the upper panels already knocked in and was working on the other. Inside the room I could hear a girl’s voice, high-pitched and on the edge of hysteria, not crying or pleading but dredging up obscenity I’d never heard before in twenty-seven years.
“I’ll get you, you lousy little slut,” he yelled, smashing the table into the door again and splintering the other panel.
“All right, knock it off, Mac,” I said. “You’ve had your fun.”
He paused, with the table pulled back for another swing, and looked around at me. I was still ten feet away, moving toward him. In those things you can never let them see any hesitation or you’re a dead duck, but I didn’t feel too sure about it. He was as big as I was, or larger, and crazy with rage, and he appeared to be only around twenty, an age when you haven’t found out yet that you can be hurt. “Drop it,” I said roughly. He stood poised to swing. “You a law?”
“Yes,” I said. “Give me that.” I reached for the table. I don’t know whether it was because he could see I was alone and didn’t have a gun or whether he was so wild with rage he didn’t care, but at any rate I saw his face go wild again and he swung. I tried to get inside it, but the table caught my arm and shoulder and I fell over against the opposite door. I could hear somebody scream down at the other end of the hall, and realized Abbie had followed me up the stairs.
“I’ll show her! I’ll show the chippy!” he yelled, swinging the table at me again. I was down on my knees with my left arm numb, and I lunged at his legs, hitting him low and taking him off balance. He came down, and the two of us and the table rolled in a pile on the floor. I could hear the table give up the ghost as one of us rolled over it and the legs started caving in. He landed a big fist on the side of my head and made it ring. I slid clear of the tangle and got to my feet before he did, and as he tried to scramble up he was wide open for a second. I got my feet set and swung, catching him under the jaw, and his feet slid out from under him. He bounced up, too insane with fury to realize he was leaving himself open in exactly the same way he had the first time, and I hit him again. We went through the whole, identical procedure two more times before he finally quit and lay there on the door.
“I’ll kill her! I’ll get her!” he was saying over and over and beginning to cry.
I was winded and my left arm felt as if a car had run over it. I had to lean against the wall to steady myself while I fought for breath. He sat up, still crying, and I kicked the wrecked table out of his reach. “Sit right where you are,” I said. He had his chin down on his chest and the big shoulders shook with the silent retching of his sobs. I felt sorry for him even if he had tried to brain me with the table, and wondered what the girl had done to him.
“Where are this guy’s clothes?” I called out, and looked behind me. Abbie was coming back up the stairs again. Apparently she’d run down when he floored me with the table.
“Get his clothes,” I said.
She was still waving the gin bottle as if she had forgotten she had it. “Jesus, I don’t know where his lousy clothes are,” she began, when suddenly one of the doors opened.
It looked like a sequence out of a movie comedy. The door flew open apparently of its own volition and a pair of blue serge trousers sailed out to land in the middle of the hall. A shirt followed it, then two shoes at once, and a tie. Just for an instant, the white, staring face of a girl appeared around the frame and then ducked back inside and the door slammed. She hadn’t said a word. That’s odd, I was conscious of thinking; he’s trying to beat up this girl, but his clothes are in another girl’s room. He must not have been with this one at all.