“Tut, tut,” Carver admonished. “You’re way too awkward for that sort of thing. Sometime you’ll do that and some excitable soul will shoot you three or four times while you’re starting your wind-up.”
He removed Noll’s weapon and tossed both it and his own upon the bed.
“Now we can converse at our ease until Bart comes,” he said.
But Lassiter, angered beyond precaution, jumped for him the instant he relinquished the weapons, and being heavier than Carver he sought to bear him down by sheer weight. Carver rocked his head with two solid smashes but Noll sought only to come to grips where he could exert his strength, clutching at his opponent instead of returning his blows. They fought in cramped quarters and Carver could not step to either side lest he should give Lassiter access to the two guns reposing on the bed. The huge paws clamped on his shoulders and Lassiter crushed him back against the dresser. Carver elevated one knee between them, planted his boot against the other’s paunch and propelled him violently doorward. With a single step he retrieved his gun with intent to discourage Lassiter’s return, but he had no need of it. The big man’s head collided forcibly with the door jamb and he sprawled in a limp heap just outside in the narrow corridor.
Bart Lassiter, just mounting the stairway, witnessed this strange exit of his relative. He peered inside and discovered Carver, so he entered and seated himself on the edge of the bed, twisting a cigarette while he sought to reconcile the evidence before his eyes with the mental picture of the empty room as he had left it not five minutes past.
“Incidentally, there seems to be a corpse on the threshold,” he presently observed. “What did it die of?”
“General malignancy that set in right after birth and just now came to a head,” Carver diagnosed. “He was prospecting for your cache when I arrived.”
“He’d already located it,” Bart stated. “It was gone when I came up. Likely he came back to hunt for more as I went down, and your trails converged, sort of. Wellman said you’d just turned up the stairs, so I came on back.”
He crossed over to inspect the sprawled figure in the hallway.
“I’d say he was totally defunct,” he reported; but as if to refute this assertion Noll stirred an arm and grunted. “Unfortunately resuscitation is already setting in,” Bart revised his statement. “Let’s be off before he opens one eye and tries to borrow ten.”