Free The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein

What happens to you if you tell me or show me where your alley is?”
    He was slow in answering; I let him take his time. At last he said in a low voice, “Nosies caught a skin six seven months ago. Cracked him open. Not from my alley thank Jesus. His alley was a maintenance space near a hundred ten and down at full gee.
    “So the nosies gassed it and a lot of skins died…but this skin they turned loose. Cold help that was to him. He hadn’t been walking twenty-four hours when he was grabbed and locked in with rats. Hungry ones.”
    “I see.” I glanced at Gwen.
    She gulped and whispered, “Senator, no rats. I don’t like rats. Please.”
    “Bill, I withdraw the question about your alley. Your hide-out. And I won’t ask you to identify any other nightwalker. But I expect you to answer anything else fully and quickly. No more stalling. No waste of time. Agreed?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Go back. These two strangers offered you a job. Tell me about it.”
    “Uh, they tell me just a few minutes of razzle-dazzle; nothing to it. They want me to wear this jacket, make like a nosie. Bong the door here, ask for you. ‘Message from the Manager,’ that’s what I have to say. Then the rest like we did—you know. When I say, ‘Hey? You ain’t the Senator! Or are you?’, they are supposed to close in and arrest you.”
    Bill looked at me accusingly. “But you messed it up. You fouled it, not me. You didn’t do anything like you was supposed to. You clamped the door on me—and you shouldn’t uh. And you turned out to be the Senator after all…and you had her with you.” His voice was especially bitter when he referred to Gwen.
    I could understand his resentment. How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate? Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back.
    “You’ve certainly had a run of bad luck. Bill. Let’s check this ‘Message from the Manager’ you were supposed to deliver. Keep him covered. Mistress Hardesty.”
    “Can I take my hands down?”
    “No.” The clipboard was still on the deck, between Gwen and Bill but a bit toward me; I could reach it without crossing her line of fire. I picked it up.
    Clipped to the board was a receipt form for messages, with a place for me (or someone) to sign. Clipped beside it was the familiar blue envelope of Mackay Three Planets; I opened it.
    The message was in five-letter code groups, about fifty of them. Even the address was in code. Written in longhand above the address was “Sen. Cantor, St. Oil.”
    I tucked it into a pocket without comment. Gwen queried me with her eyes; I managed not to see it. “Mistress Hardesty, what shall we do with Bill?”
    “Scrub him!”
    “Eh? Do you mean, ‘Waste him’? Or are you volunteering to scrub his back?”
    “Heavens, no! Both. Neither. I am suggesting that we shove him into the refresher and leave him there until he’s sanitary. Bathed, hot water and lots of suds. Hair shampooed. Clean fingernails and toenails. Everything. Don’t let him out until he whiffs clean.”
    “You would let him use your ’fresher?”
    “Things being the way they are, I don’t expect to use it again. Senator, I’m tired of his stink.”
    “Well, yes, he does put one in mind of rotten potatoes on a hot day in the Gulf Stream. Bill, take off your clothes.”
    The criminal class is the most conservative group in any society; Bill was as reluctant to strip down in the presence of a lady as he had been to divulge the hideout of his fellow outcasts. He was shocked that I would suggest it, horrified that a lady would go along with this indecent proposal. On the latter point I might have agreed with him yesterday…but I had learned that Gwen was