"onebullet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daniels Norman A)

me knocked off, see?"

Pickering came forward. "That's right, officer. Here is the letter that Higgins wrote me. It's
good evidence that he wants to surrender. All I ask for my client is secrecy. Don't announce this
until he's safely locked up where those hoodlums can't get at him. Higgins is through -- washed up
-- and he knows it,"

"O.K.," Gallagher said. "Just the same, I'm taking no chances."

He searched Higgins, but found no weapon on him. Steel links closed around the ex-racketeer's right
wrist. He made no protest, but he did look worried. At a gesture from Gallagher, he left the room,
started down the staircase with Pickering following up at the rear. Gallagher was on edge! He didn't
like this. Maybe Higgins was turning yellow and ready to make a deal with the D. A.; still there was
something a little too pat about it all.

The stairway was very dark and too narrow for both men to walk down it side by side. Gallagher
gripped one end of the handcuff and let Higgins precede him. The prisoner glanced over his shoulder
and smiled wryly.

"I'm glad it's you, Gallagher," he said fervently. "Some cops would have let me have it right where
I stood; so I wouldn't be able to spill what I know. Wait until I talk!".

"Get going!" Gallagher snapped. Higgins shrugged and continued on down the steep stairway. Suddenly
he pitched forward! Gallagher, clinging to the end of the handcuff, was caught off balance. Both men
pitched headlong down the steps. Gallagher's gun flew out of his grasp and landed on the stairs.

Suddenly the old tenement house was a bedlam of confusion. Men seemed to spring out of the darkness
and close in around the much-wanted racketeer and the detective who had arrested him. Gallagher started
to get up, but a well-aimed pistol butt sent him sprawling again. There was a single shot, followed
by a moan and a choking sob. Then the shadowy figures moved toward the door and vanished. Gallagher
struggled to his feet, fumbled around and found his gun.

Pickering, white with horror, was kneeling beside Higgins. He looked up at Gallagher,

"They got him, officer. Drilled him through the heart! He's dead!"

Gallagher swore softly, hailed a patrolman who had come in answer to the shooting and had him
send for the medical examiner and a squad from headquarters. He started to stuff his service
pistol into its holster. The muzzle dragged across his white shirt front and left a black smear,
Gallagher quickly, opened the breach, One bullet had been fired from the gun, One shot only had
rung out one bullet bad killed Higgins. And all evidence pointed to the fact that it bad been,
fired by Gallagher. Because of what Higgins knew, more than one cop would have wished him dead.
Gallagher suddenly realized the spot he was in!

"What's wrong?" Pickering asked anxiously. "You look worried."

Gallagher put the gun away.~

"Everything is under control," he growled, "but I'm going to land the hoods who killed Higgins.
You can travel, Pickering. I'll handle everything here."