Death Trance by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online Page B

members of the Association, we were prepared to some extent to let you re-energize your business, reinvest, build it up again to what it was. That's why - even though we expressed our disapproval - we didn't lean on you too hard. If Clare flourished, we thought it would be good for all of us.’
    Orbus licked his lips and then, as slowly and menacingly as a waking lizard, opened his other eye.
    'Point is now,’ he said, 'that you've gone way beyond re-energizing, way beyond rebuilding. Point is now that you're undercutting the rest of us on major contracts and that you've built up the processing capacity to handle them, the last straw that broke the camel's back being Sun-Taste.’
    Neil Sleaman broke in. 'You listen here, Mr Greene. Clare Cottonseed has every legal right to sell cottonseed oil to whomever it likes and at whatever price it likes. So kindly butt out. Mr Clare has urgent business to attend to.’
    Randolph raised his hand. 'Hold on a moment, Neil. Don't let Orbus get under your skin. I want to hear what he's got to say.’
    Orbus smiled fatly. His minders smiled too, in vacant imitation of their boss's smugness. Orbus said, 'You're going to be pushed to the limit to meet your contractual obligations to Sun-Taste after this fire, aren't you? Don't deny it. Well, just let me tell you this: no member of the Cottonseed Association is going to help you out. You won't even get one single cupful of oil out of any of us, not at any price. You wanted to stand on your own. You were prepared to steal our profits from under our noses. Now you're going to have to learn what standing on your own really means.’
    Randolph laid his hand on Orbus's shoulder. Orbus did not like to be touched; his body chafed him enough as it was, and one of his minders stepped forward warningly. But Orbus, with an odd kind of whinny, instructed the man to stay back and he tolerated Randolph's hand with his eyes closed and his teeth clenched.
    'Orbus,’ Randolph said, 'I've always understood what standing on my own means. My father made me stand on my own from the day I could first stand up. There's only one thing I'm going to say to you in reply, and that is if any more of my factories happen to meet with explosions or fires or unprecedented accidents, that's when I'm going to stop believing that they are accidents and I'm going to come looking for the person or persons who caused them.’
    Orbus kept smiling in spite of the hand on his shoulder. 'You know something, Randolph?’ he said. 'You would have made a fine cowboy actor. High Noon in Memphis. how about that? And who knows, you might even have wound up President.’
    'Get off my land, Orbus,’ Randolph told him quietly and firmly.
    'I'm not the kind to outstay my welcome,’ Orbus replied and then turned to his minders and uttered another one of his whinnies. This one evidently meant 'Let's go.’
    Randolph and Neil stood watching them walk back to Orbus's black limousine, OGRE 1, where one of the men opened the specially widened passenger door while the others heaved Orbus onto the back seat. The suspension dipped and bucked.
    'What do you think?’ Randolph asked as the limousine disappeared down the magnolia-strewn driveway.
    Neil said, 'He wasn't responsible for this. Leastways I don't think so. Even Orbus Greene wouldn't have the nerve to visit the scene of the crime so soon after it happened.’
    'Don't underestimate his capacity to gloat,’ Randolph remarked. 'Orbus is one of the world's great gloaters. I think he's glad it happened even if he didn't actually set it.’
    'Maybe we ought to rethink our policy a little,’ Neil suggested.
    'What do you mean?’
    'Well… I'm not saying that we should think of giving up our independence. But maybe we've been acting a bit too aggressive for our own good. Men like Orbus Greene don't take very kindly to being outsmarted, especially when it comes to big money.’
    'That's business,’ Randolph replied firmly. 'Besides, I wouldn't