Free The Adventures of Hiram Holliday by Paul Gallico Page A

the robbery to the concierge. Then, au revoir. They shook hands, and the gentleman departed.
    Hiram looked at the closed door. 'He may have a kind face,' he said to himself, 'but he had a damned clammy hand. Now I wonder what is going to happen ?'
    He said nothing about the battered room to the concierge, but arranged it quietly himself. Then he went out and dined uneasily, because he felt that he had been a fool. He had meddled with something that did not concern him and was dangerous. And above all, he had done something that was irrevocable, and which was almost certain to bring unpleasant consequences. It was nine o'clock when he went back to his hotel to face them. He hurried back because he wanted them to begin, to be brought out of the dark of his imagination into the light of reality.
    They were waiting for him in his room in the form of the fatherly gentleman in the striped trousers and the black be-ribboned eye-glasses, who was sitting quietly on the edge of a chair with his hat on his lap and his hands folded over the crook of his umbrella handle. He arose courteously when Hiram let himself in the door with his key and said: 'Hullo, what are you doing here?'
    'Forgive me that I chose to wait for you here,' said the fatherly gentleman. 'But I thought we could talk better. I felt sure that M'sieu Holliday could enlighten me. This umbrella that you have returned to me. It is not exactly, how shall I say, as you received it from me. There is something missing. You have it perhaps, and will return it to me, I am sure.'

Hiram tried one bluff which he was certain was not going to work, but he wanted time. And besides the gentleman with the spade beard and the kindly eyes did not look dangerous. Hiram had forgotten about the clammy hands. He looked at him blankly and then at the umbrella, and said: { Eh ? Missing ? Damned if I know what you're talking about. I gave you your umbrella. That's mine over there in the corner. You can look it over if you want to. But you've got a nerve coming into my room.'
    The man sighed patiently, and said: 'That is a pity, M'sieur Holliday. I had hoped that I was mistaken.' He then reached inside the breast of his frock-coat and produced a small nickel-plated pistol, which he fired at Hiram Holliday without further warning.
    Simultaneously with the sharp little 'spang,' Hiram heard the bullet smack into the wall behind him and threw an ash-tray at the man's head, and then a magazine, a book, a sheaf of > papers, a mineral water bottle, a glass, anything and everything he could lay his hands on.
    He did these things as a reflex, but it was an old idea stored away, something he had been told by his pistol-shooting instructor at the Armoury in New York, a grizzled sergeant who had said: 'If you're ever in a jam in a room with a fellow who has a gun and you have none, throw everything at him you can lay your hands on, and keep on throwing until you can get to him. It will spoil his aim. The average man, if he is excited, will miss you at ten feet. Things flying through the air at him will make him duck instinctively....'
    The little gun, did not go off again, the bottle had scored a direct hit, and the fatherly gentleman stood there weaving a little. Hiram brought him down with the simple trick known to every ju-jitsu pupil, he slid for his legs, and with his own feet tripped the other's put from under him, one foot hooked behind, the other applying pressure from the front. With the same movement, he scrambled up and over and behind him and brought his left forearm across the man's throat, his hand holding his own right shoulder. His right arm he brought over the man's shoulder and then back behind his head, and then with his right hand pushed the head slowly forward against the bar-lock of his own left arm.
    Now, ju-jitsu practised in a gymnasium with a clever and benevolent instructor is one thing, and the same art as applied to the person of a potential killer is quite another. When the