Free The Terrorizers by Donald Hamilton Page B

that he was serving somebody’s dinner half an hour late. It was also typical of Dugan that, seeing a patient loose who shouldn’t be, he never once thought of raising the alarm. I’d counted on that. He could handle it personally, Dugan could. He needed no help, did Dugan. He set the tray carefully on one of the benches along the path, and kept on coming, reaching behind him. No gun, I hadn’t seen any further indications of the compact Colt he’d shown me when we first met, but it was also typical of Dugan, I knew, that he carried something in his hip pocket that wasn’t a wallet or a handkerchief, regardless of the house rules.
    I’d seen the bulge of it often enough, but I’d never managed to identify it. Now, as he pulled it out, I saw that it was a slim and flexible blackjack of some kind. Maybe it was what the British call a cosh, but don’t ask me where I’d heard that word because I didn’t know.
    “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dugan asked as we stopped about ten feet apart. “Where’s Tommy?”
    “Tommy isn’t anywhere,” I said. “Not any longer. Poor Tommy.”
    His face changed. His eyes narrowed oddly. If I’d thought Dugan could feel concern for anybody but himself, I would have said I’d just startled and worried him. Well, I’d wondered a little about the relationship between the two of them; not that their love life was any of my damned business. Dugan spoke harshly, as if to reassure himself.
    “You’re a bloodly liar. Tommy isn’t Einstein, or Muhammed Ali either, but he’d never let you…”
    I sighed. “Dugan, you talk too damned much. Are you going to do something with that thing besides slap it against your palm like that, or am I just supposed to fall down dead with fright at the noise?”
    He said, “Since you ask for it, cock, it will be a real pleasure.”
    He came forward in a half-crouch, weaving a bit, feinting with the sap. I brandished my stick clumsily, like a feeble club. He laughed and kept advancing. I struck out at him in an ineffectual way, and jumped back fearfully as he responded with a slash of his own weapon. I stumbled dramatically. He laughed again, and came in like a bear to honey. I arranged my feet properly and drove the stick straight at his eyes, rapier-fashion. A man six-four has considerable range when he extends himself in a full fencing lunge, even with just a two-foot stick. Dugan recoiled; his arms went up to protect his face. Instantly, in mid-lunge, I dropped the point and sent it into his belly with the full weight of my body behind it, trying to remember the Italian name of that high-low attack that I’d first learned, I recalled, on a college fencing team back when I was still just a nice young fellow with photographic ambitions racking up a few points for phys. ed.
    I wasn’t so young, and I didn’t seem to be so nice, any longer. I heard the breath go out of Dugan. He doubled up helplessly, hugging himself, sinking to his knees. I looked down at him for a moment. I could see no need whatever to take any risks for Dugan’s sake, like the risk of leaving him tied up to maybe work himself free and alert the guards before I was ready for them. My right hand was too tender for any further flashy displays of karate, if that was what it was. I stepped behind Dugan, slipped my hands under his armpits, and brought them up and around, locking them together at the nape of his neck and levering his head forward. I remembered the name of that wrestling hold all right: the venerable and respected full nelson. I heard him groan as the pressure came on.
    “Goodbye, Dugan,” I said. “Don’t think it hasn’t been nice, because it hasn’t.”
    Afterwards, I dragged him into the nearest ornamental bushes, and liberated his cosh and wallet, and his key ring, heavier than Tommy’s. I left him my part-crutch, and got the tray he’d put aside and shoved it in with him to prevent anybody from getting curious about it. Then I frowned