John Ball - The Cool Cottontail

For a moment both men stopped, face to face, each aware that the other was trained and hardened-one in the violence of street fighting, the other in the deadly, ultra-refined techniques of karate. Virgil did not let the pause deceive him; he sank down even lower into front stance with his left leg forward, and by the faint light watched the other man’s eyes, because that would be the place where the first warning would be flashed.

He saw the flicker before the fist shot out and snapped up a rising block with his left hand. If the blow was a feint, he was ready, but it was in earnest. He turned forty-five degrees with his body, keeping his feet still and swinging from his hips. Then, instantly, he realized that the huge man had made the first mistake-his abdomen was exposed.

Virgil shot out his left arm, not to strike but to provide recoil force. With his body loose he whipped his arm back, spun his hips until they faced the attacker, and to this concentrated force added the power of his shoulders as they, too, snapped around in front-on position. The combination hip-and-shoulder movement, coupled with the recoil of his left arm, shot Virgil’s right arm out with whiplash force. He kept the attack straight, his elbows close to his body, his right fist traveling in a direct line to the midpoint in front of his own body.

At the last instant before impact, he tightened his entire body-legs, hips, torso, shoulders, and arm-and his fist smashed home with the total concentrated power of his trained muscles.

The deadly gyaku-zuki reverse punch caught the big man in the vital spot just below his breastbone. Because of its sheer power, it penetrated below his tensed and hardened muscles and forced him to jackknife his body to absorb the impact. As the man’s head came down, Virgil jerked up his right hand, open and rigid, in a slight S curve, and whipped it down with an elbow snap onto the side of the neck.

It was a fearful blow delivered with total precision. The man went down, apparently still, a heap of flesh and bone, the viciousness run out of him like water from a broken jar. Virgil stood, sweat running into his eyes, his lungs gasping for air, his chest pounding with pain. He thought he might have finished the fight, but he was not sure and could take no chances.

He did not take his eyes from the fallen man as Ellen rushed past him and dropped to her knees beside the still figure of George Nunn. Virgil felt a stickiness between his fingers and knew that his hands were bleeding. Meanwhile Ellen had turned George over and was gently pressing a handkerchief against his bloodied face.

“Someone is coming,” Virgil said without turning. “I called them.”

She looked up at him and her lips moved, but she could form no words. For a moment he glanced at her, and it nearly cost him his life. From the apparently inert man on the ground an arm shot out toward his ankle. Virgil jerked his knee up barely in time, then thrust his leg downward like a ramrod, his foot turned so that the outer edge would strike. He felt the ribs smash under the impact and knew then that he could be sure the fight was over.

Ellen began to cry. She sat back on her heels and her body shook with sobs. Virgil looked once more at the inert man on the ground and then walked over to where George lay. He dropped to his knees opposite Ellen, laid his head against George’s chest, and listened to his breathing.

“He’s banged up a little,” Virgil said, “but I think he’ll be all right. He’s good and sturdy.”

At last Ellen found her voice. “He tried so hard,” she sobbed.

In the stillness that followed, they both heard the sound of a racing engine echoing in the air. It was well down the mountain, but it was coming fast.

There was a first-aid kit in the police car, but Virgil thought it best to wait; the people coming expected trouble and would have an ambulance with them. The sound grew louder.

“Did you-kill him?” Ellen asked and looked toward the man who lay still a few feet away.

“I don’t think so,” Virgil answered her. “That last was the worst, but it had to be done.”

“I know,” she agreed.

A low, incoherent sound came from George’s lips, like the escape of air from a tight container. Ellen bent and kissed him, unmindful of the dirt, the streaks of blood, or the man who was watching.

The oncoming vehicle reached the bottom of the grade and was now on the final climb; the loom of its headlights showed against the wall of the mountain.

Ellen looked at Virgil. “If you hadn’t come-” she began, and could go no further.

“My pleasure,” he said. The understatement seemed to fit the situation. His hands stung with pain, his left wrist was agonizing, and the sharp stabbing hurt would not leave his lungs. He had not yet recovered his wind and his body was fighting to readjust itself.

George’s left hand twitched against the ground. Ellen raised his head gently and held it, not knowing quite what to do. Virgil realized that he still had his coat on; he took it off, folded it into a pillow, and slid it under George’s head.

The sound was almost upon them now and the lights of the vehicle were bright against the sky.

“Who is-that terrible man?” Ellen asked. She forced herself to look again toward the still shape on the ground.

Virgil rose unsteadily to his feet. “The only one it could be,” he answered wearily. Suddenly the fierce tension that had been driving him for the past two hours was gone, and he could hardly control his own movements. “Only one man knew enough and thought he had a motive.”

The lights of the sheriff’s car hit him as he stood there in his shirt sleeves, his energy spent.

“You saw him once before, I think, when he came to your place. His name is Brown-Walter Brown. Among other things he’s Walter McCormack’s chauffeur.”

The warm, radiant California sun hung in high glory in the sky and presented the land underneath with a day that not even the native sons could exaggerate. The weather was so splendid that Mrs. Mary Agnew forsook the usual isolation of her rural living room and seated herself on her front lawn, where she could be certain of missing no detail of what went on.

When a conspicuously marked police car drove quietly past, her heart took a quick leap; at long last they were going to raid that nudist colony down the road! She was disconcerted that there was only one car, but it was a beginning. She hoped with a devout passion that they would drag out that blond girl, screaming, and take her away to the city to be a public spectacle.

Mrs. Agnew had a mind shaped like a keyhole. For many years now she had devoted her life almost exclusively to the relentless scrutiny of everything within her range of vision. It was her tightly locked secret that though she had never been married, she had borne a child at eighteen; from that moment she had dedicated herself to learning everything possible about the faults of the rest of mankind. To her the existence of nudists, not only on the same planet but within a mile radius of her chosen home, was almost unbearable. She literally lived for the glorious day when hordes of official vehicles would descend upon the evil place and the fate of Sodom would be re-enacted. The police car gave her a quickened hope and she leaned forward to listen-to hear, if possible, if it would turn into the driveway of That Place.

To her exquisite delight, it did.

Mrs. Agnew, contrary to her usual form, had missed a detail: she had not seen the person behind the wheel. If she had, her inventive mind would have conjured up incredible possibilities concerning his presence at the nudist resort. Mrs. Agnew coughed, and remembered that she had forgotten to take her digitalis.