The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

Thus it was that she came creeping around the corner and poked her delicately chiseled nose plunk into the muzzle of the gun that I held ready for her.

She gave a little scream.

Women aren’t always reasonable: they are prone to disregard trifles like guns held upon them. So I grabbed her gun hand, which was fortunate for me. As my hand closed around the weapon, she pulled the trigger, catching a chunk of my forefinger between hammer and frame. I twisted the gun out of her hand; released my finger.

But she wasn’t done yet. With me standing there holding a gun not four inches from her body, she turned and bolted off toward where a clump of trees made a jet-black blot to the north.

When I recovered from my surprise at this amateurish procedure, I stuck both her gun and mine in my pockets, and set out after her, tearing the soles of my feet at every step.

She was trying to get over a wire fence when I caught her.

“Stop playing, will you?” I said crossly, as I set the fingers of my left hand around her wrist and started to lead her back to the roadster. “This is a serious business. Don’t be so childish!”

“You are hurting my arm.”

I knew I wasn’t hurting her arm, and I knew this girl for the direct cause of four, or perhaps five, deaths; yet I loosened my grip on her wrist until it wasn’t much more than a friendly clasp. She went back willingly enough to the roadster, where, still holding her wrist, I switched on the lights. Kilcourse lay just beneath the headlight’s glare, huddled on his face, with one knee drawn up under him.

I put the girl squarely in the line of light.

“Now stand there,” I said, “and behave. The first break you make, I’m going to shoot a leg out from under you,” and I meant it.

I found Kilcourse’s gun, pocketed it, and knelt beside him.

He was dead, with a bullet-hole above his collar-bone.

“Is he—” her mouth trembled.

“Yes.”

She looked down at him, and shivered a little.

“Poor Fag,” she whispered.

I’ve gone on record as saying that this girl was beautiful, and, standing there in the dazzling white of the headlights, she was more than that. She was the thing to start crazy thoughts even in the head of an unimaginative middle-aged thief-catcher. She was—

Anyhow, I suppose that is why I scowled at her and said:

“Yes, poor Fag, and poor Hook, and poor Tai, and poor kid of a Los Angeles bank messenger, and poor Burke,” calling the roll, as far as I knew it, of men who had died loving her.

She didn’t flare up. Her big gray eyes lifted, and she looked at me with a gaze that I couldn’t fathom, and her lovely oval face under the mass of brown hair — which I knew was phony — was sad.

“I suppose you do think—” she began.

But I had had enough of this; I was uncomfortable along the spine.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll leave Kilcourse and the roadster here for now.”

She said nothing, but went with me to Axford’s big machine, and sat in silence while I laced my shoes. I found a robe on the back seat for her.

“Better wrap this around your shoulders. The windshield is gone. It’ll be cool.”

She followed my suggestion without a word, but when I had edged our vehicle around the rear of the roadster, and had straightened out in the road again, going east, she laid a hand on my arm.

“Aren’t we going back to the White Shack?”

“No. Redwood City — the county jail.”

A mile perhaps, during which, without looking at her, I knew she was studying my rather lumpy profile. Then her hand was on my forearm again and she was leaning toward me so that her breath was warm against my cheek. “Will you stop for a minute? There’s something — some things I want to tell you.”

I brought the car to a halt in a cleared space of hard soil off to one side of the road, and screwed myself a little around in the seat to face her more directly.

“Before you start,” I told her, “I want you to understand that we stay here for just so long as you talk about the Pangburn affair. When you get off on any other line — then we finish our trip to Redwood City.”

“Aren’t you even interested in the Los Angeles affair?”

“No. That’s closed. You and Hook Riordan and Tai Choon Tau and the Quarres were equally responsible for the messenger’s death, even if Hook did the actual killing. Hook and the Quarres passed out the night we had our party in Turk Street. Tai was hanged last month. Now I’ve got you. We had enough evidence to swing the Chinese, and we’ve even more against you. That is done — finished — completed. If you want to tell me anything about Pangburn’s death, I’ll listen. Otherwise—”

I reached for the self-starter.

A pressure of her fingers on my arm stopped me.

“I do want to tell you about it,” she said earnestly. “I want you to know the truth about it. You’ll take me to Redwood City, I know. Don’t think that I expect — that I have any foolish hopes. But I’d like you to know the truth about this thing. I don’t know why I should care especially what you think, but—”