J.T. Edson - Blonde Genius

Carried forward by her momentum, the headmistress spread her legs so that her shoes landed upon the stairs instead of on the under butler. Having shown her usual consideration, she bounded over the bannister rail and reached the rear door almost as quickly as Amanda.

Having bounded to her feet, after disposing of Sid, Penelope turned to go to her companions’ assistance. While they might have the advantage when it came to soppy things like school subjects, she felt that they would need her expert guidance in more mundane and practical matters.

Before the head girl could leave the library, she found herself confronted by the mountainous Joe. He showed considerable annoyance. So much that Penelope decided the situation called for strategy rather than brute strength or courage. Fortunately her best friend—and, more important, Miss Benkinsop, who would certainly have disapproved if she had seen—had already darted into he entrance hall.

“Ooer!” Penelope gasped, looking very tiny, fragile and frightened as Joe loomed menacingly towards her. “You wouldn’t ’it a little girl like me, would you, mister?”

Although hard and unyielding in the execution of his duties as a general rule, Joe skidded to a stop and held off the plans which he had formulated. His change may have been caused by his parental instinct having been aroused at the head girl’s forlorn and dejected aspect. Or it could have been that he was impressed by her buxom, demure, yet charming appearance. Whatever the reasons, he delayed his intentions of committing assault and battery upon Penelope.

To show her gratitude, Penelope kicked Joe sharply in an extremely painful location somewhere between his neck and knee-caps. Aghast at such an action, Joe bent almost double at the waist. Penelope promptly assisted him to stand erect by propelling her left knee with some considerable force against the centre of his face.

To give the head girl her due, she felt heartily ashamed of displaying such unsporting behaviour. However, it was for the good of the School. So she forced herself to continue with her distasteful ‘bending of the rules’. Leaping into the air to obtain a more advantageous position, she delivered a right cross to Joe’s jaw. Already thrown off balance, the huge man blundered helplessly across the room and fell in a corner. He refused to take any further interest in the proceedings. An examination later disclosed that his jaw was broken in two places.

When the rear door burst open. Amanda concluded that there would be no time for polite conversation. Nor could she handle things with her usual deft, delicate touch with so many other pressing matters requiring her attention.

With that in mind, the School Swot kicked the foremost member of the ‘Heavy Mob’ in the stomach and chopped him smartly on the back of the neck with her hand’s edge as he bowed a greeting. Letting the weapon he had drawn fall from his limp fingers, the man turned a somersault then slid across the highly polished floor.

“Crude, I’m afraid,” Amanda sighed. “Although, I must admit, effective.”

An instant later, Miss Benkinsop had greeted the second of the domestic staff to make an appearance. While conversant with Professor Kamimoto’s excellent work on karate, she made use of information gleaned from his equally authoritative treatise—translated along with the former by Amanda on a wet afternoon when a hockey match had had to be cancelled—on ju jitsu. Producing a perfect example of the seoi-nage ‘Shoulder Throw By Both Shoulders’, she tossed a large and irate servant bodily through the air. He alighted almost at Penelope’s feet as she darted from the library. On being thrown, he too had dropped his revolver.

Leaving Miss Benkinsop and Penelope to attend to the other members of the ‘Heavy Mob’, those who had made use of the brass column, Amanda turned her attention to the stairs. She saw, as she had surmised, that the butler was taking the more conventional and dignified means of reaching the entrance hall. Somewhat to her annoyance, she observed that he and the three men on his heels intended to behave in a most unsporting manner. Every one of them held a Schmeisser submachine gun.

Diving in a gracefully performed forward roll, Amanda gathered up the two revolvers discarded by the first of the ‘Heavy Mob’ to have made their appearances. As she landed, she opened fire. Struck by the lead from the School Swot’s acquired weapons, the Schmeissers were knocked from their users’ hands. However, in her haste and due to using revolvers of different make, size and weight, she inadvertently caused the third member of the quartet to suffer a grazed finger by placing her bullet slightly off its intended point of impact. Apart from their hands smarting, the other three were uninjured.

“Get ’em!” Slasher ordered indignantly, for property under his charge had been damaged. He also remembered instructions given by his employer before leaving for the party. “Take them alive.”

After which, the battle was joined in earliest. The ‘Heavy Mob’ was at a disadvantage from the start. They all smoked, drank intoxicating beverages and did other things equally inconducive to good health. What was more, they lacked the upbringing, background and training which Miss Benkinsop had instilled into her pupils.

To give them credit, the Syndicate’s employees did their best regardless of their limitations. For thirty-eight minutes, during which time the furnishings and fittings of most of the downstairs rooms were wrecked, they tried to subdue and make welcome the unexpected visitors. In this, they were aided by the arrival of the cook and four pretty young women employed—somewhat loosely—as housemaids. While these latter proved to be effective in the welcoming party, they merely prolonged the inevitable. Although spirited, they lacked the aptitude for skilful and stylish Debating.

Bodies flew, curved, somersaulted or sailed through the air. Mostly they were the domestic staff taking wing as a result of Miss Benkinsops, Amanda’s or Penelope’s efforts. However, now and again, it would be one of the visitors who took flight. On these occasions, the one involved would contrive to alight gracefully upon her feet and promptly deliver an adequate response to whoever had taken such a liberty upon her.

Towards the end, it must be admitted, the two girls were showing signs of flagging.

Taking hold of a very dazed Slasher. Penelope had barely sufficient strength to raise him from the floor in an aeroplane spin and, on propelling him through the open french windows of the study, did not even cause him to reach the garden. Alighting on his back in the middle of the pathway, he lost all further interest in the proceedings.

With a man grasping each of her, arms, Amanda tiredly used her feet to thrust away the last of the housemaids; who was approaching with the intention of exceeding her duties. Then the School Swot could barely raise sufficient energy to escape from her male assailants.

Having done so, sending both flipping headlong across the room, the School Swot was compelled to take a breather. She joined Penelope, who was seated upon a pile of assorted, recumbent and motionless servants.

To the girls amazement, although she had set up a cracking pace which they had been hard-pressed to equal, Miss Benkinsop appeared to be as fresh and agile as when she had started out from the school.

Observing the exhausted appearances of her pupils, Miss Benkinsop took it upon herself to dispose of the battered, tattered remnants of the domestic staff. She did this with a brilliant, inspiring display of applied, higher karate that Professor Kamimoto would have been hard put to better.

“And we were worried about our little visit being too strenuous for Benkers,” Amanda gasped, turning her gaze to the equally amazed and admiring head girl after Miss Benkinsop had tumbled the last of the Heavy Mob into blissful repose. “I should have known better, Penny.”