The Man Who Couldn't Sleep Part 53

"Do what he tells you," I called up to her. And I knew that she had stepped slowly across to the desk again. Yet what she did there I failed to understand, for my attention was once more centered on the old scoundrel covering me with the Colt revolver and repeatedly and blasphemously threatening to plug me through the heart if I so much as made one finger-move to get off that floor. So I lay there studying him. I studied his posture. I studied the position of his weapon. I studied my own length of limb. I studied the furniture overturned about the room. And then I once more studied old Crotty.

Then I laughed aloud. As I did so I suddenly twisted my head and stared toward the door.

"_Smash it in, Sam!_" I shouted exultantly, and with all the strength of my lungs.

It startled them all, as I had intended it should. But it also did something else which I had expected it to do. It caused Crotty to glance quickly over his shoulder toward the door in question. And at the precise moment that he essayed this movement I ventured one of my own.

I brought my outstretched leg up, in one quick and vicious kick. I brought my boot-sole in one stinging blow against the stock of the firearm and the fingers cl.u.s.tered about it. And the result was practically what I had antic.i.p.ated. It sent the revolver cascading up into the air, like a circus-tumbler doing a double-twister over an elephant's back. There was the bark of an exploding cartridge as it went. But I had both timed and placed its fall, and before either one of that startled couple could make a move I had given a quick twist and roll along the dusty floor and caught up the fallen weapon in my own pinioned right hand. Another quick wrench and twist freed my bound wrist, and before even a second shout of warning could escape from any of them I was on my feet with the revolver balanced in my right hand and fire in my eye.

"Back up, every one o' you," I commanded. For I was hot now, hot as a hornet. And if one of that worthy trio had ventured a move not in harmony with my orders I am morally certain that I should have sent a bullet through him. They too must have been equally a.s.sured of my determination, for side by side they backed away, with their hands slightly above their heads, like praying Brahmans, until the wall itself stopped their retreat.

"Stand closer," I told them. And they shuffled and side-stepped shoulder to shoulder, ludicrously, like the rawest of rookies on their first day of drill. As I stood contemplating them, with disgust on my face, I was interrupted by the voice of Mary.

"Witter," she demanded in a voice throaty with excitement yet not untouched with some strange exultation which I couldn't take time to a.n.a.lyze, "what shall I do this time?"

I couldn't turn and face her, for I still had to keep that unsavory trio under inspection.

"I want you to go down to your car," I told her over my shoulder, "and get in it, and then go straight home. And then--"

"That's absurd," she interrupted.

"I want you to do it."

"But I don't intend to," she said, ignoring my masterfulness.

"Why?"

"I've been too cowardly about this already. It's been quite bad enough, without leaving you here like that. So be good enough to tell me what I can do."

I liked her for that, and I was on the point of telling her so, when down below I heard the quick stamp and clump of feet. And I felt in my bones that it must be Belton and his men. Then I remembered Mary and her question.

"I'll tell you what you can do," I said, pointing toward Latreille.

"You can ask this man what it was I ran down in my car last Hallow-e'en."

She was moving forward, with a face quite without fear by this time.

But her brow clouded, at that speech of mine, and she came to a sudden stop.

"I don't need to ask him," she slowly acknowledged.

"Why not?"

"Because I know already."

"_He_ told you?" I demanded, with a vicious and quite involuntary jab of my barrel-end into one of Latreille's intercostal s.p.a.ces.

"Not directly," replied the ever-truthful Mary. "But it was through him that I found out. I know now it was through him."

"I thought so," I snorted. "And through him you're now going to find out that he was a liar and a slanderer. So be good enough to explain to her, Latreille, that it was a straw-stuffed dummy we ran down, a street-crowd's scare-crow, and nothing else!"

Latreille didn't answer me. He merely stood there with studious and half-closed eyes, a serpent-like squint of venom on his colorless face.

It was, in fact, old Crotty who broke the silence.

"We'll do our talkin', young fellow, when the right time comes. And when we do, you're goin' to pay for an outrage like this, for an unprovoked a.s.sault on decent citizens!"

"Well, the time's come right now," I promptly announced, for I had caught the sound of Belton's quick step on the stairs. And the next moment the door swung open and that stalwart officer stood staring intently yet cautiously about the corner of the jamb. He stood there squinting in, in fact, for several seconds, calmly inspecting each face and factor of the situation. It wasn't until he stepped in through the open door, however, that I noticed the ugly-looking service-revolver in his own right hand.

"That's the bunch we want, all right," proclaimed the officer of law and order as he turned back to the still open door. "Come up, boys, and take 'em down," he called cheerfully and companionably out through the darkness.

Mary, at the answering tumult of those quick-thumping feet, crept a little closer to my side. Alarm, I suppose, had at last seeped through and crumbled the last of her Lockwood pride. The flash of waiting firearms, the strange faces, the still stranger experiences of that night, seemed to have brought about some final and unlooked for subjugation of her spirit. At least, so I thought.

"Couldn't you take me away, Witter?" she asked a little weakly and also a little wistfully. Yet there was something about the very tone of her voice which sent a thrill through my tired body. And that thrill gave me boldness enough to reach out a proprietory arm and let the weight of her body rest against it.

"You won't want us, will you, Belton?" I demanded, and that long-legged young officer stared about at us abstractedly, for a moment or two, before replying. When he turned away he did so to hide what seemed to be a slowly widening smile.

"_These_ are the folks I want," he retorted, with a hand-wave toward his three prisoners. And without wasting further breath or time on them I helped Mary out and down to the Nile-green roadster.

"No; let me," she said as she noticed my movement to mount to the driver's seat. But she was silent for several minutes as we threaded our way out through the quiet and shadowy streets.

"Witter," she said at last and with a gulp, "you must think I'm an--an awful coward."

"_I_ was the coward," I proclaimed out of my sudden misery of mind.

For there were certain things which would be terribly hard to forget.

"You?" she cried. "After what I've just seen? After what you've saved me from? Oh, how you must despise me!"

"No," I said with a gulp of my own. "That's not the word."

"It's not," she absently agreed.

"It's not," I repeated, "for I love you!"

She made no response to that foolish and untimely declaration. All her attention, in fact, seemed directed toward her driving.

"But I was so cowardly in that other thing," she persisted, out of this second silence. "Judging without understanding, condemning something I was only too ready to do myself!"

"And it made you hate me?"

"No--no. I hate myself!" And her gesture was one of protest, pa.s.sionate protest.

"But you _must_ have hated me."

"Witter," she said, speaking quite low and leaning a little closer to the wheel as she spoke, as though all her thoughts were on the shadowy road ahead of her, "I never hated you--never! I couldn't even make myself."

"Why?" I asked, scarcely knowing I had spoken.

"Because _I've always loved you_," she said in a whisper, big with bravery. And I heard a silvery little bell begin to ring in my heart, like a bird in an orchard, heralding spring.

"Stop the car!" I suddenly commanded, once the real, the glorious meaning of those six words of Mary's had sunk through to that strange core of things we call our Soul.