We close the door. Because whoever he was, Zip-Gun was not much of a thinker. The rod and the fist holding it were poked out at an angle through the eight-inch crack like roses ftom a bashful admirer. And my own hand was still on the knob.

There was not much noise, just a quick muted cracking. A broken ulna generally makes that kind of sound. Or maybe it was the radius that went. One of those insignificant bones about two inches above the wrist.

The gun clattered to the floor without going off. I’d heaved myself to the side, but I hadn’t seriously expected it to fire. Jam your wrist into a vise and your fingers open, they don’t close on any triggers.

My friend had let out a sickening gasp. He let out a louder one when I grabbed the wrist. It made a nifty fulcrum, bent that way. I jerked him forward and shouldered the door inward at the same time, then swung the arm in a fast arc so that his body followed it around. I could feel the cracked end of the bone through the skin when I pressed the arm up between his shoulderblades.

“You may take one giant step,” I told him then. He didn’t want to so I shoved him. My foot got in his way and the poor slob fell on his face into the room. He lay there clutching the break and sucking air through his teeth like the little choo-choo that couldn’t.

I let him lie for a minute. They’d be running off the next few heats without him.

I picked up the zip-gun. It was taped together. I broke it apart, dropped the handle section onto a chair just inside the doorway, slipped the lethal end of it into my pocket. The barrel had been cut from an automobile aerial, most of which are perfectly chambered for.22’s. Detroit ingenuity. I found a lamp switch and shed a little light on the subject.

I was in the living room. It was an ordinary middle-class furnished apartment. Grand Rapids had been nuts about it once. Nothing had been changed in it since the Titanic went down and wouldn’t be until it came up again. Off to the left there was a closed door with a crack of light under it and that was the only element of the decor which interested me.

My welcoming committee was still chewing a corner of the carpet. He made a feeble effort to get to his feet when I closed the door to the hall. I caught him by the back of his collar and helped him along.

“No more,” he said. “Damn, Jack, no more.”

“Mr. Jack to you.” I could have wheeled him around like a pushcart by latching onto the wrist again, but I decided it would be easier with the Luger. “This one’s glued together nicer than yours,” I told him. “How about you and me taking a stroll to that bedroom, huh, doll?”

He looked at me with glassy black eyes that were either out of focus from too many needles or else were naturally bleary. Anyhow they hadn’t gotten their dim look from poring over books. He was a punk as I had thought, maybe a year or two past twenty, narrow-jawed with a lot of greasy black hair and a mustache like an eraser smudge. If the leather jacket was in hock he’d have it back as soon as he jimmied his next pay phone. He said nothing and his breath was still coming hard.

“Move,” I told him.

He was no bigger than he had felt when I’d handled him in the darkness. He shuffled forward without much enthusiasm, protecting the wrist as if he thought I might not let him have his share when mealtime came around. When he got to the door he stopped again.

“You want the other one, too? You want it so you can’t bat from either side of the plate?”

He opened it. I elbowed him in but he didn’t go anxiously. He was hurting but he was also scared now. Nobody told me why. Bright Harry. I just had to look at the girl who would be Sally Kline.

She was a pretty girl. She was a redhead, with freckles and green eyes, and she had lovely high breasts. I could see clearly how lovely they were, because Junior hadn’t bothered to cover them up when he’d come out to answer the door.

She was tied into a chair with her arms drawn back and locked behind it. There was a gag over her mouth that was probably her last matching nylon. She was wearing slacks the color of crème de menthe and she had on a yellow pullover blouse which Junior had ripped down the front and left hanging open. Her torn brassiere was on the floor.

The cigarette Junior’d been puffing for something more than the simple joy of fine tobacco was still burning in an ashtray near her.

Junior’s head was tilted around and he was looking at me now. He hadn’t moved away from the muzzle of the Luger but you could see from the quiver in the line of his jaw that he guessed the latrine didn’t quite pass inspection. You could also see from the way his shoulders were drawn up that he knew damned well he was about to get a scolding.

Now a Luger does not have a particularly heavy barrel, but you do the best you can. The front sight helps some. I laid his skull open to the bone with the first one and then I gave him two more, which made one for each of the dirty black burns on the upper curve of the girl’s left breast. He was already going down when the second one landed. The third one was a knee in the neck to get him out of the way of the decent folk as he fell.

The girl’s eyes were wide and she was still frightened. The knot in the stocking came apart quickly and her head drew up and back and she sucked in air. I untied the belt from around her wrists.

Her hands went to her face. For a minute she sat forward, breathing deeply. Then she began to sob.

Junior was going to nap until Mommy kissed him and brushed back his precious locks. I put the Luger away and went into the John. There were a couple of washcloths on a rack and I held one of them under the warm water, then wrung it out.

“Easy,” I told her then. Her head was on the back rest of the chair now and her arms were limp at her sides. She was still inhaling deeply and her eyes were closed. I stood next to her and pressed the wet cloth across the upper part of her breast, cupping it there but not rubbing it. Most of the ash came away.

I went back and found some Unguentine. She sat there while I coated the burns with a heavy film. I lifted a torn half of her blouse and tried to drape it across her. I kept running out of material.

She’d stopped crying. She lifted the other half of the blouse herself, holding it and looking down, and then she dropped it again.

“I guess it doesn’t much matter, does it?”

I showed her my best don’t-you-fret-about-old-Uncle-Silas grin. “You feel all right?”

“You are Mr. Fannin?”

“Harry,” I told her.

“I thought—”She looked at Junior, then shook her head. “The bell rang and I thought it was you. About fifteen minutes ago. I looked down and I didn’t see anybody outside. I was just so darned scared by then that I–I went to the door and asked if it was you and he said yes. And then he put his gun against my stomach and I—” Her breath caught. “Oh, I’m so glad you came. I was—”

The butt end of Junior’s smoke was still burning. I crushed it out, then went and sat on the bed.

“Will there be… will the scars last long?”

“A few months,” I told her. A generous racketeer had let me smell a six-bit panatela along the cheekbone once. He had been going for the eye so I’d still consider myself the big winner if I was seeing a mark every time I shaved. But it had faded out.

“He put that gag on when I rang the bell?”

“Yes.”

“You tell him what he was trying to find out before that?”

“I couldn’t. I don’t know where she is, Mr. Fannin. Harry. I tried to tell him I haven’t seen her since the day before yesterday. But he wouldn’t believe me. He kept standing there and puffing on that cigarette until it would glow and then he’d put his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream and—”

I waited for her. She bit her lip, turning her head away. The flap of her blouse had fallen away again but she did not seem aware of it. Part of her had gotten a suntan someplace.