Read Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane for Free Online Page A

The door flew open with the suddenness of a horrible realization, banged with a crash against the wall. In bounced Cutshaw like a jack-in-the-box, a pixie on springs. “It is I—Manfred Cutshaw!” he announced with sparkling grandeur; then slammed the door behind him and marched up to Kane, fronting his new commander with a challenging posture, arms akimbo. “So—you’re the ‘new boy’!”
    Kane sat on the desk edge. His gaze never left Cutshaw’s as his hand reached for his file. “Yes,” he answered mildly. “I’m Colonel Hudson Kane.”
    “Do I call you Hud?”
    “Why not call me Colonel?”
    “Why not call you Shirley MacLaine! Why are we quibbling? You’re on the way out! I’ve been deputized to inform you that we refuse to be led by a sissy!” Cutshaw’s gaze flicked over at Fell. “Captain Fell,” he demanded severely, “are those my jockey shorts?”
    “Friend,” intervened Kane, “by whom were you deputized?”
    “Angels and archangels! Cherubim and seraphim! Unseen forces too numerous to enumerate!” Cutshaw boldly snatched the file from out of Kane’s grasp, flipped it open to page one and then thrust it rudely back at him. “There! It’s all in the file! Read the file, the file, the file!” His finger stabbed at a paragraph. “There, Colonel, there! Under ‘Mysterious Voices’! You think Joan of Arc was crazy? Well, you’re bloody well out of your mind! She had acutely sensitive hearing, Hud! Like me, your adorable astronaut! The file, Hud, read it! Read the file! Read the file!”
    Kane glanced down at the page.
    “Out loud, out loud! It’s part of my therapy!”
    Fell had moved to a window where he watched the two men silently. Kane looked to him and he nodded. “Very well,” said Kane. “Sit down.”
    Cutshaw sat. Putting an arm around Kane’s neck, he leaped nimbly onto his lap. And froze; waiting; staring deep into Kane’s eyes.
    Kane’s expression was unreadable. “On a chair,” he said softly.
    Cutshaw glided swiftly into a chair by the desk, assuming there a posture much like that of Rodin’s Thinker, staring intently and unblinkingly up at Kane. Fell hiccupped gently.
    Kane began to read: “Captain Manfred Cutshaw…”
    “Dammit stop that whispering!” Cutshaw interrupted. “Do it right! Do it right! It’s supposed to sound massive! ” Then, “Mannnnnfred Cutshaw!” he demonstrated stentorianly.
    Kane raised his voice. “Mannnnnnnfred Cutshaw…”
    “Beautiful! Beautiful! Go on! Go on!”
    Cutshaw silently formed the words with his lips as Kane read aloud: “… Two days prior to a scheduled space shot, subject officer Cutshaw, while dining on base, was observed to pick up a plastic catsup bottle, squeeze a thin red line across his throat, and then stagger and fall heavily across a table then occupied by the Director of the National Space Administration, gurgling, ‘Don’t order the swordfish!’…”
    There ensued a silence of several beats while Kane ingested this information, staring dully at the file. Then he continued with his reading: “On the following afternoon, subject officer quite uncharacteristically knocked a gas station manager into extended insensibility when the latter refused to deduct a cost equivalent in lieu of trading stamps. Later that same day, subject officer suggested to his commanding general that he ‘shave off his mustache’ because it looked ‘silly.’ In his general remarks at the time, subject officer also alluded to his ‘firm and unshakable opinion’ that ‘people with weak chins should not attempt to con a foolish but trusting puplic.’” Kane could not refrain from looking up. “Did you really say—?”
    Kane halted in mid-sentence, startled by what he saw: a white mouse crawling up the astronaut’s shirt front. Cutshaw’s hand flew up to a medal that hung from his neck. “You’re looking at my medal!” he snapped. “Stop looking at my medal!”
    “I’m not.”
    “Yes, you are! You covet