Читать книгу The Simple Art of Murder - Raymond Chandler - Страница 16

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When the bell rang Ironhead Toomey very carefully put a black ten down on a red jack. Then he licked his lips and put all the cards down and looked around towards the front door of the bungalow, through the dining-room arch. He stood up slowly, a big brute of a man with loose gray hair and a big nose.

In the living room beyond the arch a thin blonde girl was lying on a davenport, reading a magazine under a lamp with a torn red shade. She was pretty, but too pale, and her thin, high-arched eyebrows gave her face a startled look. She put the magazine down and swung her feet to the floor and looked at Ironhead Toomey with sharp, sudden fear in her eyes.

Toomey jerked his thumb silently. The girl stood up and went very quickly through the arch and through a swing door into the kitchen. She shut the swing door slowly, so that it made no noise.

The bell rang again, longer. Toomey shoved his white-socked feet into carpet slippers, hung a pair of glasses on his big nose, took a revolver off a chair beside him. He picked a crumpled newspaper off the floor and arranged it loosely in front of the gun, which he held in his left hand. He strolled unhurriedly to the front door.

He was yawning as he opened it, peering with sleepy eyes through the glasses at the tall man who stood on the porch.

“Okey,” he said wearily. “Talk it up.”

Delaguerra said: “I’m a police officer. I want to see Stella La Motte.”

Ironhead Toomey put an arm like a Yule log across the door frame and leaned solidly against it. His expression remained bored.

“Wrong dump, copper. No broads here.”

Delaguerra said: “I’ll come in and look.”

Toomey said cheerfully: “You will—like hell.”

Delaguerra jerked a gun out of his pocket very smoothly and swiftly, smashed it at Toomey’s left wrist. The newspaper and the big revolver fell down on the floor of the porch. Toomey’s face got a less bored expression.

“Old gag,” Delaguerra snapped. “Let’s go in.”

Toomey shook his left wrist, took his other arm off the door frame and swung hard at Delaguerra’s jaw. Delaguerra moved his head about four inches. He frowned, made a disapproving noise with his tongue and lips.

Toomey dived at him. Delaguerra sidestepped and chopped the gun at a big gray head. Toomey landed on his stomach, half in the house and half out on the porch. He grunted, planted his hands firmly and started to get up again, as if nothing had hit him.

Delaguerra kicked Toomey’s gun out of the way. A swing door inside the house made a light sound. Toomey was up on one knee and one hand as Delaguerra looked towards the noise. He took a swing at Delaguerra’s stomach, hit him. Delaguerra grunted and hit Toomey on the head again, hard. Toomey shook his head, growled: “Sappin’ me is a waste of time, bo.”

He dived sidewise, got hold of Delaguerra’s leg, jerked the leg off the floor. Delaguerra sat down on the boards of the porch, jammed in the doorway. His head hit the side of the doorway, dazed him.

The thin blonde rushed through the arch with a small automatic in her hand. She pointed it at Delaguerra, said furiously: “Reach, damn you!”

Delaguerra shook his head, started to say something, then caught his breath as Toomey twisted his foot. Toomey set his teeth hard and twisted the foot as if he was all alone in the world with it and it was his foot and he could do what he liked with it.

Delaguerra’s head jerked back again and his face got white. His mouth twisted into a harsh grimace of pain. He heaved up, grabbed Toomey’s hair with his left hand, dragged the big head up and over until his chin came up, straining. Delaguerra smashed the barrel of his Colt on the skin.

Toomey became limp, an inert mass, fell across his legs and pinned him to the floor. Delaguerra couldn’t move. He was propped on the floor on his right hand, trying to keep from being pushed flat by Toomey’s weight. He couldn’t get his right hand with the gun in it off the floor. The blonde was closer to him now, wild-eyed, white-faced with rage.

Delaguerra said in a spent voice: “Don’t be a fool, Stella. Joey——”

The blonde’s face was unnatural. Her eyes were unnatural, with small pupils, a queer flat glitter in them.

“Cops!” she almost screamed. “Cops! God, how I hate cops!”

The gun in her hand crashed. The echoes of it filled the room, went out of the open front door, died against the high-board fence across the street.

A sharp blow like the blow of a club hit the left side of Delaguerra’s head. Pain filled his head. Light flared—blinding white light that filled the world. Then it was dark. He fell soundlessly, into bottomless darkness.