Clippings

The light wavered a little, as though the hand that held it wavered. It swept slowly along the hood once more. The voice stabbed at me again.

“Listen, stranger. I’m holding a ten shot automatic. I can shoot straight. Both your feet are vulnerable. What do you bid?”

“Put it up — or I’ll blow it out of your hand!” I snarled. My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.

“Oh — a hard-boiled gentleman.” There was a quaver in the voice, a nice little quaver. Then it hardened again. “Coming out? I’ll count three. Look at the odds I’m giving you — twelve fat cylinders, maybe sixteen. But your feet will hurt. And ankle bones take years and years to get well and sometimes they never really –”

She leaned forward a little and her smile became just a little glassy. Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood.