Eyes of the Killer Robot Read Online Free Page B

teeth. "I wish I had him here in this alley," he muttered bitterly. "I'd wring his neck and leave him for dogs to mangle! I hate him! I hate him now more than I did all those years ago. Filthy rotten lying dirt-eating—"
    "Now, now ..." said the woman soothingly. "You mustn't allow yourself to get too angry. Remember what that doctor told you about your heart! You needn't worry, you'll get your revenge in due time. Meanwhile, I think we might as well go back to my place, and I'll fix us some lunch. Then I'll drive you back up north and you can get to work on our little project again. I'll keep an eye on young Mr. Dixon until we're ready to use him."
    The old man said nothing. His face was still red and twisted with rage, and he went on clawing at his knees. After a quick glance at him, the woman shrugged and started the car.
    Â 
    Time passed. It was the middle of July, and the days were blazing hot. Fergie and Johnny played chess and drank iced tea by the gallon, and they went to movies and gobbled hot fudge sundaes at Peter's Sweet Shop. Sometimes, when they were sitting on the Dixons' front porch on a warm evening, they talked about the snuffbox and the sword cane. Both these things had come to them in a very mysterious way, and they wanted to know who the owner had been. The professor had gone over the box and the cane with a magnifying glass, but he did not find any initials or other identifying marks. He had also called up Mr. Chigwell, but he had not been any help either. He explained that his grandfather had never kept any record of the names of people who pawned things at his shop. The professor remarked that the owner had probably been a man, because snuffboxes and canes were carried around by men in the old days. But beyond that, they knew absolutely nothing.
    As the month wore on, Johnny began to get the odd feeling that he was being watched. Every now and then he would be walking up Fillmore Street, and an old blue Ford would come cruising past. Johnny knew that there was more than one blue Ford in the world, but this one had a dented right fender and a missing hubcap. He had seen it downtown on Merrimack Street and in other places. It always seemed to be disappearing around a corner as he turned to look. Johnny knew that he sometimes imagined things, and at first he told himself that he was being silly. But then other odd things began to happen: the phone would ring late at night, and when Johnny got up and ran downstairs to answer it, he would hear nothing but a dial tone at the other end. And twice he had letters mailed to him with blank pieces of paper inside. Naturally, there wasn't a return address on the envelope either time. When Johnny told Fergie about these weird occurrences, Fergie seemed thoroughly unconcerned.
    "It's just some nut havin' himself a good time," he said nonchalantly. "There's crazies everywhere, an' most of 'em don't hurt anybody—that's what my dad says, anyway."
    "Yeah?" Johnny grumbled. "Well, it's not your dad who's getting followed around. What if it's some guy that wants to kidnap me?"
    Fergie laughed loudly. "Kidnap you? Good God, Dixon, are you batty? Your gramma and grampa have got about twelve dollars and three cents and a Canadian nickel in the bank."
    "Yeah, but my dad has some money," said Johnny stubbornly. Johnny's father was a career officer in the Air Force. Johnny did not get to see him often, but they wrote letters to each other.
    Johnny and Fergie argued some more, but Fergie was hard to convince, and he absolutely refused to believe that Johnny was in any kind of danger. Several days passed, and Johnny did not see any blue Fords or get any mysterious midnight phone calls. He decided—reluctantly — that Fergie was right, and he tried to put his nagging fears behind him. Nothing bad could possibly happen.
    Â 
    August came, and with it, muggy weather and thunderstorms. One rainy night, Johnny sat up late reading and listening to "The Voice of