“Four what?” I asked mildly. “Trips across?”
He wasn’t any fool and he was wise right away that I was stringing along
with him. And he didn’t like it.
“What were you doing?” he snapped. “Ferrying them up from Romo for us to
fight with?”
That got me a little sore, so I let him have it. Maybe the fact that the
heat was getting me a bit helped along.
“Listen, Jinx!” I snapped back. “Down here it’s too hot to talk and fly
both. So we fly, see?”
His face had gone a little white at the tag I used. And I hadn’t meant
to use it. But he’d started the thing and he finished it.
“You fly down here, eh?” he came back. “And you slug, too!”
With that he turned away. I stared after him. Since Prop had given me
the dope that night at the club I’d figured that Bride had known who had
battered him down. It was ten to one that Bert Allen hadn’t just hit him
from behind. The crack on his head had come from contact with the
cobbles, but he’d been hit several times in the face.
“Tough baby, even if he is a jinx!” I muttered to myself. “And he knows
who got him, all right. But then, he would. Bert isn’t the breed who
hits from behind. The thing is why did Bert go after him in such—”
I broke off. Prop was coming toward me, a grim smile on his face. His
eyes went past me to the retreating figure of Jinx Bride.
“Is he flying this morning?” he asked me slowly.