Crotti stood up, too. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want to show you how to make it pay.”
Kells said: “I’m sorry. It’s a swell proposition but I’m not the man for it — I guess I’m not commercially inclined. It’s not my game...”
Crotti shrugged elaborately. “All right.”
Kells said: “Now, if you’ll ask the man behind me to put his rod away I’ll be going.”
Crotti’s lips were pressed close together, curved up at the corners. He turned and looked into the big window behind him — the man who stood just inside the doorway through which they had entered was reflected against outer darkness.
Crotti nodded to the man and at the same moment Granquist stood up, screamed. Kells stepped into line between Crotti and the door, whirled in the same second — the big automatic was in his hand, belching flame.
The man had evidently been afraid of hitting Crotti, was two slugs late. He looked immensely surprised, crashed down sideways in the doorway. Crotti was standing with his back to the window, the same curved grimace on his face. There were pounding steps on the stair. Kells stepped over the man in the doorway, ran smack into another — the man who had been asleep on the cot — at the top of the stair. The man grabbed him around the waist before he could use the gun; he raised it, felt the barrel-sight rip across the man’s face. There were several more men in the big room below, two on the stairs, coming up.
He planted one foot in the angle of the floor and wall, shoved hard; locked together, they balanced precariously for a moment, fell. They hit the two men about halfway down, tangled to a twisted mass of threshing arms, legs. The banister creaked, gave way. Kells felt the collar of his coat grabbed, was jerked under and down. He struck out with the gun, squeezed it. The gun roared and he heard someone yell and then something hit the center of his forehead and there was darkness.
Chapter Six
The fog was wet on Kells’ face. He opened his eyes and looked up into the grayness, rolled over on his side slowly, looked into thick, unbroken grayness. He held his hand in front of him at arm’s length and it was a shapeless mass of darker gray. He sat up and leaden weights fell in his skull like the mechanism that opens and closes the eyes of dolls. He lay down again and turned his head slowly, held his watch close. It was a little after six, full daylight, but the fog made it night.