a little light leaked up from the first floor and down from the third. There were voices on the third floor, and somebody laughed up there. I held my breath and moved quietly to Jimmy’s cell.
I whispered, “Jimmy!” and he came alert and moved to the door of the cell.
“Am I glad to see you,” he whispered back.
I said, “I have the keys. Which one fits?”
“The key marked ‘D.’ It fits the four cells here in the corner.”
I couldn’t see well enough there and I didn’t want to light a match, so I moved back to the light and fumbled through the keys until I found the key tagged “D.” I opened the cell with as little noise as I could manage.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve got to get out of here in a hurry.”
He slipped out and pushed the door shut behind him. We started for the stairs. We were almost there when I heard somebody coming up. Jimmy grabbed my arm and pulled me back. We flattened out as best we could.
The policeman looked around in the dark and said, “Be you up here, Robards?” Then he saw us and started to say, “What the hell?”
I stepped out and pointed one of the pistols at him. I hadn’t loaded it. I had just stuck them in my pocket.
I said, “Easy now. I’ve got nothing to lose by shooting you. If you want to live, put up your hands.”
He put up his hands.
“All right. Walk down here.”
Jimmy opened the door for him and the policeman stepped inside the cell. While his back was turned, I hit him with the pistol. I probably hurt him worse than I did Sgt. Robards—a gun is a good deal more solid than a sack of sand—but I didn’t feel quite so bad about it because I didn’t know him. He groaned and fell and I didn’t try to break the fall at all. Instead I swung the cell door shut and locked it.
Then I heard the sound of low voices in one of the other cells and somebody said, “Shut up,” quite clearly to somebody else.
I turned and said, “Do you want to get shot?”
The voice was collected. “No. No trouble here.”
“Do you want to be let out?”
The voice was amused. “I don’t think so. Thank you just the same. I be due to be let out tomorrow and I think I’ll wait.”
Jimmy said, “Come on. Come on. Let’s go.”
On the stairs, I said, “Where’s your signal? We’ve got to have it.”
“It’s not here,” Jimmy said. “The soldiers took all my gear when I was arrested. All they have here are my clothes.”
“We’re in trouble,” I said. “My signal is broken and lost.”
“Oh, no!” Jimmy said. “I was counting on you. Well, we can try to get mine back.”
There was no real comfort in that. We collected Jimmy’s coat and clothes and headed into the night. When we were three blocks away and on a side street we stopped for a moment and kissed and hugged, and then I handed Jimmy one of the guns and half the ammunition. He loaded the gun immediately.
Then he said, “Tell me something, Mia. Would you really have shot him?”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “My gun wasn’t loaded.”
He laughed and then he asked in another tone, “What do we do now?”
“We steal horses,” I said. “And I know where, too.”
Jimmy said, “Should we?”
I said, “This man stole Ninc and everything else I have. He smashed my signal, and he beat me up.”
“He beat you up?” Jimmy said, immediately concerned.
“I’m all right now,” I said. “It only hurt for a while.”
There was a fetid, unwashed odor hanging around the entire district and the rain did nothing to carry the smell away. Instead the wetness seemed to hold the odor in place in a damp foggy stink that surrounded and penetrated everything. There were Losel pens all along the street. When we came to Fanger’s place, we slipped by the pen and if the Losels heard us, they made no noise. I had marked the stable and we went directly to it and slipped inside. Jimmy closed the door behind us.
“Stand outside and keep watch,” I said. “These are mean, unpleasant people. I’ll pick out horses.”
Jimmy said, “Right,” and slipped outside again.
When the door had clicked shut, I struck a match. I found a lamp and lit it. Then I started along the rows. I found Ninc, good old Nincompoop, and my saddle and I saddled up. Then I picked