Creeping Siamese and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett Page B

the big chaw while his playmate had him tied up.
    He laughed down at her, ducked his head to kiss her mouth, and grinned at me.
    â€œThere’s always some other time,” he said good-naturedly.
    XI
    â€œWe’d better get out of here if we can,” I said. “You’ve made too much rumpus for it to be safe.”
    â€œDon’t get it up in your neck, little man,” he told me. “Hold on to my coat-tails and I’ll pull you out.”
    The big tramp. If it hadn’t been for Jack and me he wouldn’t have had any coat-tail by now.
    We moved to the door, listened there, heard nothing.
    â€œThe stairs to the third floor must be up front,” I whispered. “We’ll try for them now.”
    We opened the door carefully. Enough light went past us into the hall to show a promise of emptiness. We crept down the hall, Red and I each holding one of the girl’s hands. I hoped Jack would come out all right, but he had put himself to sleep, and I had troubles of my own.
    I hadn’t known that Larrouy’s was large enough to have two miles of hallway. It did. It was an even mile in the darkness to the head of the stairs we had come up. We didn’t pause there to listen to the voices below. At the end of the next mile O’Leary’s foot found the bottom step of the flight leading up.
    Just then a yell broke out at the head of the other flight.
    â€œAll up—they’re up here!”
    A white light beamed up on the yeller, and a brogue addressed him from below: “Come on down, ye windbag.” “The police,” Nancy Regan whispered, and we hustled up our new-found steps to the third floor.
    More darkness, just like that we’d left. We stood still at the top of the stairs. We didn’t seem to have any company.
    â€œThe roof,” I said. “We’ll risk matches.”
    Back in a corner our feeble match-light found us a ladder nailed to the wall, leading to a trap in the ceiling. As little later as possible we were on Larrouy’s roof, the trap closed behind us.
    â€œAll silk so far,” said O’Leary, “and if Vance’s rats and the bulls will play a couple of seconds longer—bingavast.”
    I led the way across the roofs. We dropped ten feet to the next building, climbed a bit to the next, and found on the other side of it a fire-escape that ran down to a narrow court with an opening into the back street.
    â€œThis ought to do it,” I said, and went down.
    The girl came behind me, and then Red. The court into which we dropped was empty—a narrow cement passage between buildings. The bottom of the fire-escape creaked as it hinged down under my weight, but the noise didn’t stir anything. It was dark in the court, but not black.
    â€œWhen we hit the street, we split,” O’Leary told me, without a word of gratitude for my help—the help he didn’t seem to know he had needed. “You roll your hoop, we’ll roll ours.”
    â€œUh-huh,” I agreed, chasing my brains around in my skull. “I’ll scout the alley first.”
    Carefully I picked my way down to the end of the court and risked the top of my hatless head to peep into the back street. It was quiet, but up at the corner, a quarter of a block above, two loafers seemed to be loafing attentively. They weren’t coppers. I stepped out into the back street and beckoned them down. They couldn’t recognize me at that distance, in that light, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t think me one of Vance’s crew, if they belonged to him.
    As they came toward me I stepped back into the court and hissed for Red. He wasn’t a boy you had to call twice to a row. He got to me just as they arrived. I took one. He took the other.
    Because I wanted a disturbance, I had to work like a mule to get it. These bimbos were a couple of lollipops for fair. There wouldn’t have been an ounce of fight in a ton of