Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“Farson?”

“Yes, Farson. The man you had Perkins kill.”

Hamilton shrugged. “Perkins probably has killed a lot of men I don’t know about.”

“Not Farson,” said Culver, evenly. “You knew about him, all right.”

“You haven’t any proof,” Hamilton pointed out.

“A book,” said Culver.

Hamilton snickered. “Crip’s book. It would never stand in law.”

“I’m not talking about the law, Hamilton. I’m talking about a debt.”

“A debt?”

“That’s right. Ten thousand bucks. That money Farson had belonged to me.”

“You mean—”

“I mean I want the money back.”

“That’s all?”

“All for right now,” Culver told him. “After I get the cash I’m going out and find Perkins and when I’m done with him I’ll come back for you. I’ll give you that much chance, Cal. I’ll give you time to run if you want to run.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I sure hope you don’t,” said Culver.

One of Hamilton’s hands twitched nervously. “Look, Culver, we’re old friends. We knew one another back there on the river.”

Culver grinned wryly. “You’re stretching the truth some when you say that we were friends. How about starting to count out the money.”

“I haven’t got it here,” said Hamilton. “I’d have to get into the safe.”

“Okay,” said Culver. “Start getting into it.”

He moved around the desk, gun held ready. “One wrong move,” he warned, “and you’ll never finish what you’re doing.”

Hamilton swiveled the chair around, got out of it and knelt before the safe. His fingers went out to the dial and turned it, fumbling as they worked.

“You gave in pretty easy,” Culver told him. “If you got any aces up your sleeve don’t try to pull them out.”

The dial clicked and Hamilton pulled the handle of the safe. In the silence of the room, Culver heard the bolts shoot back. The hinges squealed a little as the door came open.

Another sound, a noise that was scarcely heard, brought Culver spinning around, away from the kneeling man to face the door. Perkins stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other clutching a six-gun.

Culver jerked his own gun up, finger already tightening on the trigger. Perkins’ gun coughed harshly, like a rasping throat, and burning fire sliced its way across the knuckles of Culver’s gun hand. He felt his fingers loosen and the gun jumped from them as it fired, bouncing high into the air, then spinning to the floor.

Perkins’ gun was leveling again and behind it the man’s face was a mask of hate. Culver backed toward the wall, step by slow step.

Hamilton had swung away from the safe, was still squatting on his heels, but he also held a gun. That’s why he gave in so easy, Culver told himself. He had the gun in there and he gambled on it. But he never would have made it if it hadn’t been for Perkins. He’d never had a chance to reach for it.

Culver felt the wall at his back and stood rigid, watching Perkins pace toward him, gun leveled, face twisted into livid hatefulness.

Hamilton’s voice cut through the tenseness of the silence. “Perkins! Perkins, don’t shoot!”

Perkins’ eyes did not waver from Culver. He asked: “Why not?”

“He’s got the book!” Hamilton yelled. “He’s got Crip’s book. He’s the one that scared you off and took the book.”

“Hell, all we have to do,” snarled Perkins, “is to cut him down and take it.”

“You fool!” Hamilton screamed. “You don’t think he has it on him? He’s too smart to have it on him.”

“You’re right, Cal,” Culver said. “I haven’t got it on me.”

Perkins moved closer. “Where is it?” he asked.

Culver shook his head.

“Don’t push your luck too far,” Perkins told him, fiercely. “I got a thing or two to settle with you and I might forget myself.”

“We might make a deal,” said Culver.

“I’m not dealing,” snapped Perkins. “Not with a man who hasn’t any chips.”

His right hand slammed the gun muzzle into Culver’s stomach, his left came up and struck, a savage open-handed blow that rocked Culver’s head.

“Next time,” snarled Perkins, “I will use my fist. I’ll knock every tooth you have down your dirty throat.”

Culver surged away from the wall, arms half lifted, but the gun barrel boring into his stomach drove him back.

“Gut-shot men die slow and hard,” said Perkins grimly, “but they always die. Try that once again and I’ll let you have it.”

Culver saw Perkins’ fist coming and he tried to duck, but it caught him alongside the jaw and drove his head back against the wall. The fist came up again and pain exploded in his brain. He felt himself falling and a shock went through him as he hit the floor. A heavy boot slammed into his ribs and knocked him over, flat upon his back.

Through the hazy grayness that filled the room, he heard Hamilton’s bawling voice.

“Perkins! Lay off for a minute. Give him a chance to talk.”

He was on his hands and knees now, head hanging toward the floor, and he wondered how he got there. The last he had remembered was lying on his back.

He shook his head and saw the dark drops that sprayed upon the floor. He lifted an unsteady hand and wiped his chin and his hand was red.

Eyes clearing, he stared along the worn pattern of the carpeting that covered the floor, and sucked in his breath. There, not more than five feet in front of him, was the gun that he had dropped. One chance; that was all that he would have.

He gathered his knees beneath him, tensed, then leaped. Pain wracked his body at the effort and his fumbling hand felt the touch of metal. His fingers tightened on the grip.

A boot crashed into his stomach and half lifted him, sent a wave of nausea through him, turned him into a watery mass of retching sickness. He felt the gun slipping from his fingers, groped for it in the blackness that rolled along the floor.

A hand reached out and grabbed the nape of his neck in steel-trap fingers, hauled him up.

In front of him he saw a face of twisted rage and a working mouth that screamed profanity. His bleary eyes caught the glint of a slashing six-gun barrel and then the barrel came down and his brain exploded.

For a long moment he lay in a torpor that was merciful, then slowly, bit by bit, he became aware of his battered body. His stomach was a piece of lead that held him down and behind his back his hands and wrists were a sharp, red ache.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, careful so that the lancing light would not hit them again. But there was no light. He lay still, eyes moving slowly to try to pick up something substantial in the darkness. One by one, he made out the dark, crouched presence of furniture. The posters of the brass bed on which he lay, catching the slight glimmer of stars through the window at his back. The table that stood beside the bed with the lamp upon it.

He moved an arm to reach out and touch the table at his side, and his arm moved an inch or two and would move no more. Sharp pain lanced from wrist to elbow.

Methodically, mechanically, he narrowed down his mind to consider his hands and his brain traced out the tortured lines of bloody rawness where the ropes bit into yielding flesh. His feet, too, lashed together at the ankles.

They would be coming back. Hamilton with his cold ruthlessness, Perkins with his twisted hate. They would come back to make him talk, and when he talked, they’d kill him.

He had to get out before the two came back. Somehow he had to escape this room. And the window was the only way. A man could break a window with his shoulder, heave his body through. He shuddered at the thought of jagged broken glass, but it was the only way.