He did not share my indecision. He reached swiftly for his pocket. The next moment a bullet hit the wall beside me with a smack.
There was a brief tableau. His men and mine turning their sightless eyes toward one another in an effort to understand what was going on. Then he fired again. I supposed he had aimed at me, but the bullet found the man on my left. He gave a grunt as though he were surprised, and folded up with a kind of sigh. I dodged back round the corner, dragging the other watchdog with me.
“Quick,” I said. “Give me the key to these cuffs. I can’t do a thing like this.”
He didn’t do anything except give a knowing grin. He was a one-idea man.
“Huh,” he said. “Come off it. You don’t fool me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you damned clown,” I said, pulling on the chain to drag the body of watchdog number one nearer so that we could get better cover.
The goon started to argue. Heaven knows what subtleties his dim wits were crediting me with. There was enough slack on the chain now for me to raise my arms. I did, and hammered both fists at his head so that it went back against the wall with a crack. That disposed of his argument. I found the key in his side pocket.
“Listen,” I told the rest. “Turn round, all of you, and keep going straight ahead. Don’t separate, or you’ll have had it. Get moving now.”
I got one wristlet open, ridded myself of the chain, and scrambled over the wall into somebody’s garden. I crouched there while I got rid of the other cuff. Then I moved across to peer cautiously over the far angle of the wall. The young man with the pistol had not come rushing after us, as I had half expected. He was still with his party, giving them an instruction. And now I came to think of it, why should he hurry? Since we had not fired back at him, he could reckon we were unarmed and we wouldn’t be able to get away fast.
When he’d finished his directions he walked out confidently into the road to a point where he had a view of my retreating group. At the corner he stopped to look at the two prone watchdogs. Probably the chain suggested to him that one of them had been the eyes of our gang, for he put the pistol back in his pocket and began to follow the rest in a leisurely fashion.
That wasn’t what I had expected, and it took me a minute to see his scheme. Then it came to me that his most profitable course would be to follow them to our H.Q. and see what pickings he could hijack there. He was, I had to admit, either much quicker than I at spotting chances or bad previously given more thought to the possibilities that might arise than I had. I was glad that I had told my lot to keep straight on. Most likely they’d get tired of it after a bit, but I reckoned they’d none of them be able to find the way back to the hotel and so lead him to it. As long as they kept together, I’d be able to collect them all later on without much difficulty. The immediate question was what to do about a man who carried a pistol and didn’t mind using it.
In some parts of the world one might go into the first house in sight and pick up a convenient firearm. Hampstead was not like that; it was a highly respectable suburb, unfortunately. There might possibly be a sporting gun to be found somewhere, but I would have to hunt for it. The only thing I could think of was to keep him in sight and hope that some opportunity would offer a chance to deal with him. I broke a branch off a tree, scrambled back over the wall, and began to tap my way along the curb, looking, I hoped, indistinguishable from the hundreds of blind men one bad seen wandering the streets in the same way.
The road ran straight for some distance. The redheaded young man was perhaps fifty yards ahead of me, and my party another fifty ahead of him. We continued like that for something over half a mile. To my relief, none of the front party showed any tendency to turn into the road which led to our base. I was beginning to wonder how long it would be before they decided that they bad gone far enough, when an unexpected diversion occurred. One man who had been lagging behind the rest finally stopped. He dropped his stick and doubled up with his arms over his belly. Then be sagged to the ground and lay there, rolling with pain. The others did not stop for him. They must have heard his moans, but probably they had no idea he was one of themselves.
The young man looked toward him and hesitated. He altered his course and bore across toward the contorted figure. He stopped a few feet away from him and stood gazing down. For perhaps a quarter of a minute he regarded him carefully. Then slowly, but quite deliberately, he pulled his pistol out of his pocket and shot him through the bead.
The party ahead stopped at the sound of the shot. So did L The young man made no attempt to catch up with them-in fact, he seemed suddenly to lose interest in them altogether. He turned round and came walking back down the middle of the road. I remembered to play my part, and began to tap my way forward again. He paid me no attention as he passed, but I was able to see his face: it was worried, and there was a grim set to his jaw. I kept going as I was until he was a decent distance behind me, then I hurried on to the rest. Brought up short by the Sound of the shot, they were arguing whether to go on farther or not.
I broke that up by telling them that now I was no longer encumbered with my two I.Q. -minus watchdogs we would be ordering things differently. I was going to get a truck, and I would be back in ten minutes or so to run them back to the billet in it.
The finding of another organized party at work produced a new anxiety, but we found the place intact when we got back. The only news they had for me there was that two more men and a woman had been taken with severe belly pains and removed to the other house.
We made what preparations we could for defense against any marauders arriving while I was away. Then I picked a new party and we set off in the truck, this time in a different direction.
I recalled that in former days when I had come up to Hampstead Heath it had often been by way of a bus terminus where a number of small shops and stores clustered. With the aid of the street plan I found the place again easily enough-not only found it, but discovered it to be marvelously intact. Save for three or four broken windows, the area looked simply as if it had been closed up for a weekend.
But there were differences. For one thing, no such silence had ever before hung over the locality, weekday or Sunday. And there were several bodies lying in the street. By this time one was becoming accustomed enough to that to pay them little attention. I had, in fact, wondered that there were not more to be seen, and had come to the conclusion that most people sought some kind of shelter, either out of fear or later when they became weak. It was one of the reasons that one felt a disinclination to enter any dwelling house.
I stopped the truck in front of a provision store and listened for a few seconds. The silence came down on us like a blanket. There was no sound of tapping sticks, not a wanderer in sight. Nothing moved.
“Okay,” I said. “Pile out, chaps.”
The locked door of the shop gave way easily. Inside there was a neat, unspoiled array of tubs of butter, cheeses, sides of bacon, cases of sugar, and all the rest of it. I got the party busy on it. They had developed tricks of working by now, and were more sure of their handling. I was able to leave them to get on with it for a bit while I examined the back storeroom and then the cellar.
It was while I was below, investigating the nature of the cases down there, that I heard a sound of shouts somewhere outside. Close upon it came a thunder of trampling boots on the floor above me. One man came down through the trap door and pitched on his head. He did not move or make another sound. I jumped to it that there must be a battle with a rival gang in progress up there. I stepped across the fallen man and climbed the ladderlike stair cautiously, holding up one arm to protect my head.