The gunman backed to the outside door and flicked it open with one
hand, never taking his eyes from me. Footsteps pounded on the back
porch and hard faces filled the kitchen. One even had one of these
gaspipe Sten guns, and I liked that even less than the howitzer. My
pajama tops might have concealed an arsenal from the care I got when I
was searched. No one said a word, and I didn't dare. Just about that
time Helen got the sandman out of her eyes. Likely the noise had
awakened her appetite, and she had come down to help me eat a snack.
One of the gunmen heard her slippers clattering down the stairs, and a
hard hand slapped over my mouth and a gun rammed viciously against my
spine. Spun around and held as a human shield I had to helplessly
watch her come yawning in the kitchen door. One look she got in at me,
and the drawn guns, and her mouth opened for a scream that got no
further than a muffled yip and a dead faint. They let her fall. The
gunman took his hand from my mouth and swung me around.
"Shut up!" he snapped, although I hadn't tried to say anything.
[Illustration]
At the point of his gun he held me there while the rest of the hard
faced crew roamed the house, upstairs and down. None of the faces did
I know, and I began to wonder if behind one of those granite masks
was the revengeful personality of R. C. Jones, President of Local 77,
AFL. I heard footsteps pad on the back porch, and my head tried to
turn in spite of myself. The gun in my back gouged a little harder.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see who pushed open the screen
door I hadn't got around to taking down yet. The gun in my back helped
me stand up.
* * * * *
J. Edgar Hoover motioned to the gun and the pressure eased a trifle.
His voice was reasonably unexcited, but to my present taste, ominous.
"All right. Someone go get him some pants." To me, "Your name Miller?
Peter Ambrose Miller? Get that woman off the floor."
Yes, I was Peter Ambrose Miller. I agreed to that. My mouth was dry as
popcorn, but I managed to ask him what this was all about.
Hoover looked at me and scratched his nose. "This is about your
fingerprints being all over an anonymous letter received in Aberdeen,
Maryland."