Free King of Spades by Frederick Manfred

saw right away he had said the wrong thing. Roddy dropped his eyes. “Dad and me was just joshin’ around before dinner is all.”
    â€œWindow-peeper?” Kitty echoed. She placed a hand on Roddy’s shoulder. “Here?”
    Roddy suffered his mother a moment, then moved out of her reach. “I said we was just jokin’ around about it.”
    But Kitty wouldn’t let Roddy go. She leaned forward and stroked back his hair. “Tell me, handsome is as handsome does, did Daddy say there was a wild-animal man window- peeking?”
    Magnus made another fierce face. His large lips opened just enough to show even white teeth. “Let’s shake a leg, Herman. Lead the way.”
    6
    Four inches of snow drifted down during the day. It gave the little town of Sioux City a ghostly look. It made spectral the Indian dead lashed to stick scaffolds pricking out on Morningside Heights. There was no wind.
    Into the silence of pure white a pileated woodpecker occasionally broke and rebroke the air with its rolling clatter on a hollow cottonwood. The steamboat St. Louis, arriving for the last time that season, also let go with several shrill shattering blasts.
    That evening, light lingered for a long time after the sun went down. Each chimney exhaled a slim white plume a straight thousand feet high. The voices of children playing in the snow suggested angels. People took a couple of steps, then stood and looked. Just looked.
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    Down the path in the snow came slim courtly Magnus again, wearing his usual black hat and a dark Chesterfield coat. He came swiftly, overshoes scuffing out little throws of loose phosphorescent snow to either side. His face was blenched and his eyeballs were slightly protruded. A revolver also flashed in his hand again.
    He went around to the back of his house and bounded up the stoop and burst into the kitchen.
    Kitty was getting supper ready. Light from a kerosene lamp glowed golden on the bright papered walls.
    He started firing the moment he saw her. His first shot caught her along the hairline.
    She screamed and ducked down.
    His next shot caught her in the hand, nicking the flesh between thumb and forefinger.
    She screamed again and tried to hide behind the woodbox.
    His next shot exploded in the toe of her left green button shoe.
    â€œMagnus!”
    His next shot ripped her belt on the right side. The belt dropped to the floor.
    She came up out of her crouch and ran for the bedroom, screaming as she went, “Daddy, please don’t kill me! Please. I’ll do anything you say. I’ll admit anything you say. Oh, God, I’m being murdered! Help! Help!”
    He glimpsed her silhouette against the lighted bed lamp and his next shot nicked her left breast. The ball sliced across just below the nipple. Blood spurted.
    She dove under the bed. “Help, help! My husband is killing me! Oh, God, God!”
    He sank to his knees and elbows and peered under the bed. He spotted the outline of her mouth moving against the yellow wallpaper. He fired. This time he caught the outer edge of her green eye.
    In a flash she slithered out from under the bed on the other side and clawed up the wall all in one motion. “Roddy, Roddy! Can’t you do something to stop your father? Oh, God!” Then she collapsed and tumbled backward onto the bed.
    Magnus got to his feet and aimed directly at the center of her forehead. He pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped. There was no explosion.
    He looked down at his gun. He flicked the cylinder open. The gun was empty.
    He looked down at Kitty. She was leaking blood on all sides. “I told you, woman, that before God and my son, if you didn’t admit you were a bad woman, bad! goddam you, I’d take a club to you. Well, you kept on being bad so I had to take a gun to you.”
    There was a click of a gun being cocked.
    He turned.
    Through the bedroom door, on the other side of the sitting room, he saw Roddy standing with