Mrs. Sype came in first, stiff-legged, her eyes glazed, her arms bent rigidly at the elbows and the hands clawing straight forward at nothing, feeling for something that wasn't there. There was a gun in her back, Carol Donovan's small .32, held efficiently in Carol Donovan's small ruthless hand.
Madder came last. He was drunk, brave from the bottle, flushed and savage. He threw the Smith & Wesson down on me and leered.
Carol Donovan pushed Mrs. Sype aside. The older woman stumbled into the corner and sank down on her knees, blankeyed.
Sype stared at the Donovan girl. He was rattled because she was a girl and young and pretty. He hadn't been used to the type. Seeing her took the fire out of him. If men had come in he would have shot them to pieces.
The small dark white-faced girl faced him coldly, said in her tight chilled voice: "All right, Dad. Shed the heater. Make it smooth now."
Sype leaned down slowly, not taking his eyes off her. He put his enormous frontier Colt on the floor.
"Kick it away from you, Dad."
Sype kicked it. The gun skidded across the bare boards, over towards the center of the room.
"That's the way, old-timer. You hold on him, Rush, while I unrod the dick."
The two guns swiveled and the hard gray eyes were looking at me now. Madder went a little way towards Sype and pointed his Smith & Wesson at Sype's chest.
The girl smiled, not a nice smile. "Bright boy, eh? You sure stick your neck out all the time, don't you? Made a beef, shamus. Didn't frisk your skinny pal. He had a little map in one shoe."
"I didn't need one," I said smoothly, and grinned at her.
I tried to make the grin appealing, because Mrs. Sype was moving her knees on the floor, and every move took her nearer to Sype's Colt.
"But you're all washed up now, you and your big smile. Hoist the mitts while I get your iron. Up, mister."
She was a girl, about five feet two inches tall, and weighed around a hundred and twenty. Just a girl. I was six feet and a half-inch, weighed one-ninety-five. I put my hands up and hit her on the jaw.
That was crazy, but I had all I could stand of the DonovanMadder act, the Donovan-Madder guns, the Donovan-Madder tough talk. I hit her on the jaw.
She went back a yard and her popgun went off. A slug burned my ribs. She started to fall. Slowly, like a slow motion picture, she fell. There was something silly about it.
Mrs. Sype got the Colt and shot her in the back.
Madder whirled and the instant he turned Sype rushed him. Madder jumped back and yelled and covered Sype again. Sype stopped cold and the wide crazy grin came back on his gaunt face.
The slug from the Colt knocked the girl forward as though a door had whipped in a high wind. A flurry of blue cloth, something thumped my chest-her head. I saw her face for a moment as she bounced back, a strange face that I had never seen before.
Then she was a huddled thing on the floor at my feet, small, deadly, extinct, with redness coming out from under her, and the tall quiet woman behind her with the smoking Colt held in both hands.
Madder shot Sype twice. Sype plunged forward still grinning and hit the end of the table. The purplish liquid he had used on the sick fish sprayed up over him. Madder shot him again as he was falling.
I jerked my Luger out and shot Madder in the most painful place I could think of that wasn't likely to be fatal-the back of the knee. He went down exactly as if he had tripped over a hidden wire. I had cuffs on him before he even started to groan.
I kicked guns here and there and went over to Mrs. Sype and took the big Colt out of her hands.
It was very still in the room for a little while. Eddies of smoke drifted towards the skylight, filmy gray, pale in the afternoon sun. I heard the surf booming in the distance. Then I heard a whistling sound close at hand.
It was Sype trying to say something. His wife crawled across to him, still on her knees, huddled beside him. There was blood on his lips and bubbles. He blinked hard, trying to clear his head. He smiled up at her. His whistling voice said very faintly: "The Moors, Hattie-the Moors."
Then his neck went loose and the smile melted off his face. His head rolled to one side on the bare floor.
Mrs. Sype touched him, then got very slowly to her feet and looked at me, calm, dry-eyed.
She said in a low clear voice: "Will you help me carry him to the bed? I don't like him here with these people."
I said: "Sure. What was that he said?"
"I don't know. Some nonsense about his fish, I think."
I lifted Sype's shoulders and she took his feet and we carried him into the bedroom and put him on the bed. She folded his hands on his chest and shut his eyes. She went over and pulled the blinds down.
"That's all, thank you," she said, not looking at me. "The telephone is downstairs."
She sat down in a chair beside the bed and put her head down on the coverlet near Sype's arm.
I went out of the room and shut the door.