Free What's Better Than Money by James Hadley Chase Page A

the air, sick enough to throw up.
    Rima straightened up from behind the desk. In her hand was a smoking .38. She looked indifferently at the guard. She hadn’t even lost colour.
    “There’s no money,” she said savagely. “The drawer’s empty.”
    I scarcely heard what she was saying.
    I stared at the guard, watching the trickle of blood move out of him in a thin thread across the polished parquet floor.
    “Let’s get out of here!”
    The urgent rasp in her voice brought me to my senses.
    “You’ve killed him!”
    “He would have killed me, wouldn’t he?” She stared coldly at me. “Come on, you fool! Someone will have heard the shooting!”
    She started across the room, but I grabbed her arm, jerking her around.
    “Where did you get that gun?”
    She wrenched free.
    “Oh, come on! They’ll be here in a moment!”
    Her indifferent, glittering eyes horrified me.
    Then somewhere in the outer darkness I heard a siren start up. Its moaning note chilled me.
    “Come on! Come on!”
    She ran out into the darkness and I went after her.
    Lights were coming on all over the Studios. Men’s voices shouted.
    I felt her hand on my arm as she shoved me down a dark alley. We ran blindly as the siren continued to moan into the night.
    “Here!”
    She pulled me into a dark doorway. For a brief moment her flashlight made a puddle of light, then turned off. She pulled me down behind a big wooden crate.
    We heard racing, heavy footsteps go by. We heard men shouting to each other. Someone began to blow a shrill whistle that set my nerves jangling.
    “Come on!”
    If it hadn’t been for her, I would never have got out of the place. She was terribly cool and controlled. She steered me through the dark alleys. She seemed to know when we were about to run into danger and when it was clear to go ahead.
    As we ran past the endless buildings and the vast Studio sheds, the whistles and the voices grew fainter, and at last, panting, we stopped in the shadow of a building to listen.
    There was silence now except the still moaning siren.
    “We’ve got to get out of here before the cops arrive,” Rima said.
    “You killed him!”
    “Oh, shut up! We can get over the wall at the end of this alley.”
    I went with her until we came to a ten-foot wall. We paused beside it and looked up at it.
    “Help me up.”
    I took her foot in both my hands and heaved her up. She swung one leg over the wall, bending low and stared down into the darkness.
    “It’s okay. Can you get up?”
    I walked back, ran at the wall, jumped and grabbed at the top. I got a grip, hung for a moment, then heaved myself up. We both rolled over the wall and dropped onto the dirt road that ran alongside the Studio.
    We walked quickly to the main road. Along this road was parked a line of cars belonging to people in a night club across the way.
    “There should be a bus in five minutes or so,” Rima said.
    I heard the approaching sound of police sirens.
    Rima grabbed my arm and shoved me to a Skyliner Ford.
    “Get in – quick!”
    I slid in and she followed.
    She had just time to close the door when two police cars went storming past, heading for the main entrance to the Studio.
    “We’ll wait here,” Rima said. “There’ll be more coming. They mustn’t see us on the street.”
    This made sense although I was aching to get away.
    “Larry!” Rima said, disgust in her voice. “I should have known he would get it all wrong. They must bank the money or put it in a safe when they close down.”
    “Do you realise you’ve killed a man?” I said. “They can send us to the gas chamber. You mad bitch! I wish I had never had anything to do with you!”
    “It was in self-defence,” she said hotly. “I had to do it!”
    “It wasn’t! You shot him down in cold blood. You shot him twice!”
    “I would have been a fool to let him shoot me, wouldn’t I? He had a gun in his hand. It was self-defence!”
    “It was murder!”
    “Oh, shut up!”
    “I’m through