The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,59

but the wire connected to my arm was fouled somewhere in the mess now and it brought me up short. Then Bonner was standing over us. The blackjack sliced down, missing my head and cutting across my shoulder. I heaved, rolling Slidell over on top of me. For an instant I could see the couch where she had been sitting. She was gone. Thank God, she’d run the second I’d lunged at him. If she had enough lead, she might get away.

We heaved over once more, with Bonner cutting at me again with the blackjack, and then I saw her. She hadn’t run. She’d just reached the telephone and was lifting it off the cradle and starting to dial. I heard Bonner snarl. Slidell and I rolled again, and I couldn’t see her, but then I heard the sound of the blow and her cry as she fell.

My arm was free now. I hit Slidell in the face. He grunted, but still held onto the gun, trying to swing it around to get the muzzle against me. I hit him again. His hold on it was weakening. I beat at him with rage and frustration. Wouldn’t he ever let go? Then Bonner was leaning over us, taking the gun out of both our hands. Beyond him I saw Patricia Reagan getting up from the floor, beside the telephone where Bonner had tossed it after he’d pulled the cord out of the wall. She grasped the corner of the desk and reached for something on it. I wanted to scream for her to get out. If she could only understand that if one of us got away they might give it up and run . . .

Just as he got the gun away from us she came up behind him swinging the 35-mm camera by its strap. It caught him just above the ear and he grunted and fell to his knees. The gun slid out of his fingers. I grabbed it, and then Slidell had it by the muzzle.

“Run!” I yelled at her. “Get away! The police!”

She understood then. She wheeled and ran out the front door.

Slidell raged at Bonner. “Go get her!”

Bonner shook his head like a fighter who’s just taken a nine count, pushed to his feet, and looked about the room. He rubbed a hand across his face and ran toward the back door.

“The front!” Slidell screamed. He tore at the gun and tried to knee me in the groin. I slid sidewise away from him, avoiding it, and hit him high on the side of the face. Jagged slivers of pain went up my arm. Bonner turned and ran out the front door. I jerked on the gun, and this time I broke Slidell’s grip. I rolled away from him and climbed to my feet. My knees trembled. I was sobbing for breath, and the whole room was turning. When the front door came by I lunged for it. But the wreckage of the lie-detector was still fast to my right arm; it spun me around and threw me off balance just as Slidell scrambled up and hit me at the waist with a hard-driving tackle. We fell across the edge of the table the instrument had been on. Pain sliced its way through my left side and made me cry out, and I heard the ribs go like the snapping of half-green sticks. The table gave way under us, and when we landed the gun was under me. I pulled it free, shifted it from my left hand to the right, and hit him across the left temple with it just as he was pushing up to his knees. He grunted and fell face down in what was left of the table.

I made it to my feet, and this time I remembered Flowers’ beloved machine. I tried to unwrap the pressure cuff from around my arm, but my fingers were trembling and I couldn’t half see, so I stepped on the machine and pulled upward against the wire. It broke. The one to the tube around my chest had already parted. I ran to the front door. A steel trap of pain clamped shut around my left side. I bent over with my hand against it and kept going.

The sunlight was blinding after the dimness inside. I saw Bonner. He was a good hundred yards away, near the mailbox, running very fast for a man with his squat, heavy build. I started after him. She