Read Online The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein - Free Book Online

searched him. First from behind, then I rolled him over. His trousers did not quite match his tunic, and they lacked the braid down the sides that a proctor’s uniform trousers should have. The tunic was not a good fit. His pockets held a few crowns in paper, a lottery ticket, and five cartridges. These last were Skoda 6.5 mm longs, unjacketed, expanding, used in pistols, tommies, and rifles—and illegal almost everywhere. No wallet, no IDs, nothing else.
    He needed a bath.
    I rocked back and stood up. “Keep your gun on him, Gwen. I think he’s a nightwalker.”
    “I think so, too. Please look at this, sir, while I keep him covered.” Gwen pointed at a pistol lying on the deck.
    Calling it a “pistol” dignifies it more than it deserves. It was a lethal weapon, homemade, of the category known traditionally as “rumble gun.” I studied it as thoroughly as I could without touching it. Its barrel was metal tubing so light in gauge that I wondered whether or not it had ever been fired. The handgrip was plastic, ground or whittled to conform to a fist. The firing mechanism was concealed by a metal cover held in place by (believe me!) rubber bands. That it was a single-shot weapon seemed certain. But with that flimsy barrel it could turn out to be a one-shot as well; it seemed to me to be almost as dangerous to the user as to his target.
    “Nasty little thing,” I said. “I don’t want to touch it; it’s a built-in booby trap.”
    I looked up at Gwen. She had him covered with a weapon quite as lethal but embodying all the best in modern gunsmith’s art, a nine-shot Miyako. “When he pulled a gun on you, why didn’t you shoot him? Instead of taking a chance on disarming him? You can get very dead that way.”
    “Because.”
    “Because what? If someone pulls a gun on you, kill him at once. If you can.”
    “I couldn’t. When you told me to cover him, my purse was ’way over there. So I covered him with this .” Something suddenly glinted in her other hand and she appeared to be a two-gun fighter. Then she clipped it back into her breast pocket—a pen. “I was caught flat-footed, boss. I’m sorry.”
    “Oh, that I could make such mistakes! When I yelled at you to cover him, I was simply trying to distract him. I didn’t know you were heeled.”
    “I said I was sorry. Once I had time to get at my purse I got out this persuader. But I had to disarm him first.”
    I found myself wondering what a field commander could do with a thousand like Gwen. She masses about fifty kilos and stands not much over a meter and a half high—say one hundred sixty centimeters in her bare feet. But size has little to do with it, as Goliath found out a while back.
    On the other hand there aren’t a thousand Gwens anywhere. Perhaps just as well. “Were you carrying that Miyako in your purse last night?”
    She hesitated. “If I had been, the results might have been regrettable, don’t you think?”
    “I withdraw the question. I think our friend is waking up. Keep your gun on him while I find out.” Again I gave him my thumb.
    He yelped.
    “Sit up,” I said. “Don’t try to stand up; just sit up and place your hands on top of your head. What’s your name?”
    He urged on me an action both unlikely and lewd. “Now, now,” I reproved him, “let’s have no rudeness, please. Mistress Hardesty,” I went on, looking directly at Gwen, “would you enjoy shooting him just a little bit? A flesh wound? Enough to teach him to be polite.”
    “If you say so. Senator. Now?”
    “Well…let’s allow him that one mistake. But no second chance. Try not to kill him; we want him to talk. Can you hit him in the fleshy part of a thigh? Not hit the bone?”
    “I can try.”
    “That’s all anyone can ask. If you do hit a bone, it won’t be out of spite. Now let’s start over. What is your name?”
    “Uh… Bill.”
    “Bill, what is the rest of your name?”
    “Aw, just Bill. That’s all the name I use.”
    Gwen said, “A