Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [36]
Seated, my hands holding a head that threatened to fly off, I heard footsteps approach again. They seemed too slow to be threatening, so I simply sat and took pleasure in the act of breathing. A hand came into my vision, holding a pair of glasses; my glasses. I took them, straightened them on my nose, and squinted up.
Not very far up. The man was short. And Chinese.
“You're the bookseller.” My head hurt, raised like that, so I allowed it to fall back into my supporting hands.
“I am. Are you all right?”
“I will be. What the hell did you do that for?”
“A man across the street was aiming a pistol at you. I feared that if I merely yelled, you would turn to see and he would hit you.”
I reflected that I was probably the only woman in San Francisco who, if she heard someone yell Get down! might actually obey first and look around to ask questions later—unless, of course, the swift approach of footsteps took precedence. Still, he had no way of knowing that.
“That was a shot I heard?” The impact of shoulder to diaphragm had come simultaneously with the bang, creating a more direct link in my mind than in fact there was. I craned my neck again, trying to see him. He was holding his left shoulder, casually but firmly.
“God, you're hit,” I exclaimed.
“An insignificant wound, I believe. If you can walk, perhaps we should do so.”
With the impetus of someone else's blood to drive me, I staggered to my feet, stifling curses as my head swam and pounded.
By this time, three other men had come onto the street from their houses, all of them with the look of soldiers about them—men who would perceive instantly the difference between a motorcar's back-fire and the sound of a handgun. The nearest came to where the bookseller and I stood, and asked, “Ma'am, is this fellow bothering you?”
“Oh, no, this fellow has just saved my skin, thank you. And at the cost of his own. Mister . . . I'm sorry,” I said to my rescuer, “I don't know your name.”
He flung at me a series of Oriental syllables that found no foothold in my rattled brain, but I decided that here was not the place for proper introductions. “Yes,” I said vaguely, and looked around me, trying to remember which way my house lay. “Down here, I think. We'll see if we can find some bandages that the mice haven't nested in.”
Leaving three men to stare at our retreating backs, Mr Whosit and I made our wavering way up the street and around the corner to the familiar jungle-backed wall. Luckily, Holmes had left the drive gate open; in fact, he was standing in the front door-way, watching us approach.
“A bit of first aid, Holmes,” I greeted him with. “Mr Something here took a bullet for me, and needs patching up. I could use a couple of aspirin for my head-ache. And I seem to have lost another hat.”
“Why does it not surprise me that the sound of a pistol would herald the arrival of my wife,” Holmes drawled, and stood away from the door so we could enter.
Chapter Six
Holmes had better luck with the bookseller's name, and was soon addressing the small man as Mr Long, which when I heard it caused a somewhat light-headed giggle to try to surface. I suppressed it firmly—he wasn't that tiny, really, just far from Long—and focussed on the tasks at hand.
We were sitting in the kitchen, bright lights pulsating off the white walls, as Holmes methodically assisted our guest in removing enough of his upper garments to allow treatment. He seemed uncomfortable with my presence, so I closed my eyes against the glare.
“Clever of you to get the power on, Holmes.”
“It was simply a matter of locating the