Daredevil
Birdie's staring eyes. "Lew! _'Oo's dahn there?_ ..."
"Yew li'l' four-flushin' piker!" snarled Mecklen.
His huge hands were clawing out for Birdie's throat. They found
their hold and, crushing the pickpocket's scraggy neck in that
boa-constrictor twist, Mecklen shook him as a Great Dane might shake
a poodle.
"Yew li'l' _runt_!"
"Lew!"
It was Morini's voice, hard and imperative. Mecklen took no notice
until the butt of a gun struck him a stinging blow between the eyes.
Lew staggered back and Morini fronted him, having reversed his
automatic to the business position.
"Gat, yew vamoose! Wot's bitin' yuh----"
"You've gone loco," Morini cut in with no suavity. "What're you
fightin' for? If the Chief heard of this you'd be fired right out
into the streets, where half the bulls in London are watching to draw
a bead on you. Out with it--what's the trouble?"
"Thet li'l' critter----"
"Well?"
But Mecklen, aware that he had made a blunder in saying even that
much, had relapsed into a glowering silence. Morini turned to Sands,
who was cringing against the wall, grasping and rubbing his throat
where Lew's fingers had left thick scarlet weals.
"What did you do, Birdie?"
Sands was crouching back, and then he made a sudden dive for the door.
"I'll show yer!" he cried, and bolted down the cellar steps.
Susan sat up with a start as the door of her cell burst open and
Birdie, wide-eyed and choking, crashed in. An instant later
Mecklen's huge form loomed in the gap, and then Morini pushed past
him.
"Don't yer worry, missy," Birdie got out tremulously. "I'll see yer
fru--I 'ad a sister, once...."
"What's this?" snapped Morini, wheeling on Mecklen.
"Wotcha think?" growled Lew surlily.
His raging eyes were alert for Morini's every movement, for he was
twice the size of the other, and the broadcasting of Susan's presence
was going to spoil Lew's plans considerably. But Morini still had
his gun, and he never gave Mecklen a chance to catch him off his
guard.
"This is the Hawthorne girl." Gat's voice was fiery. "You were told
to leave her alone. And, anyway, she was to be killed. Instead of
that, you've showed her our headquarters, and you're still keeping
her alive, so that if she got away we'd all be dished! Lew, I've a
good mind to give you yours!"
All unobserved, Birdie had edged along the wall towards the open
door. Lew and Morini stood just inside. And then Sands leapt
through the narrow gap like a fleeing rat, and was halfway up the
stairs before the other two realised that he had gone.
"Keep yer pecker up, missy!" he bawled. "I'll get the pleece!"
Morini flung up his gun, but Susan kicked the table against him as he
fired, and the shot went wide. The next moment Birdie was out of
sight, with Lew in cursing pursuit.
Susan caught Morini's wrist and wrenched it round with all her
strength. His gun clattered to the floor, and he closed with her in
a short, whirling, hand-to-hand tussle. Susan fought back at him
furiously, but the man was wiry and as slippery as an eel. In less
than a minute she found both her elbows locked behind her back.
"I know ju-jitsu too," he grunted, and kicked his fallen gun out into
the passage.
He threw her from him violently, and the door was shut and barred
from outside before she could rise again.
Birdie could run! He made the front door before Lew had reached the
head of the cellar steps, and Mecklen was left gaping at an empty
hall. Birdie had got away! Fear of what would happen if the
pickpocket reached a police station and squealed had temporarily
paralysed Lew's faculties. It took him some seconds to soak up the
immense significance of the disaster, and in that time Morini, more
agile of mind and body, had passed him at a sprint.
Birdie had tumbled down the front steps, moaning aloud with
apprehension. There wasn't much mettle in Birdie Sands--gutter-born,
gutter-reared, and gutter-minded, he was totally unfitted to play any
more blackguardly part than that of the petty sneak-thief. And what
he'd gone through that night had shivered his brittle nerves to
fragments. He'd killed a man, and you could be hanged for that....
The ghastly sight he had seen in Fleet Street haunted his vision.
And then the girl--that had been the final straw that broke him down.
The splits'd say he was a party to that crime, too. And he knew, or
divined instinctively, what fate was in store for her....
"Gawd, let me get aw'y!" he mumbled, panting. "P'r'aps they'd let me
off wiv a laggin' if I syved _'er_.... I 'ad a sister once...."
His chest felt as if it was bursting, and a steel band seemed to have
tightened round his heart. His legs were like lead. He was
travelling terribly slowly now, as though in a nightmare. Athletic
training had never entered his life, and chain-smoking had ruined
whatever natural stamina he had ever possessed. He couldn't keep up
that killing pace....
Would they follow him through the streets? The thought almost made
his knees give out like over-heated bearings. For some unknown
reason it didn't occur to him to shout for help.
Morini opened the front door and looked up and down the road. He had
moved fast. Birdie was not seventy feet away, running flat-footedly,
with his elbows splayed out and his head down, all but done in
already.
To shoot would be suicidal--it would bring the whole neighbourhood
about their ears in two shakes. Morini knew a better way than that.
He dropped his gun into his pocket and brought his hand out again
with a long, heavy, but beautifully balanced knife. He poised it in
his palm; and then, as Birdie passed under the full glare of a street
lamp, Gat's arm went back and came forward again with amazing
speed....
The knife flashed out with a low _whuu-uit_! He saw the flickering
sheen of it as it skimmed away like a darting splash of quicksilver,
saw Birdie go down with the haft of it sticking out between his
shoulder-blades, heard Birdie's shuddering scream gurgle away into an
awful sob....
Morini stepped back into the hall and closed the door without a sound.
CHAPTER XXIV
VISITORS FOR JOAN
Long after midnight Joan Sands had sat curled up on the chesterfield.
Through the open window had come the thunder of the Piccadilly
explosion, but she had not even gone to the window to try and find
out the meaning of the noise and shouting. Something dreadful had
happened, and the Triangle was in it. One didn't have to be a
clairvoyant to realise that without making a personal inspection.
And where the Triangle went Jimmy went--even to the gallows....
She consumed cigarette after cigarette, without tasting or enjoying a
single one, and her eyes were bloodshot with the smart of straying
smoke. It was a purely mechanical process, a device to assist
thought or to prevent it--she was not sure which. At least the
narcotic had a soothing effect on her overwrought nerves, and having
something to manipulate with her fingers kept her within certain
materialistic bounds. The same applied to the stiff whisky-and-soda
she had mixed herself; half of it was still in the glass beside
her--she had gulped half of it down, and had not touched the rest
since.
A queer, hectically coloured jazz-pattern mind had this slim,
fluffily beautiful girl. Now those jazz-patterns had kaleidoscoped
into a medley of nightmare imaginings. The only light in the room
came from the red-shaded reading lamp behind her head, and the
shadows around her, with their crimson high-lights, grouped
themselves into the real semblance of her dire grotesque visions.
She would have sold the world for company at that hour, for the
comforting presence of someone strong and calm and friendly who'd
hold her in his arms and scare away the bogeys with a cheery word.
Jimmy, for instance. In those last few days he'd shown a sympathy
one wouldn't have suspected him of possessing and a strength of
character which was the last thing on earth an ex-jailbird waster
ought by rights to have trumped out. Or Storm would have done. She
wished she'd made him stay--bar Jimmy, he was the only man who'd ever
had a kind word for her, who'd ever treated her four-square, with no
_arrière-pensée_. And the realisation that she no longer felt
capable of standing on her own feet and facing things out alone was
the hardest of all to bear--she, the ice-hearted, cool, calculating
adventuress, was getting soft; while even jelly-spined sops like
Jimmy were suddenly sprouting shells. The fact that Jimmy's
new-found backbone had awakened in her a genuine respect--something
that was tending to passionate love--didn't enter into the balance
sheet for the moment. There were weaknesses and tender patches in
her armour that she'd never encountered before, and the discovery of
them was a salutary lesson to conceit. Joan failed to derive any
enjoyment from the revelation. Shock education takes some standing
up to. She preferred the Montessori system.
Anyway, all recrimination and sentiment aside, the fact remained that
she felt intolerably lonely and unhappy. For the second time in her
life she was utterly sincere, and she was unable to decide whether
her primary reaction to this unaccustomed attitude was shame
or--fright. Not, of course, that she figured the whole thing out in
such a precise scientific manner. Her introspection ran on lines
which combined the antics of a giant switchback and a roundabout, but
the general trend of them was much simpler.
She must have dozed at last, for a stealthy movement beside her
recalled her to objective thinking with a big jump. She looked up,
shaking the hair out of her eyes. There was a man standing beside
her couch.
"Jimmy!" she breathed. "How did you get here?"
She was getting up, but he put out a hand and gently forced her back,
sitting down beside her. He looked very tired, but he was smiling.
"I couldn't stay away. I was supposed to stay till to-morrow, but
I'd done my--business--and there didn't seem to be any point in
sticking on. So I came back on the night train. Why're you up so
late, Joan?"
"Oh--I don't know," she said petulantly. "Why can't I sit up if I
feel like it? I didn't feel tired."
He was gazing fixedly at her, and then he took her face between his
two hands and turned it so that the light fell full across it.
"That's not true. Something's happened--I can see it in your eyes."
His finger moved and brushed two little drops of dew from her cheek.
"You've been crying. Joan! What is it?"
She said nothing, pulling his hands away and bowing her head again
into the darkness.
"Have the police been here, Joan?"
He was looking about the apartment, but she had replaced the rugs and
furniture so that there was no trace of Storm's visit.
"The Triangle have blown up Piccadilly--my taxi driver told me about
it," he said. "Is that it? Or did the men come through from the
next room and--and annoy you?"
He could hear the quick hissing intake of her breath. And then, with
a little gasping cry, she drooped into his arms.
"Joan"--fiercely--"_Joan!_"
"All right, boy." Her hands went up and passed behind his head. "I
was worried--because of you. And crying--because of you.
Because--because--oh, Jimmy, say it for me!"
"Because you love me," he said unevenly. "Joan ... my darling
girl...."
Somehow they had both come to their feet. Never in all Mattock's
flabby life, never in Joan's hard life, had either known a moment to
compare with that one. She had married him to please him, and she'd
never made any secret of it. But now...
He kissed her lips, her hair, her eyes, straining her to him. Heaven
lay around him like a flame; the glory of it eddied through his veins
like fire.