Murderers' Row by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

blade of the switch-blade knife, held low. The club he was swinging passed over my head. I pulled out the knife and stepped back and clear of the car, ready to thrust again. A blade hasn’t got the shocking power of a bullet. I might still have a fight on my hands.
    I needn’t have worried. He was through for the night. He dropped the club and put both hands to his stomach and looked down fearfully, as if expecting a horrible display of gushing blood and torn entrails. There was, of course, nothing of the sort. I’d done a clean, tidy job. After making sure of this, he looked up reproachfully. The light from the sky caught his face. I’d never met him before, although we’d come close earlier in the evening; but I’d seen his picture and read his official description in Washington. It just wasn’t my night for being right. On top of my other goofs, I’d miscalculated badly when I figured there was only one man around who’d like me to drop dead because of the way I’d loused up the night’s work. I’d forgotten Alan, our tender-hearted, lovesick young man in Maryland.

7
    He was a good-looking kid, if you like them with dark, wavy hair and soulful expressions. Well, agents are needed in all shapes and sizes, and I suppose Mac had use for a pretty boy when he took this one on.
    I got a gun off him: the standard little sawed-off, aluminum-framed, five-shot Smith and Wesson .38 that’s issued to us whenever the job doesn’t require anything esoteric in the way of firearms. You can get the equivalent Colt if you insist. It shoots six times but is a little harder to hide, being that much thicker. The general feeling is, if you can’t do it with five shots, you probably can’t do it at all.
    Then I picked up the club he’d tried to use on me. It was a kindo stick, a kind of overgrown policeman’s billy, with a leather wrist loop, only you don’t use it around the wrist. You just loop it over your thumb a certain way, easy to release, so that the man who grabs the stick hasn’t got you, too. Of course, taking a stick away from a good Japanese-trained kindo man doesn’t come under the heading of healthful exercise. The karate and judo experts, who’ll cheerfully go up against a knife, will back off from a thirty-inch stick in the hands of a man who knows how to use it.
    I tossed it into the car. It was kind of pitiful, actually. They come out of training having learned a few miraculous chops with the edge of the hand, a few blows with a magic stick, and they think they’re invulnerable and invincible.
    I said, “Very poor technique, Alan. You sounded like a bull elk coming through the brush, and your attack was lousy. Why didn’t you use the gun?”
    He didn’t answer. He just stood there holding his stomach with both hands, staring at me sullenly.
    I asked, “How were you planning to explain all the weapons to the cops?”
    He licked his lips. “I have a license for the gun. I was supposed to have brought it along to protect Jean—she was going under the name of Ellington, Mrs. Laura Ellington. She was supposed to have been threatened by somebody, somebody in her past. She wouldn’t tell me the details; she pleaded with me not to ask questions, just help her hide out in a safe place until—” He shrugged imperceptibly. “That was the cover story I was supposed to give out after I discovered that she’d been—attacked.”
    â€œBut you didn’t give out?”
    He spoke dully. “When I came in, she was dead. I—I guess I lost my head. There were some people from one of the units who’d seen you leave. I told them to call the police. I started after you. When I caught up with you, you’d already been arrested by the state troopers. I just— followed, hoping for a chance—” He stopped.
    â€œSure,” I said. “Well, get in the car.”
    He was