Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth by Lester Dent Page A

the best move, but hand him a good one so it would settle things. He brought his right fist up toward Brother’s middle, but Brother pushed the fist aside easily. Brother lifted his cupped hands and clapped them together against Harsh’s ears. The effect on Harsh’s eardrums and brain was agonizing. He was sure he had been given a mild concussion. Brother seized Harsh’s right arm and turned with the arm so that his back was to Harsh, the thumb and wrist in a trap-hold which was the most painful thing Harsh had ever had anyone put on him. His wrist and thumb filled with splintering pain, until he thought fire would come out of his ears. He toppled backwards onto the bed when Brother released him. He felt Brother tear open his shirt and begin pulling the taped-on money loose from the skin. Brother’s eyes shone insanely and he drew the tape loose slowly and agonizingly, panting with pleasure as the tape brought the coarse belly hair out by the roots. When Brother arose, the packet of money was in his hands, all of it, Harsh’s nineteen hundred as well as the fifty thousand.
    “Mr. Harsh, I give an order only once. I state only fact. I do not threaten, bicker, chisel, or bargain. If any time you hear me make a statement which you wish to construe as a threat, stop. Stop. If I have said it, it is fact, not a threat. A fact beyond recall, unalterable, unassailable, unchangeable, a fact.”
    “You got my nineteen hundred there!” Harsh was half blinded with pain.
    “Get up.”
    “Damn you!”
    “Get to your feet.”
    Harsh’s ears felt as if steam was escaping through them and he wondered if the eardrums were ruptured. When he saw Brother take a step toward him, he hastily rolled off the bed and stood shakily erect. This crazy fool would kill him, like as not.
    “Come. I wish to show you something.” Brother turned and walked to a framed painting on the east wall of the bedroom. The painting was an oil copy of Titian’s Woman on a Couch, a very bold and sexy-looking piece. Brother swung the painting outward like a small door. It was hinged to the wall. This disclosed a wall safe with a combination dial.
    “Watch, Harsh. Watch closely. Memorize the combination.” Brother turned the safe dial slowly to four different numbers, reciting each number aloud. He did this again. “Have you got it, Harsh?”
    “I think so.”
    “Repeat the combination aloud to me to be sure.”
    Harsh muttered the numbers, and the directions the dial was turned each time.
    Brother nodded. “Now watch closely.”
    The inner door was a flat sheet of steel with two openings for keys. It was similar, Harsh recalled, to safety deposit boxes in some banks. Brother drew two keys from his pocket. They were fastened together by a string. He inserted each key in a lock, swung open the door.
    “It takes both keys to open the inner door. You understand, Harsh?”
    “I get it.”
    Brother placed the money in the safe and locked both inner and outer door. He swung the painting back in place. It covered the safe completely. He tore the two keys apart, breaking the string. He put one key in his pocket.
    “You get to keep the other key, Harsh.”
    He handed Harsh the second key.
    “Goddamn it, my nineteen hundred is in there too!”
    Brother ignored him. “Only these two keys will open the inner door. I keep one. You keep one. When you have earned your pay, I will give you my key. The money is safe. You know where it is.”
    “What about my nineteen hundred?”
    Brother turned and walked to the door, went out, closing the door after him.
    Harsh went over and lay on the bed, taking care not to jar the cast that enclosed his left arm. He held the key tightly in his right hand.

NINE
    Harsh slept nine hours. He awakened with the notion he had been trying to cry out in frustration and had been grinding his teeth together. His throat felt dry and his jaws hurt. It was dark in the bedroom, no light at all coming from the big window, and he decided