More Deadly Than The Male

The other three at the table kicked their chairs away and jumped clear, while some of the men who had been standing in the shadows threw themselves on the floor.

Dillinger, alone at the table, sat motionless, glaring at George Fraser.

"Okay, Johnny," George Fraser said mockingly, "go for your gun. What are you waiting for?"

Dillinger rose slowly to his feet. He swept his chair out of the way and crouched.

"Bet you a hundred bucks I can put five slugs in your pumper before your rod shows," George Fraser said, letting his hands hang loosely at his sides.

Dillinger cursed him, and then his arm moved with the speed of a striking snake. A heavy, snub-nosed automatic jumped as if by magic into George Fraser's hand. The room rocked with the sound ofgunfire.

Dillinger, his eyes wide and sightless, crashed to the floor and rolled over on his back.

"Take a look at him, Charlie," George Fraser said, his eyes on the group of men huddled against the wall.

Charlie Lucky, after a moment's hesitation, reached forward, pulled Dillinger's coat back and ripped open his shirt.

"Five slugs, "he said, his voice cracking; "all in the same spot."

"Good morning, Mr George," Ella said, putting a cup of watery tea on the bamboo table by the bed. "Did I wake you?"

"Hmm?" George Fraser asked. He looked up with blank astonishment at Ella in her frowsy blue uniform and her ridiculous cap perched on the top of her mouse-coloured hair. "Good Lord! You gave me quite a turn. I didn't hear you come in. I must've been dozing . . ."

"It's ever such a lovely morning," Ella went on, crossing the drab little room, and pulling up the blind. "The sun's shining and there ain't a cloud in the sky."

George Fraser closed his eyes against the bright sunlight that streamed through the grimy window pane. The image he had been creating of himself as "Machine-gun Fraser", millionaire gangster, still gripped his imagination, and Ella's unexpected intrusion fuddled him.

"Shall I tidy up a hit?" Ella asked, her plain, shiny little face resigned as she surveyed the disordered room. "Coo, Mr George! Your socks are in the coal-scuttle."

George Fraser sighed. It was no good. He would have to leave the back room, the smell of cordite, the terrified faces of Capone, Nelson, Karpis and Charlie Lucky until later. He could always pick up his fantasy when Ella had gone.

"Oh, all right," he said, pushing the blankets from his shoulders and sitting up. "Only don't make too much noise. I've got a bit of a head this morning."

Ella looked at him hopefully. "Did you have any adventures last night?" she asked as she busied herself about the room.

George resisted the temptation to give her a fictitious account of his evening He did not feel quite up to it this morning, and after the story he had told her the day before, which had been his best effort to date, he did not think it wise to risk an anticlimax.

"I can't tell you yet," he said. "A little later perhaps; but it's too secret right now."

Ella's face fell. She was thin, sharp-featured, wistful — a typical product of the East End slums. For three years she had been the general help at this boarding-house Off the Edgware Road. Most mornings, providing he hadn't a hangover, George would keep her entranced with lurid tales of G-men, gangsters and their molls. He assured her that, when he lived in the States, he had known them all. At one time he had worked with Frank Kelly, the hank robber; at another time he had been the bodyguard of Toni Scarletti, the booze racketeer. His name was known and feared by all the big shots of the underworld, and he had experienced enough adventures to fill a dozen books.