The Vanishers Read Online Free PDF Page B

a rule, I’ve been known to make exceptions. And for a gent my age to convince himself that he’s walloping the shapely ass of a girl her age strictly in the interest of education and discipline, with no irrelevant biological considerations whatever, isn’t easy. I stood up abruptly, dumping her to the floor. She sprawled there for a moment, clearly afraid to make a move lest it be the wrong move. At last, finding herself unraped, unshot, unwhipped, and unkicked, she sat up, regarding me warily through a veil of white-blonde hair.
    “Get your purse,” I said. “Get the gun out of it and put it over there, on the table by the window. Anything else you care to do with it, or try doing with it, be my guest. But remember, I’m just looking for an excuse to shove it up your anus, butt first.”
    She remained sitting for a moment longer, waiting for her breathing to subside. Then she got to her feet, a little awkwardly. She moved across the room and picked up the shoulder-strap bag. Showing a gleam of intelligence for a change, she turned to face me so I could see what she was doing, before opening it. She took out a tiny black pistol, neither a revolver nor an automatic, but a two-shot derringer. She crossed the room and placed it on the table as directed.
    “Now let’s try you on something hard,” I said. “The coat. We can’t leave a nice coat lying on the floor getting all wrinkled, can we? Hang it up neatly over there in the closet corner by the bathroom. Oh, and there’s a nice little twenty-five caliber automatic right there in my open suitcase. By all means go for it if you like. I haven’t had a good gunfight all week.”
    She wanted to protest against being ordered around so rudely and sarcastically, but a little common sense seemed to have fought its way to the surface through the thick layers of stupidity. She contented herself with a resentful glare, and picked up the coat. While she was taking it across the room, I examined her weapon. Two stubby black barrels; actually a solid, gun-shaped little block of metal bored with two holes, one above the other. A small curved butt that, with a hand of any size, wouldn’t accept a full complement of fingers. If you held the gun normally, the pinky would be left waving in the breeze; but you don’t shoot a derringer normally. You lay your trigger finger along the barrels, and point it at the cheating sonofabitch across the poker table, and pull the trigger with the middle finger.
    The old-time gamblers wore them up their sleeves, or maybe in special leather-lined pockets of their embroidered waistcoats. The best-known specimens came in .41 caliber, throwing a big blob of lead without much velocity or accuracy; but how much do you need across a pile of marked cards? However, this was a modern job in .22 Magnum, an oddball rimfire cartridge that has considerably more punch than the standard .22 but still not enough to loosen the fillings in your teeth when you fire it. Incidentally, the derringer was first invented or at least popularized, we’re told, by a guy named Deringer. Nobody seems to know where the extra
r
came from.
    “May I…” On the other side of the room, having put Astrid Watrous’ coat on a hanger, the girl hesitated, embarrassed. She spoke stiffly, avoiding my eyes: “I would like to use the toilet, if I may.”
    I refrained from grinning. After the suspense of waiting for me to walk in so she could wave her horrid gun at me, and the shock of being roughly manhandled, she undoubtedly did need to go. And while it was necessary for me to bully her a bit to keep her from getting independent and doing something else stupid, there was no need to humiliate her about a simple call of nature.
    “Help yourself,” I said.
    She disappeared into the bathroom. Waiting, I finished checking the diminutive weapon in my hand. It broke open like a double-barreled shotgun, but reluctantly, with the stiffness of a brand-new weapon. Two brass cartridge heads