I gave her another drink from the flask. That bought me ten minutes of peace.
Then she said:
“I’m catching cold. By the time anybody comes, if they ever do, I’ll be sneezing and coughing loud enough to be heard in the city.”
“Just once,” I told her. “Then you’ll be all strangled.”
“There’s a mouse or something crawling under the blanket.”
“Probably only a snake.”
“Are you married?”
“Don’t start that.”
“Then you are?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet your wife’s glad of it.”
I was trying to find a suitable come-back to that wise-crack when a distant light gleamed up the road. It disappeared as I sh-sh’d the girl.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A light. It’s gone now. Our visitors have left their car and are finishing the trip afoot.”
A lot of time went by. The girl shivered with her cheek warm against mine. We heard footsteps, saw dark figures moving on the road and around the shack, without being sure whether we did or didn’t.
A flashlight ended our doubt by putting a bright circle on the shack’s door. A heavy voice said:
“We’ll let the broad come out.”
There was a half-minute of silence while they waited for a reply from indoors. Then the same heavy voice asked: “Coming?” Then more silence.
Gun-fire, a familiar sound tonight, broke the silence. Something hammered boards.
“Come on,” I whispered to the girl. “We’ll have a try at their car while they’re making a racket.”
“Let them alone,” she said, pulling my arm down as I started up. “I’ve had enough of it for one night. We’re all right here.”
“Come on,” I insisted.
She said, “I won’t,” and she wouldn’t, and presently, while we argued, it was too late. The boys below had kicked in the door, found the hut empty, and were bellowing for their car.
It came, took eight men aboard, and followed Reno’s track downhill.
“We might as well move in again,” I said. “It’s not likely they’ll be back this way tonight.”
“I hope to God there’s some Scotch left in that flask,” she said as I helped her stand up.
XVIII. Painter Street
The shack’s supply of canned goods didn’t include anything that tempted us for breakfast. We made the meal of coffee cooked in very stale water from a galvanized pail.
A mile of walking brought us to a farmhouse where there was a boy who didn’t mind earning a few dollars by driving us to town in the family Ford. He had a lot of questions, to which we gave him phoney answers or none. He set us down in front of a little restaurant in upper King Street, where we ate quantities of buckwheat cakes and bacon.
A taxi put us at Dinah’s door a little before nine o’clock. I searched the place for her, from roof to cellar, and found no signs of visitors.
“When will you be back?” she asked as she followed me to the door. “I’ll try to pop in between now and midnight, if only for a few minutes. Where does Lew Yard live?”
“1622 Painter Street. Painter’s three blocks over. 1622’s four blocks up. What are you going to do there?” Before I could answer, she put her hands on my arm and begged: “Get Max, will you? I’m afraid of him.”
“Maybe I’ll sic Noonan on him a little later. It depends on how things work out.”
She called me a damned double-crossing something or other who didn’t care what happened to her as long as his dirty work got done.
I went over to Painter Street. 1622 was a red brick house with a garage under the front porch.
A block up the street I found Dick Foley in a hired drive-yourself Buick. I got in beside him, asking:
“What’s doing?”
“Spot two. Out three-thirty, office to Willsson’s. Mickey. Five. Home. Busy. Kept plant. Off three, seven. Nothing yet.”
That was supposed to inform me that he had picked up Lew Yard at two the previous afternoon; had shadowed him to Willsson’s at three-thirty, where Mickey had tailed Pete; had followed Yard away at five, to his residence; had seen people going in and out of the house, but had not shadowed any of them; had watched the house until three this morning, and had returned to the job at seven; and since then had seen nobody go in or out.