In a little while he heard the man coming back. He stood flat against the bulkhead just inside the door, and when the man came in Kells slid one arm around his neck and pulled it tight with his other hand. The man’s curse was cut to a faint gurgle; they fell down and rolled across the deck. Kells kept his arm pressed tightly against the man’s throat and after a time he stopped struggling, went limp. Kells lay panting beside him for a few minutes without releasing his hold and then, when he was sure that the man was unconscious, got up. He stooped and fumbled in the man’s pockets, found a box of matches and a small woven-leather blackjack.
He went swiftly to the door, through to a narrow L-shaped room where unused chairs, stools, tables were stored. There was a hatchway with a steep-sloped stair leading down to another compartment. Kells went quietly down.
There was a paper-shaded light over the flat desk; there were two bunks. A man in overalls was snoring in one. There was a watertight door in one bulkhead and Kells went through it to a dark passageway that led forward along the ship’s side. About thirty feet along the passageway he stepped on something soft, yielding; he lighted a match and held it down to the drained face of the little man who had said “Please lock your hands together back of your neck.” There was a dark stain high on the front of his shirt; the heavy blue revolver was gripped in his outstretched hand. He was breathing.
Kells pried the revolver out of the little man’s hand and stood up. He balanced the revolver across his fingers and a kind of soft insanity came into his eyes. He shook out the match and went back along the dark passageway, through the compartment where the overalled man was sleeping, up to the L-shaped storeroom. In the far end of the L there was another narrow door. Kells swung it open softly.
Swanstrom was sitting at the desk with his back to the door. Another man, a spare thin-haired consumptive-looking man was sitting on a chair on the platform, one of the 30–30’s across his knees. He looked at Kells and he looked at the big blue revolver in Kells’ hand and he put the .30–30 down on the platform.
Swanstrom swung around and opened his mouth, and then he smiled as if he were very tired.
Kells said: “Twenty-four hundred, and goddamned quick.”
The thin moan of saxophones came down to them from somewhere above.
Swanstrom inclined his head toward the desk. He said, still with the tired smile: “I ain’t got a key.”
The lock of the other door clicked and the door opened and Rose and O’Donnell came in. They stood still for perhaps five seconds; O’Donnell was almost behind Rose. He closed the door and then he reached for the light-switch on the bulkhead. Kells squeezed the big Colt; O’Donnell fell forward to his hands and knees, shook his head slowly from side to side, sank down and forward onto his face.