I held it while Ned got unsteadily to his feet.
“What the hell is going on?” Harry demanded. He was a fat-faced, dumb-looking hick, but built like a bullock.
All I could think of was the bomb.
“Watch him, Harry,” Ned croaked. “Just let me get my breath. I told you, didn’t I? It’s the same guy.”
Harry gaped at me. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“We’d better call the cops,” he said. “You all right, Ned?”
Ned cursed him and cursed me. Then he kicked me in my ribs before I could block his boot. I went sprawling across the room and I guess that saved me.
The bomb went off.
I was vaguely aware of a lot of noise, a flash of blinding light and a rush of air that flung me up against the wall. Then plaster crashed down on me, windows fell out, the room swayed and shook.
I found I was clutching the flashlight I’d dropped when I had grabbed Ned. I knew I had to get out of there fast, but I had to see what had happened to the guards. I needn’t have worried. They had been in a direct line of the safe door as it was blown off its hinges. I recognized Ned by his boots, but I didn’t recognize Harry at all.
I stumbled through the broken French windows out onto the terrace. I was punch-drunk, slaphappy and scared witless, but my brain still functioned.
I was going to double-cross Gorman before he double-crossed me. The exploding bomb had made it easy for me.
I staggered over to the stone bird that guarded the top of the terrace steps. I don’t know how I managed to climb up to the place where its wings joined its body, but I did. I put the compact in the little hollow between the wings, scrambled down, and began to run toward where I hoped I’d find Parker.
My legs felt as if the bones had been taken out of them and my ears sang. It looked a long way across that lawn to the wall and I wasn’t sure if I could make it.
The moon had climbed above the house now and the garden was full of silvery light. You could see every blade of grass, every flower, every stone in the gravel paths. There was nothing you couldn’t see. But I saw only one thing: the wolfhound coming straight at me like an express train.
I let out a yell you could have heard in San Francisco, turned to run, changed my mind, spun around to face the brute. He came over the lawn, low to the ground, his eyes like red-hot embers, his teeth as white as orange pith in the moonlight. I still dream about that dog, and I still wake up, sweating, thinking he’s coming at me, feeling his teeth in my throat. He stopped dead within ten yards of me, dropped flat, turned to stone. I stood there, sweat dripping off me, my knees buckling, too scared even to breathe. I knew one flicker out of me and he’d come.
We stared at each other for maybe ten seconds. It seemed like a hundred years to me. I could see his tail stiffening and his back legs tightening for his spring, then there was a sharp crack of an automatic. I heard the slug whine past my head. The dog rolled over on its side, snarling and biting, its teeth snapping horribly at empty air.
I didn’t wait to assess the damage. I ran toward the beam of the flashlight that flashed from the top of the wall. I got there, pulled myself up and fell with a thud on the far side.
Parker grabbed me around the waist, half dragged, half carried me to the car. I rolled in, slammed the door as he let in the clutch.
“Keep going!” I yelled at him. “They’re right behind. They’ve got a car and they’ll be after us.”
I wanted to get him rattled so he wouldn’t ask questions until we had gone too far to go back. I got him rattled.
He drove down the hills like he was crazy. That guy certainly could drive. Why we didn’t go over the mountain road beats me. We tore down the road, took hairpin bends at eighty, our wheels inches from the overhang.
At the end of the mountain road he suddenly slammed on his brakes, skidded across the road, straightened up and turned on me as if he were out of his mind.
“Did you get it?” he screamed at me, grabbing my coat lapels and shaking me. “Where is it, damn you! Did you get it?”
I put my hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a shove that nearly sent him out of the car.
“You and your damned bomb!” I yelled back at him. “You crazy dumb cluck! You nearly killed me!”
“Did you get it?” he bawled, beating on the steering wheel with his clenched fists.
“The bomb blew it to hell,” I told him. “That’s what your bomb did. It blew the whole safe and everything in it to hell,” and I hit him flush on the button as he came at me.
CHAPTER FIVE
I CAUGHT A GLIMPSE of myself in the mirror over the mantel as I came into the lounge. I was smothered in white plaster dust, my hair hung over my eyes, the sleeve of my coat was ripped, one knee showed through my trouser leg. If that wasn’t enough, blood ran down my face from a cut above my eye and the side of my neck where Ned had socked me was turning a nice shade of purple. With the elegant Parker draped over my shoulder, it wasn’t hard to see we had run into trouble, and plenty of it.
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