Read Online Merryll Manning Is Dead Lucky by Johm Howard Reid - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Johm Howard Reid
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that door. I never want to see you again.”
“Brunsdon, I remember vaguely. His bow? What bow?”
I was beginning to believe him. Dune-Harrigan was so self-centered, he’d probably taken no notice of Brunsdon at all, let alone his bag of tricks.
Thus I made the same mistake I’d made thirty years ago. I was thinking, not watching. I’d allowed my eyes to turn inward for a fatal second. He leaped forward. By the time I saw his hands coming at me, it was too late to step aside. I was jammed against his solid desk. In one rush, he wrestled me to the top of the desk and I was flailing around like an upturned beetle. My legs and arms were kicking out in all directions while he pinned me down with his hands and pressed the weight of his right arm into my throat.
Scrabbling madly among the papers on the desk, my hand closed around a metal ruler. I slammed it against Dune-Harrigan’s head. He took no notice. His arm pressing against my throat stabbed my brain with more pain than I could bear. I was passing out. The room was spinning. My eyes refused to focus.
Rousing myself for one last effort, I drew my hand back as far as possible and with every last ounce of my failing strength, I brought the sharp end of the ruler down against his left cheek, It actually cut across his ear, causing him to jump away in shock.
Coughing and spluttering, I rolled off the desk and fell into its chair.
Dune-Harrigan was shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs: “ Malfatto , you have almost sliced my ear in half!” But his cursing was interrupted by an even louder and far more insistent knocking on the front door.
Left with no choice but to answer the door, the professor was confronted by one of the university’s security guards who had heard the commotion and had actually bestirred himself to come and investigate.
Dune-Harrigan was all pardons and excuses. “An accident,” he explained. “Demonstrating various hand-locks in Egyptian wrestling, you know. But we slipped against my desk. I’ve cut my ear and my friend’s had the wind knocked out of him.”
The guard looked to me for confirmation, but I couldn’t speak. I tried to form words, but none came. I was gasping for air. To my dismay, I couldn’t even stand up. I waved my hand as a plea for help, but the idiotic guard, taking my wave as a friendly “hello”, turned his back on me and walked out the door.
Quick as a tarantula, Dune-Harrigan closed the door and relocked it.
I’d dropped the ruler – my only weapon – on the other side of the desk. My eyes sought vainly for a substitute. Nothing! Nothing at all usable except a shelf of colored glass paperweights. And now Dune-Harrigan was coming in for the kill. But surely he realized that in the event of a fresh ruckus, the guard was likely to return? No, you couldn’t trust Dune-Harrigan to think straight. That was not his way at all. He’d always act first, plan an alibi later.
I was still coughing and shaking. And there was nothing I could use to defend myself – nothing I could throw at Dune-Harrigan except the stupid glass paperweights – and a fat lot of good they’d do. He’d merely to step aside. But far better to go down fighting than simply chuck in the towel. I seized the nearest of the paperweights, a crudely amateurish statuette of Anubis, the jackal god, gaudily painted and colored – the sort of expensive trash that tourists bring home from the souvenir shops at Cairo.
To my surprise, even allowing for the fact that it was fashioned from glass, Anubis was surprisingly heavy.
And to my even greater surprise, Dune-Harrigan stopped dead in his tracks, his body shaking, his eyes widening in fear.
Now Anubis was a fearsome god in the underworld. The Ancient Egyptians shuddered at even the very mention of his name because his duty was to weigh the deceased’s heart in the balance.
“Brunsdon, I remember vaguely. His bow? What bow?”
I was beginning to believe him. Dune-Harrigan was so self-centered, he’d probably taken no notice of Brunsdon at all, let alone his bag of tricks.
Thus I made the same mistake I’d made thirty years ago. I was thinking, not watching. I’d allowed my eyes to turn inward for a fatal second. He leaped forward. By the time I saw his hands coming at me, it was too late to step aside. I was jammed against his solid desk. In one rush, he wrestled me to the top of the desk and I was flailing around like an upturned beetle. My legs and arms were kicking out in all directions while he pinned me down with his hands and pressed the weight of his right arm into my throat.
Scrabbling madly among the papers on the desk, my hand closed around a metal ruler. I slammed it against Dune-Harrigan’s head. He took no notice. His arm pressing against my throat stabbed my brain with more pain than I could bear. I was passing out. The room was spinning. My eyes refused to focus.
Rousing myself for one last effort, I drew my hand back as far as possible and with every last ounce of my failing strength, I brought the sharp end of the ruler down against his left cheek, It actually cut across his ear, causing him to jump away in shock.
Coughing and spluttering, I rolled off the desk and fell into its chair.
Dune-Harrigan was shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs: “ Malfatto , you have almost sliced my ear in half!” But his cursing was interrupted by an even louder and far more insistent knocking on the front door.
Left with no choice but to answer the door, the professor was confronted by one of the university’s security guards who had heard the commotion and had actually bestirred himself to come and investigate.
Dune-Harrigan was all pardons and excuses. “An accident,” he explained. “Demonstrating various hand-locks in Egyptian wrestling, you know. But we slipped against my desk. I’ve cut my ear and my friend’s had the wind knocked out of him.”
The guard looked to me for confirmation, but I couldn’t speak. I tried to form words, but none came. I was gasping for air. To my dismay, I couldn’t even stand up. I waved my hand as a plea for help, but the idiotic guard, taking my wave as a friendly “hello”, turned his back on me and walked out the door.
Quick as a tarantula, Dune-Harrigan closed the door and relocked it.
I’d dropped the ruler – my only weapon – on the other side of the desk. My eyes sought vainly for a substitute. Nothing! Nothing at all usable except a shelf of colored glass paperweights. And now Dune-Harrigan was coming in for the kill. But surely he realized that in the event of a fresh ruckus, the guard was likely to return? No, you couldn’t trust Dune-Harrigan to think straight. That was not his way at all. He’d always act first, plan an alibi later.
I was still coughing and shaking. And there was nothing I could use to defend myself – nothing I could throw at Dune-Harrigan except the stupid glass paperweights – and a fat lot of good they’d do. He’d merely to step aside. But far better to go down fighting than simply chuck in the towel. I seized the nearest of the paperweights, a crudely amateurish statuette of Anubis, the jackal god, gaudily painted and colored – the sort of expensive trash that tourists bring home from the souvenir shops at Cairo.
To my surprise, even allowing for the fact that it was fashioned from glass, Anubis was surprisingly heavy.
And to my even greater surprise, Dune-Harrigan stopped dead in his tracks, his body shaking, his eyes widening in fear.
Now Anubis was a fearsome god in the underworld. The Ancient Egyptians shuddered at even the very mention of his name because his duty was to weigh the deceased’s heart in the balance.
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