The nearest man cursed and made a lunge for the closest piece. Then they were all scurrying here and there about the road while the frail bills sailed and flickered in the gale, pirouetting like elves along the grass, bouncing and skipping from side to side in mad perversity.
From one side to the other they ran, Corcoran with them, crumpling the captured money into their pockets, then scattering always farther and farther apart in wild pursuit of the elusive beckoning symbols of gold.
Suddenly Corcoran saw his opportunity. Bending low, as if he had spotted a stray bill beneath the car, he ran toward it, vaulted over the side and hitched into the driver’s seat. As he plunged the lever into first, he heard a cursing cry and then a sharp report, but the warmed car had jumped forward safely and the shot went wide.
In a moment, his teeth locked and muscles tense against the fusillade, he had passed the stalled taxi and was racing along into the darkness. There was another report close at hand and he ducked wildly, afraid for an instant that one of them had clung to the running board; then he realized that one of their shots had blown out a tire.
After three-quarters of a mile he stopped, cut off his motor and listened. There wasn’t a sound, only the drip from his radiator onto the road.
“Hallie!” he called. “Hallie!”
A figure emerged from the shadows not ten feet away, then another figure and another.
“Hallie!” he said.
She clambered into the front seat with him; her arms went about him.
“You’re safe!” she sobbed. “We heard the shots and wanted to go back.”
Mr. Nosby, very cool now, stood in the road.
“I don’t suppose you brought back any of that money,” he said.
Corcoran took three crumpled bank notes from his pocket.
“That’s all,” he said. “But they’re liable to be along here any minute and you can argue with them about the rest.”
Mr. Nosby, followed by Mrs. Bushmill and the chauffeur, stepped quickly into the car.
“Nevertheless,” he insisted shrilly, as they moved off, “this has been a pretty expensive business. You’ve flung away ten thousand dollars that was to have bought goods in Sicily.”
“Those are English bank notes,” said Corcoran. “Big notes too. Every bank in England and Italy will be watching for those numbers.”
“But we don’t know the numbers!”
“I took all the numbers,” said Corcoran.
The rumor that Mr. Julius Bushmill’s purchasing department keeps him awake nights is absolutely unfounded. There are those who say that a once conservative business is expanding in a way that is more sensational than sound, but they are probably small, malevolent rivals with a congenital disgust for the grand scale. To all gratuitous advice, Mr. Bushmill replies that even when his son-in-law seems to be throwing it away, it all comes back. His theory is that the young idiot really has a talent for spending money.
