The Terrorizers by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

nylons. I had a moment to think, which was just as well, since I had to decide just how much warning, if any, I owed these people—and if that sounds strange, it was. I didn’t really know what it meant. I just knew it was something I had to do; or not do. It wasn’t something that could be let go by default.
    Then they were standing in front of me. The man was tallish, although he missed my six-four by several inches. He had a distinguished, professional, gray-at-the-temples look. The woman was the ugliest human female I’d seen in my life—well, as far as I could remember, which wasn’t very far. It wasn’t that she was seriously deformed in the body. She had all the normal limbs and they all seemed to work. Her legs were ordinary middleaged female legs, not good, not bad. Her hands were perfectly functional human hands. But her face was a collection of bony features out of a scare-the-kids comic book, with a spade chin and a misshapen nose displaying large bulldog nostrils. Under the massive eyebrow ridges, however, the brown eyes were cool and intelligent and dangerous.
    “This is Dr. Elsie Somerset, Paul.” Kitty had got out beside me to perform the introductions. “And Dr. Albert Caine… They’ll take very good care of you, darling. You really shouldn’t be out of the hospital so soon; you’re much better off…”
    I said, “Kitty, why don’t you turn off the bullshit?” She gasped and was silent. I looked at Dr. Elsie Somerset—Elsie, for God’s sake! I’d made my second big decision for the day. I was going to give them the breaks, silly though it might seem; I was going to give them a chance to back away unharmed. After all, they were only amateurs and I was a pro. Somehow, I was quite sure, now, that I was a pro, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was professional at. I asked, “Are you the manager of this funny farm, Dr. Somerset?”
    The tall man beside her cleared his throat. “I am the director of this institution, Mr. Madden.”
    I said, “Fine. Then I’ll direct my protest at you. I’d like to state that I’ve been brought here against my will. I want to leave. I want to go home to Seattle. Okay?”
    The two men surrounding me, if you can be surrounded by two men, didn’t move, but I could feel them kind of bracing themselves for action.
    “I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Mr. Madden,” said Dr. Caine smoothly. “You’ve been brought here for treatment—”
    “On whose authority?”
    “Miss Davidson—”
    “The hell with Miss Davidson,” I said. “We may or may not be engaged to be married, but even if we are that’s hardly a binding legal relationship unless she wants to sue me for breach of promise. I doubt very much that it gives her the right to have me committed to a booby hatch; and where are the commitment papers or whatever the legal equivalent is here in Canada? Let’s see something signed by a judge or somebody empowering you to hold me here.”
    It was play-acting in a way, of course; but there were no longer any guns in sight, and the stuffed shirt in front of me obviously liked to put on a show of legality, even when he was kidnaping perfectly normal strangers off the streets. If I could be considered perfectly normal.
    Caine said quickly, “The papers are being drawn up, Mr. Madden. And I would like you to understand that this is an institution of mental healing, not a funny farm or… or a booby hatch!”
    I said, “Swell, draw up your papers and serve them on me. In Seattle, U.S.A. In the meantime, I’ll take my leave, thanks. I won’t bother your driver. That’s a busy highway out there. I guess it won’t take me too long to hitch a ride back to the airport.”
    I turned. The two men grabbed for me. Again, as with Kitty and her gun, I could see with almost frightening clarity how to handle it: first crippling one and then turning to deal with the other, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. I therefore just swung a clumsy fist at