Five-Star Fugitive

Chapter Nine Hamstrung!

Heat had gone from Christy. Now he had a chill so intense that he had to keep his jaw tightly shut to keep his teeth from chattering. When he had swum the narrow channel in the river, the cool water had felt good against the fire in his shoulder. But now he had the idea that it had done little good.

He moved through narrow stinking alleys, guided always by the blue letters in the sky which said The Sage House. The gun had been lost in the river, or else while he was running from the children. He couldn’t remember.

The river had washed away much of the filth, but his clothes still had a fetid odor. The swelling had spread down to his hand. It was visibly larger than the left hand, and of a darker shade.

He waited in doorways to avoid being seen. He was finding it hard to remember why he had to get to the hotel. It was all tangled in his mind. The girl was there, with the money. Shaymen had let him down. Then it seemed like he’d killed the girl back there near a fountain. It made his head hurt to try to straighten it all out. The only thing he was absolutely certain of was the great need to get to the hotel. He decided several times that when he reached the hotel he would remember why it was important.

And he wondered if he would ever be warm again.

It took time and planning to cross the main street. He had to go four blocks from the hotel and then wait a long time before he knew it was safe. Once he sat down in a doorway and, before he knew it, his eyes had closed. He awakened when he fell out of the doorway, his cheek against cinders.

Again there was the network of alleys and small streets. At last he came out into an open place which he recognized as the parking lot behind the hotel. He could not risk the alley entrance to the parking lot. Too much danger of a car coming in or going out, fixing him in its lights. The other wall of the hotel was separated from the wall of a store by a space so narrow that he had to turn his shoulders to get into it. He sidestepped along.

Soon there was a lighted window above his head. He jumped up and grabbed the sill and with effortless strength pulled his heavy body up to where he could look in. It was the dining room. He clung there, looking at the people at the tables. He knew none of them. He wanted to remember why he had come back here. Puzzled, he dropped back, continued his slow movement.

The next window was dark. The next window was lighted. It was a bit higher than the last one. He missed the sill the first jump.

On the second jump his fingers locked on the sill. He wondered vaguely why his right shoulder was so sore. He chinned himself on the sill and looked in.

It was a small room. An office. He saw her at once. Diana. Now he knew that she wasn’t dead. But her face had a funny dead look about it. The window was open from the top but he couldn’t hear what she was saying to the young round-faced man behind the desk because of the funny roaring sound in his ears.

And that man sitting beside her. Now it was becoming more clear. Diana and that man. He remembered the man throwing something at him. A great blow against his head. There was a Ranger, a Mexican girl and a Mexican official of some kind in the room. Christy gave them one quick glance. He wasn’t interested in them.

He dropped back to the ground to give himself time to think. George stood beside him, smiling the funny crooked smile.

“What the hell are you doing here, George?” he whispered.

George’s voice came from far away. It had a hollow sound. “I thought you might forget what I told you to do, Christy. I hear you’ve been crossing me up.”

“I wouldn’t do a thing like that, George. Honest!”

“You got to get in there and kill both of them, Christy. Diana and that friend of hers. You can do that.”

“There’re a couple of cops in there, George,” he complained.

“Remember, Christy, how strong you are? You can do it. If you don’t do it, I’ll know for sure you’re crossing me, Christy.”

“I’ll try, George. I’ll sure try. You know me.”

He glanced down the narrow space between the buildings to see if he was unobserved. When he looked back, George was gone. He blinked a few times and decided that George didn’t want to hang around. Besides, it was hard to see since he’d lost his glasses. He wondered where he’d left them.

Too bad about the gun. He could hang up there on the sill and pot both of them. Now he had to do it another way. He moved to the side of the window and put his back against the store wall, his feet against the hotel wall. He began to hitch his way up. It was slow work. Finally he was on a level with the window. Then, maintaining the pressure, he hitched sideways until at last his feet, spread wide, were on the sill.

He straightened his legs and his shoulders slid up the store wall. He flattened his hands against the wall and shoved himself toward the window as hard as he could, ducking his head below the upper sill, hitting the center bar of the sash, carrying screen, sash, glass and all forward with him into the room, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, pawing at the Ranger with what looked like a foolishly light blow. Yet it dropped the man over into the corner beside the desk.

As Diana jumped up, he grabbed her with one big arm. With his raised foot he shoved hard against the front of the desk. The desk slammed Tomkinton brutally against the wall.

Grinning and laughing aloud, Christy held the kicking, struggling girl in one arm. His left hand caught Sanson by the throat as Sanson tried to come up out of the chair where he had been frozen with shock.

Then, as he laughed and yelled for George to come and look to see what he was doing, there was a pain like flame that seared across the backs of his legs just above the knees. The strength went out of his legs and he fell heavily. He saw Diana roll free and scramble over to where Sanson stood, turning in his arms to look back at Christy on the floor.

Christy leaned his head back and looked up into the broad-boned smiling face of the Mexican girl. Her dark eyes glittered like the onyx that had once been carved into knives for the use of the priests of the sun god. She showed her even white teeth as she smiled down at him, the red-bladed knife gleamed in her hand.

From an enormous distance he heard the Ranger saying in a dazed voice, “By Jupiter, she hamstrung him! She came up behind him crouched as though she were going to cut the grass, and she hamstrung him!”

The wave of darkness hung above him, a silent dark crest, and then it fell forward onto him, spinning him down into darkness.

The letters had come to Lane’s desk in the newsroom in Houston. The first two weeks had been difficult, but now he knew that he’d be able to hold his own. The first big story he had brought them, the eye-witness account on all that trouble down at Baker had helped. They’d slapped a byline on it, too.

The first one was from his agent.

He grinned and put the letter in his desk drawer. He had saved the second letter until last.

He shrugged. The past part of the letter seemed incoherent. Not hard to understand how a girl in her spot might be a little incoherent.

He put her letter in the drawer too, stood up and clapped his hat on the back of his head. The managing editor came across the news room toward him.

“How’s it going, Lane?”

“Good, thanks.”

“Say, you’ll have no trial to cover down the line. The infection finally killed that Christy citizen. They didn’t get the arm off soon enough, I guess.”

Lane sighed. “That suits me.”

“By the way, that was a nice job you did on the transit squabble.”

“Thanks again.” He left, whistling. He went down the stairs, grinned in at the girls behind the classified ad counter.

As he reached the outside door he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a girl coming quickly toward him. He turned and gasped. “Sandy! Sandy, what...”

Her eyes were shining. “Don’t talk, darling. Just walk with me.”

Her hand was through his arm as they walked down the sidewalk. He smiled down into her face and she squeezed his arm lightly.

“I had to shut you up, you oaf,” she said. “I was about to cry.”

“I remember that you cry nicely. Sandy, why did you come here?”

“To see my ex,” she said smugly.

He stopped and faced her. “I’m no good for you. Didn’t we find that out?”

“Hush! I might give you a second chance. If you want it.”

“If I want it!”

“I’ll think it over, oaf.”

“After what I did to you, Sandy?”

“Or what I did to you? Damn a wife who runs out when she’s worst needed.”

“I chased you out.”

“You did not! I left!”

“By special request. Who cares? You’re back. But how come? How did it happen? I’m confused.”

She took his arm again. “Come on, keep walking. You see, I got a letter. From a girl. Quite a nice girl, I think. She mentioned that she ran into you and you seemed to be carrying a torch for one gal named Sandy, so she wormed the address out of you. It was signed Diana Saybree.”

“So that’s what she meant!” he said.

“What, darling?”

“Never mind. Look, I’ve got a small apartment just three blocks from here. There’s ice, gin and vermouth. They need a woman’s touch.”

He quickened his pace, but she stopped and made her eyes wide. “But I can’t! I just remembered.”

“What? A date?”

“No, I just remembered that I’m a single woman. Heavens! I’d be compromised.”

“Huh!” he said.

She laughed in the old well-remembered way. Again she took his arm. “Come on, you big mental hazard. What’s your address?”