1965 - The Way the Cookie Crumbles by James Hadley Chase Read Free Book Online Page B

down this road every day for five days, always at this time and he had never seen anyone either on the road or the beach. It was a strictly Saturday and Sunday bathing and picnic spot: on weekdays, no one seemed to have the time nor the inclination to bathe there.
    ‘I want to see Mummy as quickly as possible,’ the girl said nervously. ‘We’re wasting time, Mr. Tebbel, coming this way. We must stop and turn back.’
    ‘What makes you think you won’t see her this way?’ Algir said. ‘I didn’t say she was in Paradise City, did I?’
    ‘Isn’t she? Then where is she?’
    ‘She’s in Culver Hospital,’ Algir lied. ‘This is a short cut to Culver.’
    ‘But it isn’t! I know this road. It leads only to the dunes and to the sea.’
    ‘You must leave this to me, Norena,’ Algir said, a sudden harsh note in his voice. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
    She looked at him. He didn’t seem to be the same man who had met her in Dr. Graham’s study. That man had been charming, kind and sympathetic. But this man . . . Norena experienced a chill of terror. How could a man change so utterly and so quickly? It was like a face that changed in a nightmare.
    A heron, startled by the approaching car, flew out of a tree and flapped heavily away. Ahead of them, Norena saw the sea.
    ‘There’s the sea,’ she said in despair. ‘This road leads nowhere except to the sea.’
    The citrus shrubs had given way to tall pampas grass that swayed like sinister beckoning fingers in the warm gentle breeze.
    ‘Please stop,’ she pleaded. ‘Please.’
    A hundred yards ahead of them the road came to an end in a big circular turnaround.
    As Algir slowed the car, she again looked at him. His face was drawn and glistened with sweat. His eyes were staring. His lips were set in a hard vicious line. The sight of him horrified her. She had an instinctive feeling that he was going to attack her. She had often read the rape and murder cases that from time to time appeared in the newspapers. She had read them without much interest, sure that that sort of thing could never happen to her. In her opinion most of the murdered girls had only themselves to blame for their end. By the way they dressed and generally behaved themselves, they really did ask for trouble. But why should this man attack her? What had she done?
    Unless, of course, he was one of those awful maniacs you read about. But he couldn’t be. He was Mummy’s lawyer. But did Mummy have a lawyer? She had never mentioned him. Again Norena looked at Algir who had stopped the car and was removing the ignition key.
    He didn’t look at her. She hated that. If he had looked at her she might have seen what he was planning to do by the expression in his eyes. His movements were slow and deliberate. She noticed his hand was shaking as he withdrew the ignition key.
    The beach with its lines of dunes, its yellowing clumps of dried grass and its broad wet ribbon of sand, marking the receding sea, stretched for lonely, empty miles. The breeze had stiffened, blowing the loose dry sand in little swirls that week after week, month after month, year after year formed the high sloping dunes that broke up the flatness of the beach.
    She found herself slipping back the door catch. The car door swung open and she was out. Algir’s reaching fingers were too late. She felt his grip, but she tore loose and she began to run across the soft sand faster than she had ever run before.
    And she could run. She hadn’t played hockey and basketball for nothing. She hadn’t won the hundred yards at the College sports against stiff opposition for nothing either. Nor had she ever had to race for her life, and as she flashed across the beach that thought that she was racing for her life urged her forward at a speed that made her winning hundred yard sprint look slow.
    Taken by surprise, Algir glared after her. He was shaken by the way this girl could run.
    If she escaped and talked!
    He scrambled out of the car and