really give Joe a look? Joe’s funny. He’s not like you and me that can take a woman or leave her alone. Once Joe gets started-”
Shayne’s body lunged forward. Joe’s blackjack was a split second slow. It thudded against his shoulder as he whirled and drove a fist into Joe’s face. Joe stumbled backward, and Shayne swung toward Leroy.
The gunman stepped from behind Phyllis’s chair, crouched with the. 45 in front of him. “Don’t do it, Shamus,” he panted. “I’ll blast you, so help me.”
Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth in a grin that was more animal than human. He took a step forward and his eyes were mad. “You’ll have to blast me, Leroy. There’s no other out.”
He kept moving, very slowly, directly toward the muzzle of Leroy’s. 45.
Leroy moved backward. He panted, “Don’t come any closer.”
Shayne kept moving. He laughed shortly, and the sound vibrated eerily in the silent room. “You’ll have to pull that trigger, Leroy. I’m going to make you pull it. That’ll bring the cops-and the party will be over.”
Leroy took another backward step. Shayne was even with the center table when he saw the gunman’s eyes shift nervously and he sensed movement behind him.