Malone nodded. “I’m going to see who’s up front,” he said. He walked through the corridors of the plane and rapped authoritatively on the door of the pilot’s cabin. A second passed, and he raised his hand to knock again.
It never reached the door, which opened very suddenly. Malone found himself facing a small black hole.
It was the muzzle and the bore of the barrel of an M-2 .45 revolver, and it was pointing somewhere in the space between Malone’s eyes. Behind the gun was a hard-eyed air force colonel with a grim expression.
“You know,” Malone said pleasantly, “they’re good guns, but they really can’t compare to the .44 Magnum.”
The pilot blinked, and his gun wavered just a little. “What?” he said.
“Well,” Malone said, “if you’d only join the FBI, like me, you’d have a .44 Magnum, and you could compare the guns.”
The pilot blinked again. “You’re—”
“Malone,” Malone said. “Kenneth J. Malone, FBI. My friends call me Snookums, but don’t try it. Why not let’s put the gun away and be friends?”
“Oh,” the colonel said weakly. “Mr.—sure. I’m sorry, Mr. Malone. Didn’t recognize you for a second there.”
“Perfectly all right,” Malone said. The gun was still pointing at him, and in spite of the fact that he felt pleasantly like Philip Marlowe, or maybe the Saint, he was beginning to get a little nervous. “The gun,” he said.