The Shell Scott Sampler Read Online Free

was a big ugly ape named Agony, swinging a sap down at my head. I bent my knees and threw my left arm up, my forearm blocking Agony’s descending wrist, then I was straightening up with my right fist slamming toward his stomach. The blow landed and bored in, and then I led with my right a couple more times, but the last one Agony knew nothing about. Before he hit the floor I spun around toward the other man.
    The guy hanging onto the camera with its strobe-light flash attachment was a local photographer named Lomey Fain. He jumped away from me, letting out a surprised yell. Ordinarily, I don’t slap medium-sized guys like Lomey around, since I am six-two and 206 pounds, but Lomey was a punk who did work for the syndicate and the private eyes who peer through keyholes, and also he was in my bedroom and I’d about figured out why, so I hit him on the mouth and it suddenly looked the way a mouth must look to teeth, all red and ugly. Lomey sailed back through the air, out cold for a while.
    The pale white gal on the bed let out a little scream and jumped off it, and the sun-bronzed blonde from the front room came racing into the bedroom. Why? How would I know? Maybe to talk with the other blonde. Maybe anything. Why do gals run to bedrooms?
    Both of them were running about stark staring naked—they were stark, and I was staring—and they looked at the two unconscious men, and sort of jumped up and down making wailing sounds, and I stood pretty still making a sort of low wailing sound myself, and then I heard the shower running.
    I groaned, then ran to the bathroom, threw open the door, stepped in and pulled the shower curtain away from my combination tub and shower. Sure enough, there was the third gal. A real dish, this one. A redhead with saucy white breasts and flaring hips, water streaming over her in glistening rivulets, and a wide-eyed startled expression on her striking face.
    She squealed, “Who are you! ”
    â€œI’m Shell Scott, and —”
    â€œOh, you’re Shell Scott!” She beamed at me, happily.
    â€œArrgh,” I growled in frustration and wheeled around and ran out. Be calm, I told myself. Think. Think! That was the hell of it. I was thinking.
    One thing was sure: I had to get rid of these women fast. I groaned again. Here I was in my own apartment with three beautiful nude tomatoes and all I could think of was getting rid of them. Life can really be cruel sometimes.
    From where I was standing I could see out the living room window down to North Rossmore. A flash of white caught my eye.
    A Los Angeles police car had just pulled up to the curb below. Another car was behind it. Across the street was the rest of that flash of white I’d seen—an all-white Lincoln Continental that belonged to one Victor Grieg. It was ten thousand dollars’ worth of car driven by a two-bit slob. Maybe four-bit, since Grieg was one of the top racket boys in L.A., but still slob.
    There wasn’t going to be time for me to get rid of these gals. I was trapped here with them. I thought: I’m dead. This may be living, but I’m dead. If I knew Grieg, in addition to the policemen he’d have some reporters along and maybe even a judge and jury, and when they all swarmed in here it would be the end of Happy-Go-Looky Shell Scott.
    In my mushy mind my license took wings, my mind took wings, everything got dizzy. I jumped to the door and locked it, then turned around with my back against the door, feeling breathless. And at the sight which met my eyes I got even more breathless.
    All three babes were greatly excited, and running about every which way, and all sorts of things were flying about helter-skelter, through the air, up, down, even sideways. Man, it was wonderful. But then they seemed to become aware of me standing scrunched against the door, and I guess they decided to get out.
    They all turned, as if with one mind, and ran at me.
    Well, you know how it is with