Crack! There had been another cool pause, as though the person in the window were taking deliberate aim. The man behind the oak was staggering to his feet just as the bullet took him; he flapped against the bole of the tree, screamed again…
Crack! The cool, inhuman precision of the sniper in the window was adjusted with hideous nicety; he fired at intervals of just five seconds, drawing his sights to a fraction of an inch…
Crack! —
Somebody was thrashing through the underbrush, still screaming. Hugh couldn't stand it. He got to his feet just as Morgan seized his ankle and brought him down toppling. Morgan yelled: "Don'tbeabloodyfool; hellpickusoffas-we-get-up—! Ah!"
He grunted as Hugh jerked loose. Nobody would have believed that mere birds could have made such a racket; the clearing was alive with their noise, and they wheeled in clouds on the moonlight. Round the side of the house ran a clumsy figure, making indistinguishable noises. It was a wild-eyed Inspector Murch. He ran up the side steps of the porch, waving a flashlight whose beam darted crazily over the house, and he had something else in the other; and even then he was shouting out some nonsensical words about the name. of the Law.
Nobody has a clear recollection of exactly what happened. Morgan gasped something like, "Oh, all right!" and then he and Hugh were running up the lawn, zigzag fashion, towards the house. Murch's light glared momentarily in the sniper's window, and something jerked back like a toad. The sniper fired high, off j balance, shattering the glass in his own window. They saw it spurt and glitter out against a white mist of smoke and the pot-bellied bars that guarded the window. Then there were more flashes in the smoke, j because Murch forgot police rules, and he was firing in reply. When the three of them came together on the porch, he was dangerously ready to drill anybody he; saw; but Morgan cursed him in time, and prevented a shot as the inspector whirled round. The sniper was gone. All Murch did was stand and shake the bars of j the window, until somebody said, "Door!" and they all j charged for it.
It was unlocked. But even as Murch kicked it open, a faint bang from another door at the rear of the house i announced which way the sniper had gone…
Five minutes later they were still aimlessly beating the brush, and finding nobody. The only result was that Murch had stumbled on something and broken his flashlight. Not, they silently agreed as they looked at each other, a very dignified spectacle of a man hunt, j Even the querulous birds were angrily dozing off j again. The sharp mist of smoke had begun to dissolve before a shattered window; a breeze had come back-rather complacently, you felt — to the long grasses; and the clearing was quiet. But, from the porch where they
had reassembled, they could see Spinelli's body lying spread-eagled on the brick path near the oak. That was all.
Morgan leaned against the porch. He tried to light a cigarette, shakily. "Well?" he said.