Woman In The Dark

He looked past her at the open bedroom door, grinned, and crossed to it. When he turned from the empty room she sneered at him. Conroy had gone to the fireplace, where the Great Dane was lying, and was standing with his back to the fire, watching them.

Robson said: “Well, it’s like this, Luise: you’re going back home with me.”

She said: “No.”

He wagged his head up and down, grinning.

“I haven’t got my money’s worth out of you yet.” He took a step toward her.

She retreated to the table, caught up the whiskey bottle by its neck. “Do not touch me!” Her voice, like her face, was cold with fury.

The dog rose, growling.

Robson’s dark eyes jerked sidewise to focus on the dog, then on Conroy—and one eyelid twitched—then on the woman again.

Conroy—with neither tenseness nor furtiveness to alarm woman or dog—put his right hand into his overcoat pocket, brought out a black pistol, put its muzzle close behind one of the dog’s ears, and shot the dog through the head. The dog tried to leap, fell on its side; its legs stirred feebly. Conroy, smiling foolishly, returned the pistol to his pocket.

Luise Fischer spun around at the sound of the shot. Screaming at Conroy, she raised the bottle to hurl it. But Robson caught her wrist with one hand, wrenched the bottle away with the other. He was grinning, saying, “No, no, my sweet,” in a bantering voice.

He put the bottle on the table again, but kept his grip on her wrist.

The dog’s legs stopped moving.

Robson said: “All right. Now, are you ready to go?”

She made no attempt to free her wrist. She drew herself up straight and said very seriously: “My friend, you do not know me yet if you think I am going with you.”

Robson chuckled. “You don’t know me if you think you’re not,” he told her.

The front door opened and Brazil came in. His sallow face was phlegmatic, though there was a shade of annoyance in his eyes. He shut the door carefully behind him, then addressed his guests. His voice was that of one who complains without anger. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “Visitors’ day? Am I supposed to be running a roadhouse?”

Robson said: “We are going now. Fraulein Fischer’s going with us.”

Brazil was looking at the dead dog, annoyance deepening in his copperish eyes. “That’s all right if she wants to,” he said indifferently.

The woman said: “I am not going.”

Brazil was still looking at the dog. “That’s all right too,” he muttered, and with more interest: “But who did this?” He walked over to the dog and prodded its head with his foot. “Blood all over the floor,” he grumbled.

Then, without raising his head, without the slightest shifting of balance or stiffening of his body, he drove his right fist up into Conroy’s handsome, drunken face.

Conroy fell away from the fist rigidly, with upbent knees, turning a little as he fell. His head and one shoulder struck the stone fireplace, and he tumbled forward, rolling completely over, face upward, on the floor.

Brazil whirled to face Robson.

Robson had dropped the woman’s wrist and was trying to get a pistol out of his overcoat pocket. But she had flung herself on his arm, hugging it to her body, hanging with her full weight on it, and he could not free it, though he tore her hair with his other hand.

Brazil went around behind Robson, struck his chin up with a fist so he could slide his forearm under it across the taller man’s throat. When he had tightened the forearm there and had his other hand wrapped around Robson’s wrist, he said: “All right. I’ve got him.”

Luise Fischer released the man’s arm and fell back on her haunches. Except for the triumph in it, her face was as businesslike as Brazil’s.

Brazil pulled Robson’s arm up sharply behind his back. The pistol came up with it, and when the pistol was horizontal Robson pulled the trigger. The bullet went between his back and Brazil’s chest, to splinter the corner of a bookcase in the far end of the room.

Brazil said: “Try that again, baby, and I’ll break your arms. Drop it!”

Robson hesitated, let the pistol clatter down on the floor. Luise Fischer scrambled forward on hands and knees to pick it up. She sat on a corner of the table, holding the pistol in her hand.

Brazil pushed Robson away from him and crossed the room to kneel beside the man on the floor, feeling his pulse, running hands over his body, and rising with Conroy’s pistol, which he thrust into a hip pocket.

Conroy moved one leg, his eyelids fluttered sleepily, and he groaned.

Brazil jerked a thumb at him and addressed Robson curtly: “Take him and get out.”

Robson went over to Conroy, stooped to lift his head and shoulders a little, shook him, and said irritably: “Come on, Dick, wake up. We’re going.”

Conroy mumbled, “I’m a’ ri’,” and tried to lie down again.

“Get up, get up,” Robson snarled, and slapped his cheeks.

Conroy shook his head and mumbled: “Do’ wan’a.”

Robson slapped the blond face again. “Come on, get up, you louse.”

Conroy groaned and mumbled something unintelligible.

Brazil said impatiently: “Get him out anyway. The rain’ll bring him around.”