From Here to Eternity by James Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

from the one the ARs intended them to have. "He said he was coming over here," Mrs. Holmes said. "Well now, Maam." He changed his tactics now and stood up, effusively polite. "He usually does come here, sooner or later. There is some work here for him to do, now and then. He'll probably be in this morning, some time. I'll tell him you want him, if I can catch him. Or I can leave a message if you want." Smiling, he opened the countertop and stepped out suddenly into the tiny counterspace with her. Involuntarily Mrs. Holmes backed out onto the porch. Warden followed her, ignoring the grinning Leva. "He^was to pick up some things for me," Mrs. Holmes said. This was the first time, to her, the first sergeant had ever been more than a lifeless stageprop in the melodrama of her husband's life. It disconcerted her. The little boy was still trying to chin himself on the pipe no higher than his waist. "Junior!" Mrs. Holmes shrilled. "Stop that! Get back in the car! And I thought," she said to Warden in a normal tone, "that he might have purchased them and left them for me." Warden grinned, broadly. She would never have used that word purchased unless he had got beneath her skin. He watched her "eyes go slightly out of focus as she understood the grin. But she brought them right back in again and tried to stare him down. He decided she had guts. Karen Holmes was suddenly aware of the impish twist of the eyebrows on his wide face, like a small boy who has pulled a fast one. She saw his sleeves, turned back, exposing black silky hairs on the thick wrists and muscled forearms. In the tight shirt the round bunches of muscle bulged at the tips of his shoulders, and they rippled tautly as he moved. These things, too, she had never seen in him before. "Well, Maam," he said politely, simultaneously aware of her awareness and his grin widening and squeezing up against his eyes to give his face a slyness, "we can sure take a look in the Orderly Room, seef your things is there. He just might of come in and gone out while I was in the Supply Room working." She followed him inside, although she had just come from there herself. "Well," he said, surprised. 'They aint here." "I wonder where he could be," she said irritably, half to herself. At the mention of her husband a tight unpleasant little frown cut her forehead with twin lines above her nose. Warden waited deliberately, timing it exactly. Then he slipped it to her. "Well, Maam, if I know the Capn, him and Colonel Delbert is already up at the Club, having a few snorts, discussing the servant problem." Mrs. Holmes turned her cold eyes on him slowly, as if he were a slide beneath a microscope. Her scrutiny knew nothing at all about Col Delbert's stags he held up at the Club, or about his partiality to Kanaka maids. But Warden, watching her, thought he could detect a fine faint gleam, almost of amusement behind her eyes. "Thank you very much for your trouble, Sergeant," she said coolly, from a very great distance. She turned and left. "Thats quite all right, Maam," he called cheerily. "Any time that I can help. Any time at all." He strolled out onto the porch to watch her climb in and drive off. In spite of her efforts a long smooth flash of thigh winked at him and he grinned. Leva was still sitting at his desk when he went back in the Supply Room. "You been down to Mrs. Kipfer's lately, Milt?" he grinned. "No," Warden said. "I aint. How's the dear lady gettin along?" "Got two new girls in fresh from the States. One redhead and one brunette. Interested?" "No," he said. "I aint." "You aint?" Leva grinned. "I kind of thought you might want to go along with me tonight. I thought you might feel like it." "Go to hell, Niccolo. When I have to pay for it I'll quit." Leva laughed, high up in his nose, making a sound like the spluttering of Diesel exhaust. "Well," he said, "I just thought. Man, but that Holmes woman is one, aint she?" "One what?" "One woman." "I've seen better," Warden said indifferently.