Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane by William Peter Blatty Read Free Book Online Page A

leaping bolt upright.
    “And now you’ll be good for a week?”
    “No!”
    “Cutshaw, didn’t you tell me that—?”
    “Yes! Yes, I did! But I’m an incorrigible liar!” Cutshaw swept to the door, crouched over like Groucho Marx, and flung it open with a bang. “May I go?” he asked urbanely.
    A corporal in uniform, capped in the hat of a chef, stood revealed in the doorway, his hand gripping a ladle that brimmed with a murky substance. “Colonel, you’ve got to taste this!” he burbled, stepping inside.
    With a swift, birdlike motion, Cutshaw lowered his nose to the ladle, then jerked his head up at Kane, announcing: “Truffles from the Moon, Hud! Dusty, but good for your sex life!” He swept out of view.
    The corporal advanced on Kane, the ladle prowed forward. “Taste it!” he said. “Taste it! I just made it up!”
    Kane eyed him levelly over the ladle. “What is it?”
    “I’m not sure,” retorted the corporal. “Take a taste, take a taste!”
    Kane slurped a taste. The corporal, rather corpulent, jiggled his stomach up and down. “Tell me!” he demanded. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!”
    “And to whom am I speaking?” asked Kane.
    “Corporal Gower.”
    “You’re the chef?”
    “How did you guess?”
    Kane smiled thinly. “Just a shot in the dark. I think your stew is tasty.”
    “Great!” exulted Gower. “We’ll have it for dinner!” He jiggled out of the office, gracefully tossing onto the floor, in an absent-minded reflex, the steaming contents of the ladle.
    Fell watched the sinews in the psychologist’s neck as Kane stared down at the splotch the stew had made on the floor. Cutshaw appeared at the door, examined the splotch with concentration. “A lobster eating Johnson grass!” he decided, and crouched away.
    Fell closed the door, dropping some newspaper over the splotch. “The cook, by the way, is not an inmate,” he explained. Then he wandered to a bookshelf, examining its new contents.
    Kane poked aimlessly at a corner of the newspaper with the point of his shoe. He spoke as though to himself. “We all defeat madness in various ways.”
    Fell quietly waited. But Kane said no more.
    The medic pulled a book from the shelf. “This yours? Elementary psych?”
    The psychogist looked up at him. “Yes. Yes it is.”
    Fell flipped through the book, noted some marginal glosses as well as some very heavy underlinings. “You’re a lucky boy, Kane,” he said: “assigned to a job you do best.”
    “Aren’t you? You’re a doctor.”
    “Brain surgeon.”
    “Oh.” Kane moved to his desk, calmly resuming unpacking.
    “I am stunned, ” declared Fell, “by your shock and amazement.”
    Kane’s hand was on the missal. He stared at it solemnly. “We’re all miscast—one way or another. Being born into this world: that’s the ultimate miscasting.” He paused and seemed to be brooding over what he had just said, feeling for his thoughts with gentle, surgical fingers. “I—think that’s what drives us mad. I mean—if fish could survive—actually survive out of water—they would go mad.” Kane looked up at Fell. “Do you know what I mean?”
    “No. But maybe I’m drunk.”
    Kane picked up the missal, sat down behind the desk. He put the missal into a drawer and slid it shut; then uttered softly: “Haven’t you ever had the feeling that we—weren’t meant for this place?”
    “Well, I go where the Air Force sends me.”
    Kane shifted his leg, heard a loud and anguished “Yip!” as a disreputable-looking spotted mongrel dog scrambled out from under the desk. The office door was flung open.
    “So there you are!” pounced a large-nosed, elfish inmate, pointing imperiously at the dog.
    “Lieutenant Leslie Spoor,” explained Fell.
    Kane stood up. “Is that your dog?” he asked mildly.
    “Does he look like my zebra? What’s the matter with you, any way!” The dog licked Kane’s shoe. “Look,” said Spoor, “he likes you!”
    “What do you call