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At last he knew for sure who he was hunting. The man who claimed to be Arnold Bennett was in league with the Chinese, probably with their boss, who was likely the man who ordered the redhead to kill Scully when the detective uncovered the Chinatown connection.
At last he held the advantage. They did not know that Bell knew.
“Misser Bell?”
Bell looked up from his telegrams and down a gun barrel.
39
LOUIS, I THOUGHT WE AGREED THAT YOU WOULD KEEP that in your suitcase.”
Harold was behind Louis, drawing a weapon from his coat.
“You disappoint me, too, Harold. That is not a Bible. Not even a traditional tong hatchet but a firearm any self-respecting, modern American criminal thug would be proud to carry.”
Louis’s English was suddenly accentless, his manner superior.
“Step to the edge of the platform, Mr. Bell, and turn your back to us. Do not draw the pistol you conceal in your shoulder holster. Do not try for the derringer in your hat. Do not consider reaching for the knife in your boot.”
Bell glanced past them through the vestibule door. At the front of the coach, the false Arnold Bennett was holding forth with broad gestures that were having his desired effect of distracting the few people in the car. The wheels were clattering too loudly for Bell to hear their laughter.
“You’re unusually observant of sidearms for a divinity student, Louis. But have you considered that witnesses will hear you shoot me?”
“We’ll shoot you if you force us to. Then we will shoot the witnesses. I’m sure you’ve heard that we Asiatics and Mongolians have no regard for human life. Turn around!”
Bell looked over his shoulder. The railing was low. The roadbed was disappearing behind the train at fifty miles an hour, a blur of steel rails, iron spikes, stone ballast, and wooden ties. When he turned, they would crack his skull with a gun barrel or plunge a knife in his back and dump him over the railing.
He opened his hand.
The telegrams scattered, twisting and twirling in the buffeting slipstream, and flew in Louis’s face like demented finches.
Bell thrust his arms straight up, grabbed the edge of the roof awning, tucked his knees, and kicked a boot at Harold’s head. Harold jumped left where Bell wanted him to, clearing a path to the red wooden handle of the train’s emergency brake.
Any doubt that they were not divinity students vanished when Bell’s hand was an inch from the emergency brake. Louis smashed his gun against Bell’s wrist, slamming it away from the brake pull. Unable to bring the train to a crashing halt, Bell ignored the searing pain in his right wrist and punched with his left. It landed with satisfying force, hard enough on Louis’s forehead to buckle his knees.
But Harold had recovered. Concentrating his strength and weight like a highly trained fighter, the short, wiry Chinese wielded his gun like a steel club. The barrel smashed into Bell’s hat. The thick felt crown and the spring steel band within absorbed some of the blow, but momentum was against him. He saw the awning spin overhead, then the sky, and then he was tumbling over the side rail and falling toward the tracks. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. He saw the railroad ties, the wheels, the truck they carried, and the platform steps. He seized the top step with both hands. His boots hit the ties. For an awful split second he was trying to run backward at fifty miles an hour. Squeezing hard on the steel step, knowing that if his hands slipped he was through, he curled his arms as if doing a chin-up and hauled his feet onto the bottom stop.
Harold’s pistol descended in a blur. It seemed to fill the sky. Bell reached past the gun to seize Harold’s wrist and yanked with all his might. The tong gangster catapulted over him, flew through the air, and smashed into a telegraph pole, his body bent backward around it like a horseshoe.
Clinging to the steps, Bell reached for his own pistol. Before he could pull it, he felt Louis’s automatic pressed to his head. “Your turn!”
40
BELL BRACED HIS FEET TO JUMP AND CAST A LIGHTNING-SWIFT glance over the ground racing past. From his precarious perch on the steps he could see farther ahead than Louis. Beside the train was a steep ballast embankment, an endless row of telegraph poles, and a clump of thick trees as deadly as the poles. But far ahead spread an open field dotted with sheep. A barbed-wire fence ran along the track to keep livestock off the rails. He had to clear the fence if he had any hope at all of surviving the jump. But first he needed a five-second reprieve to get to the field.
He shouted into the roaring wind and clattering wheels, “I will track you down, Louis.”
“If you live, I will cock my ears for the clump of crutches.”
“I will never give up,” Bell said, buying another second. Almost to the grassy field. The slope was steeper than it appeared from the distance.
“Last chance, Bell. Jump!”
Bell bought one more second with “Never!”
He launched in a desperate dive to clear the fence. Too low. He missed a telegraph pole by feet and a fence post by inches. But the top strand of barbed wire was leaping at his face. The speeding train’s slipstream slammed into him. The blast of air lifted his flying body over the wire. He hit the grass face-first like a base runner stealing second, and he tried to tuck arms and legs into a tight ball. He rolled, powerless to avoid any rock or boulder in his path. In the blur of motion there was suddenly something solid right in front of him, and he had no choice but to slam into it.
The shock jolted every fiber in his body. Pain and darkness clamped around his head. He was vaguely aware that his arms and legs had untucked and were flopping like a scarecrow’s as he continued rolling on the grass. He hadn’t the strength to gather them in again. The darkness deepened. After a while he had the vague impression that he had stopped moving. He heard a drum beat. The ground shook under him. Then the darkness closed in completely, and he lay absolutely still.
