"Please," Androtten sighed, "no noise, please. I should hate to be forced to shoot you both."
Jerry stifled a muted cry. "You wouldn't dare," Hall said.
"You are a fool, Hall. I hope you have already noticed that my gun is equipped with the only silencer in this jungle of Indians and blackamoors."
"The Gestapo—you Nazis think of everything, don't you?" Hall said in a rising voice.
"I must remind you again not to shout, Hall. Please, lock your hands on top of your head."
Hall obeyed the order.
"If the nurse co-operates, she will be spared."
"For God's sake, Jerry, do anything the Nazi orders," Hall cried. "He has a gun!"
The little man with the gun angrily raised a finger to his lips. "Not one word out of you," he whispered. He got out of the chair, started backing toward the door. "Now," he said, "listen carefully, both of you. For your information, Hall, I am not Gestapo. I am from the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin. And that, I am afraid, is the last information you will ever receive about anything, Hall."
The comb in Jerry's hand snapped with a dry little crack. The sudden noise startled Androtten. He raised the gun and fired just as Hall dove for his feet. Three times the cough of a silenced gun sounded in the room. The shots seemed to come all together. A split second after the third shot was fired Hall had kicked the gun from the limp hand of the Nazi and was sitting astride his chest with his hands locked on Androtten's throat. He was oblivious to the noise at the balcony, to Jerry, to everything but the man dying under him.