At least that was the way it was supposed to work.  As I say, it was very neat - a little too neat.  I've been in the business a reasonable length of time, and when somebody flaunts a junior-grade Fu Manchu under my nose, complete with slant eyes, furtive manner, and gleaming knife, I can't help wondering just what's supposed to hit me from elsewhere while I'm watching the Oriental menace going through the motions.

After all, I'm six feet four inches tall, and for a guy a foot shorter, four or five steps below me on a steep stairway, to do me any immediate damage, he's going to need a pogo stick - or lots of help.  There had to be another element involved to make this a reasonable trap, and since there were only three of us present, that element had to be the gent above and behind me, however unlikely a candidate he might appear to be.

As the man below me turned, I brought my hand out of my pants pocket, hipped open my own little folding knife - which I keep in my hand whenever the situation looks doubtful - and pivoted sharply, ducking low and driving the blade up and back.  If I was wrong, I was going to have some awkward explanations to make, but that decision is one I made long ago.  The only death I'm not prepared to explain is my own.

I wasn't wrong.  The whistling sap - I guess they call it a cosh in England - told me as much, as it missed my skull by an inch or so and glanced off my raised shoulder instead.  Then my knife connected, but my luck was bad and I hit a belt buckle.  I was once told that all British gentlemen wear suspenders - excuse me, braces - but apparently Mr. Walling was no gentleman.  Well, I'd already begun to susect that.

Because of the belt, I got no penetration, but the force was enough to make him sit down hard, temporarily breathless.  The sap got away from him and thumped a couple of times, rolling downstairs.  At least for the moment he was out of weapons and out of wind.

I had to settle for that, since I could sense the yellow peril at my back, looking for a soft spot in which to plant that foot-long sticker.  I didn't think I had time to turn.  I just kicked out rearwards like a mule.  My luck was improving a little.  The kick connected somewhere and sent him stumbling back downstairs, but not far enough.  He caught himself by the banister and came up again, catlike, his knife ready.  It was three times the length of mine, and above me Walling was returning to life and groping in his clothes for some new weapon, as yet unidentified.

I was fast running out of strategy and tactics.  The stairs were too narrow for any fancy work.  It's only in the movies that a lone hero can stand off two trained and armed opponents indefinitely, unless he's got long legs and plenty of room to run in.  I had the legs, but the space was lacking.  It was beginning to look, I reflected grimly, as if Winnie might have to find herself another stalking-horse...

There was a sudden, sharp, echoing noise below.  I heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet going into flesh, and the little yellow man sighed and collapsed on top of his long knife.  Footsteps rushed up the stairs, and I heard the reassuring voice of Les Crowe-Barham - I guess I knew him well enough to call him Les despite his title.  I'd t saved his life once and now he'd saved mine.