The Threateners by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page B

perimeter was again under attack by dangerous delivery personnel. . . . Then there was the crack of a shot, and silence. I felt a sudden panic.
    “Oh, Jesus, if some trigger-happy bastard has shot my dog . . . !”
    I rolled off the bed, kicked my feet into my shoes, and ran into the living room. It took me a moment to unlock the rack and get down one of the shotguns. There are two theories about the home storage of firearms. One says you never load a gun in the house, the other says an unloaded gun is a useless piece of iron and you’re supposed to treat every gun as if it were loaded, anyway, so it might as well be. With no kids around, I go for Theory Two to the extent that while the chamber was empty, the weapon in my hands, an old Remington 1100 auto, had four buckshot shells in the magazine. Heading for the door, I yanked back the charging handle and let the bolt slam forward, readying the gun for firing.
    Normally, I might have taken a few precautions like, say, going out the bedroom door as before so I wouldn’t be stepping right into the line of fire; but the ugly silence, after the odd-sounding barking and the single shot, did things to my judgment. I had an ex-wife and some offspring in the east somewhere, but the big yellow retriever in the yard was my only immediate family, and maybe you wouldn’t die for your dog but I’m not so sure about me. I’d certainly kill for him. As far as I’m concerned, any two-legged creature that would harm a dog isn’t really human, so where’s the problem?
    I yanked the door open and made a dive for the bushes on the far side of the path, wishing the old lady from whom I’d bought the house had gone in for anything but roses. Nobody shot at me. I came up scratched, with the gun shouldered ready to fire, safety off. Then I drew a long breath of relief. Happy was standing over something by the front gate, his thick yellow tail slashing from side to side. Wherever the single bullet had gone, at least he was still alive and on his feet.
    I extricated myself from the thorny cover into which I’d plunged and moved forward cautiously. My initial impression was that my gentle hunting dog had brought down the intruder and was now busily tearing him limb from limb; which was strange behavior for a soft-mouthed retriever who never left a tooth mark on a bird. Then I saw that the invader was a woman; and that Happy was merely licking her face in his friendly fashion. She didn’t seem to appreciate his attentions. Hearing me approach, she pushed herself up, her face white, her eyes wide with fear.
    “Take him away!” she gasped. “Oh, please take him away!”
    I saw her pistol come up, a small automatic. I didn’t know if she was even aware, in her panic, that she was still holding it; but it was swinging my way, and a gun is a gun, and dying accidentally isn’t a great improvement over dying intentionally. I kicked at the weapon and swung the butt of my shotgun hard, keeping the muzzle high so that if there was a discharge, it wouldn’t blow my head off. The shotgun didn’t fire, but the wooden stock made a solid thunking sound as it hit the woman’s skull just above the ear.
Chapter 5
    I picked up the pistol where I’d kicked it. Checking it, I saw that its seven-shot magazine lacked two cartridges: the one that had been fired and the one that was in the chamber ready to fire. It was a small. 380 Spanish automatic called Llama—well, semiautomatic, if you want to get technical. I was reminded of somebody’s long-ago jingle to the effect that a one-1 lama is a priest, but a two-1 llama is a beast. Edgar Guest? Ogden Nash? This little beast seemed like a reasonably well made gun. I replaced the magazine, set the safety catch, and having attended to all stray firearms, always the well-trained agent’s first concern after a crisis, laid it aside with my shotgun on the rough wooden box built against the front fence that concealed my garbage cans.
    I turned anxiously to