The World in My Pocket

Ginny stepped back, threatening him with the gun while Morgan yelled and cursed at him.

‘Get on! Get on!’ Morgan shouted to Ginny. ‘Hurry!’

As calm as a model at a dress show, Ginny moved on, picking up the wallets and dropping them into the sack. No one moved. They sat frozen, white-faced, their fear riveted on their faces.

Outside in the car, Kitson heard the crash of gunfire and he flinched. It needed a tremendous effort of self-control not to put the car into gear and drive away.

He sat motionless, his hands gripping the wheel, sweat on his face, holding on to himself, willing himself to stay where he was.

Then suddenly it was all over.

There was a sound of rushing of feet. He heard the rear door of the Lincoln jerk open and bodies spilt into the car. He felt a hot, sweating body thud against his as Bleck sprawled on to the front seat. Automatically, he started the car moving.

‘Go on! Go on!’ Morgan bawled in his ear from the rear seat. ‘Get the hell out of here fast!’

Kitson, his breath whistling between his clenched teeth, sent the car surging forward. He swung left with a scream of tortured tires, cut down the narrow alley and out into the in street.

With the skill that was his natural talent, he skipped the car cross the main street, and into another side street, slackening speed slightly, flicking on his headlights and flicking them off immediately as he drove across the intersections.

Morgan twisted around, was staring out of the rear window, intent on seeing if they were being followed. After a half a mile of such driving, he said abruptly, ‘Okay, no one is on us, let’s

get over to Gypo’s place.’

There was a general relaxation of tension.

‘Well, that was rugged!’ Bleck said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. ‘That could have turned pretty sour if we hadn’t had the chopper with us. Phew! When that jerk tried to grab Ginny’s gun.’

‘What happened?’ Kitson demanded, his voice shaking. ‘What was the shooting? Did anyone get hurt?’

‘No. Some guy tried to grab Ginny’s gun and the gun went off. No one got hurt. It certainly put the fear of the devil into that punk. Then a guy took me by surprise and knocked the gun out of my hand. That was pretty rugged too.’

Ginny was sitting next to Morgan, and he could feel her body was trembling. He looked sideways at her, and as they passed under a street lamp, he saw she was looking bad, her skin a bluish white.

He patted her knee.

‘You did fine, kid,’ he said. ‘You really did fine. The way you handled that fat jerk! I’ve never seen anything like it for nerve.’

She moved her knee away.

‘Oh, stop it!’ she said, and to his surprise, she turned her head away and began to cry.

Neither Kitson nor Bleck, sitting in front, knew what was happening, and Morgan shifted away from the girl, leaving her alone.

‘What’s the loot like?’ Kitson asked, driving carefully now as he headed for Gypo’s workshop.

‘Should be okay. At least fifty wallets and the till was loaded,’ Morgan said. He lit a cigarette, noticing with a sense of pride how steady his hands were.

He could still hear Bleck’s laboured breathing. He had watched Bleck while they were in the cafe, and he had an idea he might crack. This bothered him. He had been under the impression that Bleck’s nerve was reliable, but the way he had acted and the way he had let that big jerk knock his gun out of his hand warned Morgan that from now on Bleck would have to be watched.

Kitson too had been in a pretty bad way when they had scrambled into the car. He hadn’t got going as he should have done. If Morgan hadn’t yelled at him, he would have driven away so slowly someone from the cafe could have got a description of the car.

Before the big one, there would have to be some tightening up. At least he was now sure of the girl. She had handled herself magnificently. She was the best of the whole bunch.

He glanced at her again. She had stopped crying, and was sitting up, her white face wooden, her eyes a little glassy, and she was staring out of the window.

Morgan pushed his cigarette towards her.

‘Here, take it,’ he said curtly.

She took the cigarette and put it between her lips, not saying anything.

As Morgan lit another cigarette for himself, Kitson drove up the rough road that led to Gypo’s workshop.

The workshop consisted of a big shed and a wooden shack in which Gypo lived. It was in the shed that he did occasional welding work, made wrought iron gates when anyone wanted gates, which was seldom, or cut a key or fixed a lock for the hardware stores in town.

The workshop gave Gypo a legitimate excuse to keep a few cylinders of acetylene as well as a few cylinders of undiluted hydrogen which were useful when he had to cut into a safe. He scarcely made enough profit from the workshop to pay for the rent of the shed.

They found him waiting anxiously for them, and as the headlights of the Lincoln lit up the double doors, he appeared, shoving open the doors with the frantic clumsiness of a frightened man.