Стюарт Стерлинг - The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

The little cell-like room inside was padded also; and as Eddy Voss jerked the door wide I saw Trixie sitting on an iron-framed couch in the center of the tiny room.

“Mike!” Trixie said, and then gasped as she saw the blood that had smeared down over my wrist and hand. “Oh, Mike, what did he do to you?”

Eddy Voss sneered at her. “I oughta finished him off in there. So you two know each other? Ain’t that interesting?”

Trixie was pale, tiny and pretty in her helplessness as she sat there in the white robe with one of her wrists fastened to a corner of the bed by a short chain.

Chains and handcuffs hung from the other three corners of the beds, so that a person could be spread-eagled there helplessly. The low-ceilinged room seemed to crowd in and smother. Even our voices sounded flat and muted.

I felt cold enough to shiver through the pain as I realized that with the massive door closed all sounds would probably be smothered in the windowless, padded room.

“I met the lady tonight,” I said. “We talked a little. What the hell’s the idea of putting her in here?”

“Just met her tonight?” Voss said.

“That’s right.”

“So she lets out a yell when she thinks something is going to happen to you. Just met her — and she knows your voice clear from the other room. And she’s ready to faint when she gets a look at you.”

“He’s bleeding!” Trixie said unsteadily. “Why don’t you stop it before he’s lost too much?”

“Look at her,” Voss said to me. “A hard-boiled little tramp like she’s been the last half hour, getting all washy about you. Do I look dumb?”

“Damn dumb,” I said. “How much of this do you think you can get by with?”

“Plenty,” Voss told me, and he spoke to Trixie. “Maybe if we hold him here until he bleeds long enough, you’ll talk.”

“I doubt it,” said Trixie, and I could have patted her on the back for the way her chin went up and her eyes flashed at him.

We weren’t talking like crackpots now. Eddy Voss didn’t look like one, although he still wore the toga and sandals. His thin face was hard, sneering, intent as he looked from Trixie to me and back to Trixie.

“She was snooping around here trying to see what she could discover,” Voss said. “And now you show up doing the same thing. I heard you asking about that fool woman who popped off tonight. And you’re the guy who lost his memory and didn’t know what it was all about.”

“I’m learning,” says I, seeing that the amnesia role was washed up.

“Hold him, Ali,” he said.

Ali could understand English all right. He nodded and clung to my right arm while Voss frisked me and found the fat billfold.

“Christ!” Voss said under his breath when he got a look at the money. “No wonder Paige said you were his private sucker.” Voss spat and grinned as he put the billfold inside his toga. “This’ll teach him a lesson.”

Blood was dripping off my finger tips. I caught Trixie’s eyes watching it. “I’m all right,” I said.

But I wasn’t. Trixie knew it. So did Voss. He grinned again as he looked at the arm.

“You won’t last long if that isn’t fixed,” he said.

“So what?” I said.

He hit me in the face. Ali held my good arm while Voss knocked me reeling against the padded wall with blow after blow. I heard Trixie cry out, but Voss was yelling at me in a sudden fury.

“I’ll fix you, you redheaded little squirt! I’ll have you chained in a cell and let Ali work on you with one of his whips! Who else is with you? What are you here for? I’ll find out who you are and what the money’s for! Will you talk? Will you talk?”

His nerves weren’t any better than mine had been before I found Father Orion. He had me, but he was afraid of what he didn’t know. He spoke of whips — and I thought of Father Orion’s whip-scarred body and these soundproofed cells fitted up to chain people helplessly for any kind of torture.

Father Orion and his cultists were grotesque, unreal — but this was a look into depths more horrible than I could have suspected. And if I’d get what Voss was shouting, what would Trixie get? What would happen to us both if Voss was sure we were detectives?

I knew. I guess Trixie knew too. Voss probably already had his mind made up. We’d seen too much, we knew too much. There wasn’t a chance even now of either one of us getting down into Hollywood to tell our stories.

So I fainted. It’s always a good gag, whether the girls use it or Mike Harris tries it in a tight spot. Back against the padded wall I slumped with Ali still holding my arm. Eddy Voss dropped his fist.

“Damn him!” he gasped. “I—”

My foot caught him in the stomach when he got that far. Never mind Ali, never mind Eddy’s gun; braced against the wall I had the leverage I needed. The shoe went deep in his middle and hurled him back over the bed where Trixie was held.

“The gun!” I yelled. “Get the gun, Trixie!”

She didn’t need the order. Little Trixie could think faster than most men. She had the whipcord muscles of an adagio dancer. She was already grabbing at Voss as he tumbled off the bed on the other side.

Trixie had the full length of her arm and the short chain to move in. Voss’ coat ripped as she caught it and yanked. He had hardly struck the floor when Trixie was off the bed and down on her knees catching at him.

Ali uttered a gobbling, unearthly cry as he released my arm and dived toward her. I tripped him and grabbed at him. His slippery arm went out of my fingers as he fell on all fours.

I couldn’t see what Trixie was doing as I lurched down on Ali. He bounced up from under me like a ball of buttered muscles — and in the same instant Trixie raised up with the gun in her hand.

It was good to see the business-like look on Trixie’s face and to know that she could handle any gun like an expert. Ali must have sensed it, must have realized that he didn’t have a chance with the gun so close. He whirled with the startling rapidity which had surprised me in the other room and darted toward the door.

Trixie fired at him, high deliberately, and he streaked out the door and vanished.

“Hurry, Mike!”

Trixie crouched at the foot of the bed with the gun covering Eddy Voss. When I staggered to her side, Voss was holding his middle and weakly trying to sit up. He looked sick, dazed.

“Keys are in his right trousers pocket, Mike!”

I had them a moment later.

“That littlest one, Mike!”

A moment later Trixie was free and on her feet. She handed me the gun, caught Voss’ wrist, and had it in the steel bracelet before Voss could resist.

“Good work, Sweetness,” I told her.

And only then did Trixie’s voice break, quaver as she came to me.

“Mike, dear, are you badly hurt? Here, let me see!”

My lip was bleeding. My face felt like it had been jumped on. The pain had been there in my shoulder but I’d been too busy to notice it. Now I did. With clenched teeth I let Trixie get my coat off, jerk my shirt off.

The arm wasn’t pretty to look at. Trixie used the shirt for a swab.

“Can you use the arm, Mike?”

“Yes — fingers too,” I groaned after trying.

“Not as bad as I thought,” says little Trixie briskly. “The bleeding is slowing up too. I’ll wrap it quickly.”

“We’ve got to get out of here, Baby! That bird in the breech clout will have the whole place around our ears!”

Trixie ripped half of Voss’ toga off with one pull and tore strips off the edge.

“Only a minute, Mike. And that woman’s in the room across the hall. We can’t leave her. They’ll kill her.”

“I’d like to take Voss,” I said as Trixie hastily bandaged the shoulder.