Duffy said, “You ain’t making this stick.”
The first copper shrugged. “You don’t know the half of it. You’re going for a little ride right now.”
“There’s a bottle of Scotch somewhere,” Duffy said, looking round the room. “Mind if I cut the phlegm?”
Gus passed the end of a thick finger round the inside of his collar. “We’ll cut it, too.”
Duffy walked across the room, conscious of the hard unwavering watchfulness of the cop with the gun. His brain was ice-cold. If they were ready to frame him by such a clumsy method of palming money and planting it on him, they might even knock him off resisting arrest.
He picked up the whisky and filled the two glasses that Olga arid he had used, half full.
As he turned, he intercepted a quick glance between the two cops. He felt himself go very cold. It told him what he suspected. He gave Gus one of the glasses and then wandered over to the other. “I guess I can use the bottle,” he said carelessly.
The gun looked as big as a cannon trained on his vest, but he showed no sign of jumping nerves as he held out the glass. He was just about five feet away from the cop. Then he moved with incredible rapidity. He stepped quickly aside. At the same time he tossed the whisky into the cop’s face.
The cop gave a howl, clapped one of his hands to his eyes, stepped back, and blindly pulled the trigger. The gun crashed. Duffy jumped in, threw himself on the cop’s gun arm, and jerked the gun out of his hand.
The next sound he was conscious of was the breaking of glass; The cop was behaving like a madman, trying to get the whisky out of his eyes. Duffy had no time. He hit the cop, holding the gun by the barrel, between the eyes. Then he whirled round, expecting to run into a blast from the other cop.