"Hammett, Dashiell (as Peter Collinson) - The Road Home - Black Mask 2212" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hammett Dashiell)

months and then six behind his quarry. And now successfully home! Betty would be
fifteenЧquite a lady.
Barnes edged forward and resumed his pleading, with a whine creeping into his
voice.
"Say, Hagedorn, why don't you listen to reason? There ain't no sense in us
losing all that money just for something that happened over two years ago. I
didn't mean to kill that guy, anyway. You know how it is; I was a kid and wild
and foolishЧbut I wasn't meanЧand I got in with a bunch. Why, I thought of that
hold-up as a lark when we planned it! And then that messenger yelled and I guess
I was excited, and my gun went off the first thing I knew. I didn't go to kill
him; and it won't do him no good to take me back and hang me for it. The express
company didn't lose no money. What do they want to hound me like this for? I
been trying to live it down."
The gaunt detective answered quietly enough but what kindness there had been in
his dry voice before was gone now.
"I knowЧthe old story! And the bruises on the Burmese woman you were living with
sure show that there's nothing mean about you. Cut it, Barnes, and make up your
mind to face itЧyou and I are going back to New York."
"The hell we are!"
Barnes got slowly to his feet and backed away a step.
"I'd just as leaveЧ"
Hagedorn's automatic came out a split second too late; his prisoner was over the
side and swimming toward the bank. The detective caught up his rifle from the
deck behind him and sprang to the rail. Barnes' head showed for a moment and
then went down again, to appear again twenty feet nearer shore. Upstream the man
in the boat saw the blunt, wrinkled noses of three muggars, moving toward the
shore at a tangent that would intercept the fugitive. He leaned against the teak
rail and summed up the situation.
"Looks like I'm not going to take him back alive after allЧbut my job's done. I
can shoot him when he shows again, or I can let him alone and the muggars will
get him."
Then the sudden but logical instinct to side with the member of his own species
against enemies from another wiped out all other considerations, and sent his
rifle to his shoulder to throw a shower of bullets into the muggars.
Barnes clambered up the bank of the river, waved his hand over his head without
looking back, and plunged into the jungle.
Hagedorn turned to the bearded owner of the jahaz, who had come to his side, and
addressed him in his broke Burmese.
"Put me ashoreЧyu nga apau myeЧand waitЧthaingЧuntil I bring him backЧthu
yughe."
The captain wagged his black beard protestingly.
"Mahok! In the jungle here, sahib a man is as a lei Twenty men might find him in
a week, or a month, it may take five years. I cannot wait that long."
The gaunt white man gnawed at his lower lip and looked down the riverЧthe road
to New York.
"Two years," he said aloud to himself, "it took to fin him when he didn't know I
was hunting for him. Now-Oh, hell! It may take five years. I wonder about them
jewel of his."
He turned to the boatman.
"I go after him. You wait three hours," pointing over head, "until noonЧne