Green put his hand up and rubbed the heel of it slowly down the left side of his face. His eyes were fixed more or less vacantly on a small turkey-red cigarette box on the table. Very suddenly he went forward and as Sallust sprang to his feet, Green’s arm moved in a long looping arc, his knuckles smacked sharply against Sallust’s chin; Sallust crumpled and fell to his knees, clutched blindly at the chair, went limp.
Paula was too surprised to scream, or move; she stood with her hands to her mouth, her great eyes fixed on Green in startled amazement.
Green mumbled, “Sorry,” shortly, stooped and swept Sallust’s slight figure up into his arms and moved towards the door. “Come on,” he grunted over his shoulder, “and make it snappy.”
She followed in stunned silence; at the door he turned and jerked his head at her coat and she took it up from a chair and put it on like a somnambulist motivated and moved by something unknown, something irresistible.
The bleak Greenwich Village street was deserted; Green carried Sallust across the glistening sidewalk and put him in the car, hurried around to climb in behind the wheel. Paula stood hesitantly on the sidewalk; the cold air had brought back her momentarily dimmed senses and she reflected that it was not too late to scream, reflected further, after glancing up and down the street, that it was more or less useless. She got into the car and closed the door, put her arm around Sallust and waited.
Just east of Eighth Avenue, Green slowed and pulled over to the curb to allow two speeding police-cars to pass, then turned and watched them skid to the curb outside the building where the Sallusts lived.
He grinned at Paula. “My timing wasn’t so hot,” he observed. “The Law was about three minutes less efficient than I figured.”
She turned from watching the men swarm out of the cars and run into the house. Her inclination to scream was definitely gone; she tried to return his smile.
“What is it all about?” she whispered. “I don’t understand...”
“Neither do I yet.” He let the clutch in and the car rounded the corner, whirred north on Eighth Avenue. “I’m sorry I had to resort to that to get your brother out, but I thought he got a raw deal before and I want to do what I can to prevent his getting another one. After five years on the inside he shouldn’t mind a sock on the jaw if it saves him even one night in the cooler.”