We shook hands, and he started for the door. I spoke to his retreating back: “I hate to contradict an old man, but you seem to be a pretty nice guy, actually.”
He didn’t turn his head. “Don’t tell anybody, son, or it’ll cost me money.”
Then it was evening, and Jo brought in my liquid diet. I wouldn’t want to flatter it by calling it a dinner. She’d eaten in the kitchen and brought a cup of coffee to keep me company. She was wearing blue jeans and a loose white shirt with the tails out. No silver. She sat there studying me for a while, and I thought she was evaluating the situation. She was thinking that Gloria was beautiful but meaningless; any woman who let the lovely Glorias of the world bother her was a fool. There had been another girl who could have been much more significant, but she was dead. That left only the two of us, and the question of whether a civilized woman like her could, or should, find any kind of satisfactory relationship with an uncivilized gent like me.
“We’ll have that intravenous apparatus out of there in a couple of days,” she said. “Easier to get the antibiotics into you that way than stuffing them down your throat. Mean as you are, a girl could lose a couple of fingers… I saw it, you know. The way you teased that man into grabbing the gun, standing there looking as if you were half-asleep, and let him fumble with it awhile, and then shot him.”
“I told you to take a walk.”
She spoke calmly: “You’re a dreadful man, darling. One of these days I’ll undoubtedly start disapproving of you very strongly, the way any decent woman would. That’s assuming that I’m a decent woman. In any case, professional pride compels me to get you well, first. After that, well, we’ll just have to see how it goes, won’t we?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Hamilton was the creator of secret agent Matt Helm, star of 27 novels that have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.
Born in Sweden, he emigrated to the United States and studied at the University of Chicago. During the Second World War he served in the United States Naval Reserve, and in 1941 he married Kathleen Stick, with whom he had four children.
The first Matt Helm book, Death of a Citizen, was published in 1960 to great acclaim, and four of the subsequent novels were made into motion pictures. Hamilton was also the author of several outstanding stand-alone thrillers and westerns, including two novels adapted for the big screen as The Big Country and The Violent Men.
Donald Hamilton died in 2006.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Matt Helm Series
BY DONALD HAMILTON
The long-awaited return of the United States’ toughest special agent.
Death of a Citizen
The Wrecking Crew
The Removers
The Silencers
Murderers’ Row
The Ambushers
The Shadowers
The Ravagers
The Devastators
The Betrayers
The Menacers
The Interlopers
The Poisoners
The Intriguers
The Intimidators
The Terminators
The Retaliators
The Terrorizers
The Revengers
The Infiltrators
The Detonators
The Vanishers
The Threateners (February 2017)
The Damagers (April 2017)
PRAISE FOR DONALD HAMILTON
“Donald Hamilton has brought to the spy novel the authentic hard realism of Dashiell Hammett; and his stories are as compelling, and probably as close to the sordid truth of espionage, as any now being told.”
Anthony Boucher, The New York Times
“This series by Donald Hamilton is the top-ranking American secret agent fare, with its intelligent protagonist and an author who consistently writes in high style. Good writing, slick plotting and stimulating characters, all tartly flavored with wit.”
Book Week
“Matt Helm is as credible a man of violence as has ever figured in the fiction of intrigue.”
The New York Sunday Times
“Fast, tightly written, brutal, and very good…”
Milwaukee Journal
TITANBOOKS.COM
Helen MacInnes
A series of slick espionage thrillers from the New York Times bestselling “Queen of Spy Writers.”
Pray for a Brave Heart
Above Suspicion
Assignment in Brittany
North From Rome
Decision at Delphi
The Venetian Affair
The Salzburg Connection
Message from Málaga
While Still We Live
The Double Image
Neither Five Nor Three
Horizon
Snare of the Hunter
Agent in Place
PRAISE FOR HELEN MACINNES
“The queen of spy writers.” Sunday Express
“Definitely in the top class.” Daily Mail
“The hallmarks of a MacInnes novel of suspense are as individual and as clearly stamped as a Hitchcock thriller.” The New York Times
“She can hang her cloak and dagger right up there with Eric Ambler and Graham Greene.” Newsweek
“More class than most adventure writers accumulate in a lifetime.” Chicago Daily News
“A sophisticated thriller. The story builds up to an exciting climax.” Times Literary Supplement
“An atmosphere that is ready to explode with tension… a wonderfully readable book.” The New Yorker
TITANBOOKS.COM
Lady, Go Die!
BY MICKEY SPILLANE & MAX ALLAN COLLINS
THE LOST MIKE HAMMER NOVEL
Hammer and Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case (I, the Jury). Walking romantically along the boardwalk, they witness a brutal beating at the hands of some vicious local cops—Hammer wades in to defend the victim.
When a woman turns up naked—and dead—astride the statue of a horse in the small-town city park, how she wound up this unlikely Lady Godiva is just one of the mysteries Hammer feels compelled to solve…
TITANBOOKS.COM
The Frighteners Page 33