1944 - Just the Way It Is by James Hadley Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

suddenly. He listened to the rasping voice at the other end of the line, then interrupted the flow, ‘Okay, okay, you keep it until you see me. Come over to my place right away,’ and he hung up.
    He sat for some minutes brooding, then he got up, turned out the light and left the office.
    Downstairs they were still playing crap. He went past the table into the street.
    A long black car slid up to him and he climbed into the back seat. The boy at the wheel didn’t look at him. He sat like a stone statue, staring ahead. He was very slight with angular shoulders and his peak cap, which was broken into a V, hid his face.
    ‘Home, Joe,’ Schultz whispered through the speaking tube and he groped for a cigar.
    He sat in a heap, smoking, and staring with blank, hooded eyes at the street lights as they flashed past. His mind groped, made decisions, discarded them, groped some more and gave up. It was no use making plans until Cubitt had told him everything.
    The car stopped outside Schultz’s small house and even before he got out of the car, he could smell the heavy scent of the flowers from his garden.
    Schultz believed all men should have hobbies. He believed that it provided them with an antidote to boredom when they couldn’t go to business anymore. He had been a horticulturist all his life and his speciality was orchids. In a small, stuffy little glasshouse at the back of his house, he reared some of the finest specimens seen in the country. Besides the orchids, he grew every known flower in a mass of blazing colour that was the
    envy of his neighbours.
    He stepped out of the car and sniffed. ‘Smells good, doesn’t it, Joe?’ he said, smiling in the darkness.
    The boy grunted. He had heard Schultz say the same thing every time he drove him home. He had no interest in flowers. He thought they were a waste of money.
    ‘Leave the car, Joe,’ Schultz said. ‘I may need it again tonight.’ He went up the path and sank his key. There was a light in the big sitting room.
    Across the room, half lying, half sitting on the divan, Lorelli displayed her black silk legs. She glanced up as Schultz came in and her full lips curled into a smile.
    Schultz stood just in the doorway and looked at her.
    Lorelli was running to fat. Not too much, but just enough to give her figure a soft, full outline. She was not tall and most of her weight ran to her hips. Her face was heart-shaped and a little heavy. Her complexion was creamy with no colour, making her full, scarlet lips and heavy black eyebrows startling. She was still very young. Schultz had no idea how old she was, but he guessed she couldn’t be more than twenty. He thought regretfully that she would lose her attractions before she was thirty. She was developing too fast.
    She looked back at him with her smiling mouth and her gleaming white teeth, seeing his gross body and hard little eyes and wondered how much longer she could stomach him.
    ‘Maestro,’ she said, holding out her small plump hand. ‘Come in because there’s a draught and you are not beautiful enough for a delayed entry.’
    Schultz closed the door. ‘I don’t have to be beautiful,’ he said, evenly, moving over to her. ‘I have other things of value.’ He tapped his great dome of a head. Things in here, my pigeon, but you. . .’ he put his great perspiring hand on her thick hair. ‘You have nothing in there so you must be beautiful to live.’
    She wriggled from under his hand. Her blue-black eyes were full of questions. ‘You don’t sound happy, Maestro. Has anything gone wrong?’
    He almost struck her, but controlled himself. His slit of a mouth pursed and his saucer-like eyes were like granite. What could go wrong?’ he asked, putting his hand on her chin. He raised her face. They looked at each other. She saw the snarling anger in his eyes and flinched away, but his giant fingers crushed her chin.
    Sneering at her, he lowered his great face down and crushed his lips over hers. He held her like