I turned back to them. “I like it here. Even if I had ideas, which I haven’t, my gun’s empty, so relax. I emptied it—”
I didn’t duck or dive, I just dropped, flat on the sidewalk, and started rolling. I was thinking I mustn’t bang my head against the stone of the stoop. This time I didn’t see the man in the taxicab at all, even enough of a glimpse to see if he had something white over his face, I was moving too fast, rolling to get around the corner. I had, as I remember it, no sign of an impulse to reach for my gun. If I thought at all I suppose I was thinking that if a man in a taxicab wanted to make holes in Perrit and the face it was nothing to me. I had, and have, no notion what they were doing, but later examination showed that some of the noise I heard was made by them, using their own ammunition.
That noise stopped. The noise of the taxi moving from the scene tapered off. I stuck my head around the corner of the stoop, saw a form as flat as mine had been and much quieter, and scrambled to my feet. There were two forms, the other one around the other corner of the stoop, and it was twitching a little. I saw it still had a gun in its hand, so I stepped over and kicked it out and away. I knelt, first to one and then to the other, for a brief inspection, and finding it likely that no one would ever again consider it dangerous to turn his back on them, mounted the stoop to the front door and pushed the button for Fritz, my private rings. But the rings weren’t needed. Before my finger left the button the door opened for the crack of two inches allowed by the chain of the bolt and a voice came through.
“Archie?”
“Me, Fritz. Open—”
“Do you need help?”
“I need help to get in. Open up.”
He slid the bolt and I pushed and entered.
“Did you kill somebody?” he inquired.
Wolfe’s bellow sounded from the hall one flight up. “Archie! What the devil is it now?”