All The Way by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

with a wide-eyed and appealing sort of defenselessness about her. Like anthrax, or a striking cobra—”
    “Come off it,” I said. “How the hell could you lose out to a cornball routine like that? She’d never lay a glove on you.”
    ”It’s a little trick you do with numbers. She’s twenty-three.”
    “Well, what of it?”
    “Oh, you are a young man, aren’t you? I’d forgotten, men do go through a phase between their first and second passes at the jail-bait when they’re actually interested in women— But never mind. They’re going to be married in January.”
    “You’re getting ahead of me,” I said. “He couldn’t marry you because he already had a wife. What happened to her?”
    “What happened to her, besides the fact they haven’t lived together for the past eight years, is that she died about five months ago.
    “Well, look—I doubt very seriously anybody could hand you a line six years long, so if he was really serious why didn’t he get a divorce?”
    “He and his wife were both Catholics.”
    “I see. And now that he can remarry—”
    “Yes,” she said. “You see.”
    “And I see something more. You’ll never get away with it.”
    “Yes—”
    “Look. He took everything you could give him for six years, and then when he finally could get married he jilted you for somebody else. If he’s killed, it’ll take the police about twenty minutes to figure it out.”
    “You underestimate me,” she broke in. “I’m going to take a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars away from him, and kill him. And nobody will ever suspect I did it, for the simple reason they won’t even know it was done at all. Does that satisfy you?”
    “No,” I said. “It can’t be done.”
    She sighed. “You’re forgetting something I told you. That I know more about Harris Chapman than anybody else on earth. I’m going to destroy him from the inside.”
    “Hold it a minute,” I said. “If you knew so much about him, why didn’t you see this fluff-ball moving in on you?”
    “See it? Don’t be ridiculous. I saw every stage of it before it even happened, but what do you suggest I should have done about it? Compete with a twenty-three-year-old professional virgin, after he was already tired of me? I saw it, all right; I had a front-row seat. He hired her as a stenographer, and I had the honor and privilege of training her. Sometimes I wake up at night—”
    “If it’s that kind of thing,” I said, “why the money angle?”
    “Money is important to me. I like success. I poured everything I had into making him one, thinking I was doing it for both of us. Do you think I’m going to move aside now and give it up? Let him hand it all to some simpering and feather-brained little bitch who can’t even balance a check book?”
    “Tell me the rest of it,” I said.
    “All right. First, about the apartment. We had to have a quiet place where we could work without being disturbed and with no chance of being overheard. The motel simply wouldn’t do. I was registered there under my right name, of course, and it’s imperative that no one ever finds out that I even know you—”
    I interrupted her. “What about those detectives you’ve had following me around?”
    “That’s a good point. I used another name, and paid them in cash. The fact they know your name is of no significance at all unless you can be traced to me in some way. I’m the one who knows Harris Chapman.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “I rented the apartment on a six months’ lease, under your name. I’m Mrs. J. L. Forbes, and there’s nothing to connect me with the Mrs. Forsyth who stayed briefly at the Golden Horn. There’s no reason for you not to use your right name; you have nothing to hide, and you can go right on living here afterwards if you like. No one will notice if you’re gone from time to time, as you will be. It’s handled by a rental agency. The people who have the other apartment won’t be here until some