Free The Adventures of Hiram Holliday by Paul Gallico Page B

ju-jitsu student or exponent feels himself caught in a grip that is too much for him or is threatening to break a limb if the pressure is increased, he pats the nearest part of his opponent that he can reach and the bout is over. Also it takes a genuine expert to apply holds so as not to injure a man. Holliday was no expert. The man struggled and threshed with his legs. Hiram increased the pressure. The man did not reach up and pat him to signify submission. He continued the pressure until the man gave a sudden convulsive shudder and relaxed and lay still. It was not until long after that Hiram realized that he had applied the wrong hold.
    It was over. And Hiram Holliday knew that he was badly frightened, that in fact he was no longer Hiram Holliday. For the first time he realized the truth of the many interviews with persons who had committed acts of violence, that passed through his fingers on the copy-desk; that what they had done thereafter seemed like a badly remembered dream.
    He did not know whether the man was alive or dead. He only knew that he wanted to get out, to people, to his own kind, to keep on going. He was still wearing his hat and coat. Incongruously he snatched up his umbrella, hung it over his arm by the crook and hustled out of the room. Any moment people would come, attracted by the shot. He must get to the Sentinel Bureau and see Clegg at once and tell him everything. Miraculously the tiny, self-operating lift was waiting at the landing when he reached it. He got in and pushed the button for the ground floor. The windows were of frosted glass, but as he descended he saw the shapes of men passing on the way up, and heard their feet pounding on the stairs.
    There were five or six men standing in the lobby by the porter's desk, and Hiram held himself to walking past them slowly. But one of them suddenly cried out in German: 'Das
    i st er Hallo. ... Halt!' - and made a grab for him. Hiram
    ducked and ran through the door and turned left up the street with the men streaming after him. He was frightened at the forces he had invoked, and driven very close to the panic of the hunted when there came a sound like a back-fire from behind him, and something went 'Pht' past his left ear. It was a long street, a full three hundred yards more before he would reach a turning. He wondered what it would feel like to be bit. Then he was conscious that a car was running close beside him. A good-humoured voice said in French: 'Taxi, m'sieu ?'
    Hiram made the running-board with a leap and flung himself inside. Through the rear window he saw the men piling into a car. He had forgotten about Clegg and the Sentinel Bureau. He was hunted and he wanted a warren in which to run to earth.
    'Montmartre! Vite!’ he gasped to the driver. He had remembered the twisting, crooked streets. He also knew that German agents were now aware that he had abstracted papers that concerned them vitally, and that he was in deep trouble.
    Because all Paris cabbies drive like mad, Hiram kept some two hundred yards in front of the following car. He knew that if they caught up with him they would kill him. And then suddenly he acted purely on hunch and instinct. He saw the lights of the Cirque Antoine, the huge electric sign advertising its glories. He stopped the cab, handed the driver a twenty-franc note, bought a ticket and went inside. He had a wild idea that he could lose himself in the audience. But as he went through the door, he saw the pursuing car draw up and the men piling out.
    He no longer felt that there would be any security in the circus crowd. There was a deadly and uncompromising implacability in the pursuit. He hustled around the encircling corridor to the rear, to the only friend he knew.
    She was standing outside the door of her dressing-room with her white horse, waiting for her cue to go on.
    'Lisette,' panted Hiram Holliday. 'I'm in a jam. They're trying to kill me. Is there anywhere I can go ? Lisette! Quickly!'
    Anyone but a