Dolly back.
Annette takes his pistol.
Annette stands; we see her aim down at Paul, out of the picture. Then we dolly in to a CM of her head; sheas smiling triumphantly.
A hand holding a pistol enters the CM; the pistol muzzle touches Annette’s neck.
Dolly back to middle shot. Hark-rider stands behind Annette as Paul gets up briskly and takes the pistol from her hand.
Cut to long shot of street, Hark-rider and Paul walk away from the camera, Annette between them. Fadeout.
Annette: This, my dear, is as good a time as any to drop my little masquerade. Are you American agents really so stupid that you never thought I might be—a plant, as you call it?
Sound: click of cocking pistol.
Harkrider: Golkov.
Drop it, Madame
Paul: No, Madame Golkov; we American agents were not really so stupid. Wish I could say the same for—your people. Pierre Tourneur was a plant, I am glad to say; otherwise he would not have missed me. He is one of the best pistol shots hi Counterintel-ligence.
Harkrider: Come along, Madame Golkov.
Music: theme up and out.
To his right: “It ain’t reasonable. All that shooting and yelling and falling down and not one person sticks his head out of a window to see what’s going on. They should of had a few people looking out to see what’s going on, otherwise it ain’t reasonable.”
“Yeah, who’s fighting tonight?”
“Rocky Mausoleum against Rocky Mazzarella. From Toledo.”
“Rocky Mazzarella beat Rocky Granatino, didn’t he?”
“Ah, that was Rocky Bolderoni, and he whipped Rocky Capa-cola.”
Them and their neatly packaged problems, them and their neatly packaged shows with beginning middle and end. The rite of the low-budget shot-in-Europe spy series, the rite of pugilism, the rite of the dog walk after dinner and the beer at the bar with cocelebrant worshippers at the high altar of Nothing.
9:30. Shot of Red Top and a beer, positively the last one until you get this figured out; you’re beginning to buzz like a transformer.
Do they have transformers? Do they have vitamins? Do they have anything but that glaring green sky, and the rock altar and treasures like the Seal and the rusty gear with three broken teeth? “All smelling of iodoform. And all quite bald.” But Galardo looked as if he were dying of tuberculosis, and the letter from the Serpentists was in a sick and straggling hand. Relics of medieval barbarism.
To his left-
“Galardo!” he screamed.
The bartender scurried over—Joe, Sam, Mike, Tony, Ben?— scowling. “What’s the matter, mister?”
“I’m sorry. I got a stitch in my side. A cramp.”
Bullyboy scowled competently and turned. “What’ll you have, mister?”
Galardo said cadaverously: “Wodeffer my vriend hyere iss havfing.”
“Shot of Red Top and a beer, right?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Drink-ing beferachiss . . . havf hyu de-site-it hwat rii dii?”
The bartender rapped down the shot glass and tilted the bottle over it, looking at Galardo. Some of the whiskey slopped over. The bartender started, went to the tap and carefully drew a glass of beer, slicing the collar twice.
“My vriend hyere will pay.”
He got out a half dollar, fumbling, and put it on the wet wood. The bartender, old-fashioned, rapped it twice on the bar to show he wasn’t stealing it even though you weren’t watching; he rang it up double virtuous on the cash register, the absent owner’s fishy eye.
“What are you doing here?” again, in a low, reasonable, almost amused voice to show him you have the whip hand.
“Drink-ing beferachiss … it iss so cle-an hyere.” Galardo’s
sunken face, unbelievably, looked wistful as he surveyed the barroom, his head swiveling slowly from extreme left to extreme right.
“Clean. Well. Isn’t it clean there?”
“Sheh, not!” Galardo said mournfully. “Sheh, not! Hyere it iss so cle-an . . . hwai did yii outreach tii us? Hag-rid us, wretch-it, hag-rid us?” There were tears hanging in his eyes. “Haff yii de-site-it hwat tu dii?”
Expansively: “I don’t pretend to understand the situation fully, Galardo. But you know and I know that I’ve got something you people [think you] need. Now there doesn’t seem to be any body .of law covering artifacts that appear [plink!] in a magnetron on accidental overload, and I just have your word that it’s yours.”