“Got it all worked out, haven’t you?” I said as calmly as the circumstances allowed.
“We’ve got to, pally,” MacGraw said, grinning. “There are too many punks making trouble, and our jail isn’t that large. So we just hand out a little discipline every now and then and save the city some dough.”
I should have kept my eyes on Hartsell who was standing a few feet to my left and rear. Not that I could have done a great deal about it. They had me, and I knew it, and what was worse, they knew it, too. But all the same I was dumb not to have watched him. I heard a sudden swish and began to duck, but I was much, much too late. The rubber hose caught me on the top of the head and I fell forward on hands and knees.
MacGraw was waiting for that, and his foot shot out; the square steel-tipped toe of his shoe caught me in the throat. I fell over on my side, trying to get breath through a constricted, contracting windpipe. Something hit me on the forearm, sending pain crawling up into my skull. Something thudded on the back of my neck; a sharp something crashed into my ribs. I rolled away, got on my hands and knees, saw Hartsell coming at me and tried to duck.
The hose seemed to bounce against my brain; just as if the top of my head had been trepanned and my brain was there to be hit. I sprawled on to the carpet, clenching my fists, holding back the yell that tried to burst its way out of me.
Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. Through a misty-red curtain MacGraw seemed over-large, overbroad and over-ugly. I began to fall forward as he released me. I fell on his fist that was travelling towards me in a punch that sent me reeling across the room, knocking over the table. I landed on my back amid a shower of jig-saw nuzzle pieces.
I lay still. The light in the ceiling came rushing towards me, stopped, and then rushed away again. It did that several times, so I closed my eyes. At the back of my mind I was thinking this could go on and on until they were tired, and it would take a lot to tire a couple of thugs like MacGraw and Hartsell. By the time they were through with me there wouldn’t be a great deal left. I wondered dreamily why they didn’t move in; why they left me lying on the floor.
So long as I didn’t move the pain that rode me was bearable. I didn’t like to think what would happen to my head if I did move. It felt as if it were hanging on a thread. One little movement would be enough to send it rolling across the floor.
Out of the pain and the mist I heard a woman say, “Is this your idea of fun?”
A woman!