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

At the same moment he heard the door of Carew's room close softly. He reached up in the darkness,
clutched at the foot of the bed and drew himself erect. He staggered over to the door, found the
light switch and snapped it on. Carew lay in the middle of the floor! He was stabbed through the
heart, but there was no sign of a knife. His head rested in an awkward position and there was a
bruise on the chin. Gallagher took three steps toward the body, passed into range of an old mirror
over the bureau and stopped dead. His clothing, his hands and even his face were streaked with
blood! Carew's blood!

He heard pounding feet in the hallway outside. He had to get away. He raced across the room and went
through the window. But as he did so, the door opened. A harness cop and a watery-eyed hotel manager
entered in time to see him. The cop's gun roared, but he fired much too fast and at a moving target.
Gallagher went up the fire escape, not down. It gave him an added second before the cop could
comprehend what had happened. When he did, the gun blazed again, but Gallagher was clambering over
the edge of the roof and the slugs only whined harmlessly by.

He studied his situation for a moment, saw that the adjoining building was not three feet away and
its roof only a foot or two lower than that of the hotel's. He jumped across the narrow alley, ran
over to a skylight and smashed it with his foot. He worried his bulky form through the skylight,
dropped into a hallway and proceeded to run down the back stairs until he reached a courtyard, in
the rear. The harness cop was blowing blasts on his whistle, but Gallagher knew that he had two or
three minutes leeway before help could arrive. He vaulted a fence and vanished into the darkness
of the water front.

"Now," he told himself grimly, "they'll have two murder raps listed on the blotter, and unless I
work fast, my name will be opposite them--as chief suspect."

He stopped long enough to wipe some of the blood from his face and hands. The spots on his clothing
were not too noticeable. He pulled his hat low and walked swiftly across town to a residential
section and approached an imposing house. He slipped up on the porch, peered through a window and
saw Attorney Pickering pacing the floor in front of his fireplace. Gallagher tapped on the window
and Pickering whirled about. He spotted Gallagher and motioned him to the door. A moment later
Gallagher was pulling down the shades in the living room before he sat down and lit a cigarette.:

"I'm in deep," he told Pickering. "If a guy ever needed a mouthpiece, I do. Carew, a combination
stool pigeon and pickpocket, tipped me where Higgins was holed up. Naturally, I figured Carew was
in on the frame-up If he was, they paid him off with a knife through his heart. I fought with the
men who murdered him and one of them flung Carew's body into my arms. That's how this blood got
all over me. Then the hotel manager and a cop came in time to recognize me. The bullet that killed
Higgins came from my gun. what'll I do?"

Pickering sat down weakly and shook his head from side to side. "I don't know, Gallagher. It looks
bad!"

"Well I'm going to do something about it," Gallagher said. "First of all I need a gun. Got one,
Pickering?"

The attorney handed over a small caliber automatic, but with plenty of misgivings and protests.
Gallagher shot a bullet into the firing chamber and thrust the weapon into his pocket.

"They may try to get you too," he cautioned Pickering. "The mug who headed what was left of Higgins'