Eight, nine steps above him, Roberts had paused.
Mickey paused with him, waiting, no longer impatient, trying now to think it out, do a little planning.
He looked down over the banister at the hotel desk, with the telephone and pen set.

If I could call in, they could check the story while we were on our way.
I wouldn't have to tell them I had Roberts --

Then he heard it, like a muffled thud, felt a subtle change in air pressure.
He glanced up in time to see Roberts hurtling down on him from above, literally flying through the air, his bloody face twisted.
Mickey tried to flatten against the banister, gripped it with one hand, but Roberts' full weight struck him at that moment in the groin.
He gasped for air and the impact tore his hand from the rail.
He tumbled with Roberts, helpless and in agony, over and over, down the steps.

By a wrenching effort, he managed to hunch and draw in, to take the final fall on his back and shoulders rather than his head.
He was fuzzy in his mind and, for a moment, helpless on the lobby floor, but he was conscious, and free of the weight of Roberts' body.
When his vision cleared he saw the taller one scrambling upward, reaching.
Mickey was on his knees when Roberts turned on the stairs and the razor flashed in his hand.
He felt his empty pocket and knew that Roberts had retrieved the only weapon at hand.

Mickey's eyes fixed on the other's feet, which would first betray the moment and direction of an attack.
He rose stiffly, forcing his knees to lock.
The knifelike pain in his groin nearly brought him down again.
He made himself back off slowly, his eyes wary on Roberts, who now had no more to lose than he.
The pain dulled as he moved, and he steadied inside.
After a moment he extended one hand, the fingers curled.

"Come on", he said.
"You want to be that big a fool -- I was hoping for this".

Roberts brushed at his eyes with his free hand and started down the steps.
He held the razor well out to one side.
He was invulnerable to attack, but he could be handled, Mickey knew, if he could be brought to make the first move.

They were eight feet apart when Roberts cleared the last step.
Mickey waited with slack arms.

"Any time, Roberts", he said.
"Or would it be easier if I put my hands in my pockets"?

The taunt was lost on Roberts.
He advanced slowly, directly, giving no hint of a feint to either side.
He was just short of arm's reach when he stopped.
Mickey backed off two steps, forcing him to come on again.
There was a fixed grin on Roberts' face, made hideous by the swollen nose and the smeared blood.

Mickey backed off again and Roberts hesitated, then came along.
They moved in a series of rhythmic fits and starts, a macabre dance -- two steps back, two steps forward, two steps back.
Mickey felt his shoulders come up against the wall beside the heavy slab front door.
This was going to be it now, any second, and what he had to remember was to keep his eye on the razor, no matter what, even if Roberts should feint with a kick to the groin, the deadly hand was his exclusive concern.

The kick came, sudden and vicious but short.
Mickey's guts twisted with the effort, but he kept his eye on the weapon.
It moved in a silver arc toward his throat, then veered downward.
He hunched his left shoulder into it and slashed at Roberts' forearm with his own, felt the blade slide off his sleeve.
Before Roberts could move inside to cut upward toward his face, he slammed his right fist into Roberts' belly.
Roberts sagged and slashed at him wildly.
Ducking, Mickey tripped and fell to one side, landing heavily on the wood floor.
Then Roberts was on him, gasping for breath and for a couple of seconds Mickey lost sight of the blade.
He felt it rip at the side of his jacket and a momentary sting under his left ribs.
He got a knee up into Roberts' belly, used both hands and heaved him clear, then scrambled to his feet.
They were in the center of the lobby now.
Still clutching the razor, Roberts came up into a crouch, shaking his head.
When he charged Mickey was ready.
He hit Roberts with his left fist in the ribs and the razor cut toward him feebly, then wobbled in mid-air.
With his right fist, and nearly all his weight behind it, he smashed at the bloodstained face.

Roberts careened backward, his back arched, fought for balance and, failing, stumbled against the newel post at the foot of the stairs.
The sound of his head striking the solid wood was an ultimate, sudden-end sound.
He fell on his side across the lowest step, rolled over once, then lay still.

Mickey found himself leaning against the desk, with stiff hands, panting for breath.
After a minute he went to Roberts, looked at one of his eyes and felt for a pulse.
He couldn't feel any.
Roberts appeared to be dead;
if not yet, then soon, very soon.
Suddenly it was cold in the lobby.

12

It seemed to him that a long time had passed before he decided what to do.
Actually it was no more than eight or ten minutes, and the sum of his reasoning came to this:

There's no way to take him in now and keep those other two -- Wister and the one who hired the two of them -- from finding out about Roberts and lamming out.
The local law here would hold me till they check clear back home, and maybe more than that.
They would have to.
By then they could never catch up with the others.
There's no other way;
I'll have to do it myself.

He looked at where Roberts lay sprawled on the step.
Mickey was sure now he was dead.

One thing, he thought, nobody knows about it yet.
Only me.

He climbed the stairs, went into Roberts' room, found a suitcase and packed as much into it as he could.
He left a few things.
It didn't have to be perfect.
Roberts was a wastrel.
Walking away on impulse, he might logically leave behind what it was inconvenient to carry.

When he had closed the suitcase he found a rag and moved about the room, wiping carefully everything he might have touched.
It took him nearly an hour.
He went to the room he had rented and got into his overcoat.
He left the rest of his things and returned to the lobby.
He set Roberts' suitcase near the front door, went outside and walked back to the garage.
He was mildly surprised to find it was snowing.
It snowed softly, silently, an undulating interruption of his vision against the night sky.
He could feel it on his face and in his hair.

He found the key to the Jeep, got it started and warmed it up for five minutes.
Then he backed out and swung around to the front drive.
He went into the hotel and searched till he found the razor.
He put it in his own pocket for safekeeping.
He took the suitcase out to the Jeep and put it in the front seat.
Then he went back for Roberts.

The body was heavier than he had anticipated.
He got it onto his shoulder after some work and carried it outside and down to the Jeep.
He dumped it into the back and made sure it wouldn't roll out, then returned to the porch and closed the front door, making sure it was unlocked.

He drove carefully in the direction of the brief tour they had taken earlier.
It snowed continuously, but quietly, evenly.
When he reached the dip in the woods, he saw that already the earlier ruts were barely discernible.
The Jeep fought its way through the low spot and got onto higher ground.
He drove in low gear to the fork in the road and swung as close as possible to the entrance to the abandoned mine.
He parked facing it and left the headlights on, but when he started into the tunnel with the suitcase, he found the illumination extended no farther than half a dozen feet into the passage.
He went back and got the flashlight, returned to the tunnel and carried the suitcase to the edge of the pit he had found earlier.
He tossed the bag into the pit and watched dry dust spray up around it.
When the dust settled, he went back to the Jeep and carefully worked Roberts' body onto his shoulder.

It wasn't like carrying the suitcase.
The soft snow was deceitful underfoot.
Twice he nearly fell.
Inside the passage, he had to work his way over the fallen timber and nearly collapsed under his clumsy burden.
By the time he reached the edge of the pit he was panting and his shoulder and back ached under the drag of the dead weight.

He stood looking down for a few seconds, then backed up two or three paces from the edge.
There was too much weight casually to toss it away.
He could feel himself falling in with it and being unable to get out.
It would be a bad place to die.
It was a bad place for Roberts to wind up, but Roberts had asked for it.
It was too late to worry about that.

He knelt slowly and dumped the corpse onto the floor of the tunnel.
It was a relief to get rid of the weight.
He was shaking with tension and it took him a couple of minutes to get his breath and settle down.
Then he got on his knees and rolled Roberts' body toward the edge.
It hung momentarily on the point of dropping off.
He gave it a strong push, heard it slide, then tumble dryly into the hole.
He got to his feet and threw the flashlight beam into the pit.
The body lay in an awkward sprawl twelve or fifteen feet below the level of the tunnel floor.

Deep enough, he decided.
There was little chance anyone would enter this shaft during the winter.
The external signs of his approach to it would be covered by the snow, probably by the next day.
It wasn't cold enough in the tunnel to preserve the body intact.
By spring it would be a skeleton.

He made his way back to the Jeep.
He had started to back into the turn when he remembered the razor in his pocket.
He climbed down, went back into the tunnel and tossed the razor into the pit.
It landed on Roberts' sprawled right thigh, poised precariously, then slid off to the ground.
He went back once more to the Jeep and started the short drive to the hotel.

In the garage he checked the Jeep for signs of the use he had made of it.
There were stains here and there and he cleaned them off, using an oiled rag he found on a nail.
He wiped the steering wheel and all the places he might have touched the Jeep.
He replaced the flashlight where it had been stowed, got into his own car and backed it out of the garage.
There were tire marks where it had been, but they were overlapped by others and on the dusty floor would not be noticeable except under close scrutiny.
Liz Peabody, he thought, might spend some time grieving for her lost lover, but he doubted that she would launch an investigation.
He judged her to be a woman of some pride, though not much sense.
Still she would probably have sense enough not to call in the local sheriff to find her boy friend who, apparently, had run away.