(1987) The Celestial Bed by Irving Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

fascinating. I never get tired of the human maze, the confusion, the conflict, even the suspense. Yes, they are difficult, every one of them, but I’m confident they’ll all make out.’
    ‘I’m sure they will.’
    ‘Well, I’m off to dinner. When you’ve finished, leave the transcripts on my desk. Before you leave, be sure to turn on the alarm and lock up. See you tomorrow, Suzy.’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
    After he’d gone, Suzy stared at the door he had closed.
    Tomorrow, she thought. Why wait? There was still tonight, a long tonight, ahead. Quickly, concentrating, she finished her proofing, and checked her pages to see that they were in order. Then, without hesitation, she reached for her telephone.
    The decision to call Chet had come to her while she had been proofing. Only when her hand was on the receiver did she hesitate. She considered the call she was about to make, and tried to imagine how he might react, not merely to her call but to what could follow.
    She thought about Chet Hunter, her new boyfriend, her best, and pictured him as he’d been the first moment she had met him. It had been a month ago, in the Hillsdale Main Public Library. She had been at a reading table, going through some medical magazines to see if she could learn more about Dr Arnold Freeberg, her new boss. This fellow, probably in his thirties, surely no more than five years older than she, was carrying some books from the shelves, and the only spot open was the chair next to hers. Apologetically, he eased into the chair tight against her own. She had been taken by him at once. He was of medium build, receding neat brown hair, high forehead, soulful brown eyes highlighted by steel-framed spectacles set near the tip of a pug nose, his manner reserved but obviously an intellectual type.
    They had exchanged occasional whispered talk, mostly bookish talk, and at closing time he had accompanied her out of the library, casting sidelong glances at her and, as they were about to part, suddenly asking if she’d like to have a cup of coffee with him. She had wanted to, indeed, and they’d sipped their coffees and become acquainted.
    His work had been unclear to her, and in a way still was. Two years ago he had founded, and still ran, something called the Acme Research Bureau. He was a full-time researcher, he had explained, digging up facts from countless sources for freelance writers, graduate students, magazines, newspapers. He worked on an hourly pay basis, poor pay, set barely at subsistence level, earning
    just enough to keep him in food, clothing, and a three-room apartment. She wondered what he researched and for whom. Just everything imaginable - who was the only bachelor US president for a political candidate; what was the second highest mountain in the world for a travel writer; how advanced the process of cloning was for a medical magazine; how many reported rapes there had been in Hillsdale and Los Angeles last year, for a Hillsdale attorney… She asked how he found his answers, and he explained that he did so by checking books in the library, corresponding with experts, interviewing specialists - why, he had even studied and trained to become a police reservist in the Hillsdale Police Force, to get closer to law enforcement material for many of his clients.
    ‘A police reservist?’ Suzy had wondered. ‘Whatever is that?’
    ‘A part-time auxiliary policeman, a reserve police officer, the way a National Guardsman is a part-time soldier,’ Hunter had explained. ‘The police force needs added manpower. They take volunteers. Not easy to become a reservist. You’re tested by a physician, then a psychiatrist, and if accepted you go to the Hillsdale Police Academy three nights a week for almost five months. Only two out of fifty of us graduated. At first I was a technical reservist, doing indoor work like taking reports at the police station. Then I studied for the line reserve, and was trained in everything from use of