I Come as a Theif by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page A

thousand for three months."
    The specificity of his need was like a cold rag rubbed suddenly into her face, and she was back in Dr. Reid's office with the cheap reproductions of Van Gogh. She trembled all over. Tony watched her change of expression with surprise. Then he shrugged.
    "I see how it is," he said, now sullen. "You want to help, but you hate me for needing it. You rich all belong to the same club. You're better off sticking with each other."
    "Do you know that I may be dying?"
    "Jesus, Joan!"
    "It's come back."
    "Joan!" He did not move or even take her hand, but she felt the shock of his sympathy and was instantly better. "How bad?"
    "That bad. I don't know. I don't want to talk about it. I'll be going back to the hospital for treatment. Maybe I'll be all right. Maybe not. Oh, who
cares?
Just don't talk about it."
    "Look, Joan. I wasn't serious about that loan. Lee and I made a bet last night. She said you were like all rich people. That you gave oodles of money to charity but hated giving it to friends. She said you were actually afraid of giving it to friends. As if their poverty might be catching."
    "Lee said that?"
    "Yes, but she was wrong, and I win the bet. I tested you, and you immediately offered me the money. I was simply picking a quarrel to get out of it when you broke up my little game with this hideous news."
    Len appeared in the doorway and nodded to Joan.
    "Oh, damn it, Tony. The first guest. I don't know if I should believe you, but I'm going to. I've got to." And suddenly, as she rose, she knew that she did believe him. "Oh, Tony," she murmured as she saw two figures behind Len, "don't leave tonight until they've all gone. Don't leave me."
    Now he did take her hand, publicly, gravely, in front of the approaching couple.
    "I promise."
    ***
    Tony outstayed all the guests and went to Joan's bedroom after the household had left and Len had turned out the hall lights. It was not very satisfactory, for Joan was fuzzy with drink, but it was wonderful that he spent the whole night with her, holding her in his arms. In the morning she did not even ask him how he would explain his absence to Lee. She felt sure now that he could explain anything. Or that he did not have to. She telephoned Dr. Reid to say that she was ready to go to the hospital.

5
    Nothing that Max Leonard was hearing on the telephone matched the bright yellow cheerfulness of his Madison Avenue office in Lowder, Leonard, Bacon & Shea (or Leonard, Bacon & Shea, as they would have to call it now that Tony had gone into government). Nor did the news that his broker offered fit with the colorful marine prints on his walls: the
Monitor
firing away at a hulky
Merrimac
and the
Constitution
in full sail on a blue, blue sea. Or with the silver-framed photographs of Max and the great, sometimes in color, of Max, young, blond and smiling, always the boy, seen behind Mayor Lindsay on a platform, or by Tony at Madison Square Garden, or dancing at a fund-raising dinner with Sophia Loren. Or with the certificates of all the courts to which Max had been admitted or with the page, extracted and framed, from the Williams College yearbook of eighteen years back showing Max, looking only slightly younger, over a legend that represented the verdict of his peers: "If Max strikes you as only a good time Johnnie, watch out! The guy's a dynamo disguised as sugar candy!"
    "I'm sorry, Max," Bob Everett went on, "things are tough all over. Do you think you're the only margin buyer who's been caught in this recession? Herron Products is still down, and I still need twenty g's to cover you and Tony."
    "Where am I supposed to get it?"
    "What about that limited partnership you went into? The Jersey restaurant deal?"
    "Alrae? If we don't get a bank loan before the end of the month, that's down the drain, too."
    "What about your law firm?"
    "Joke? When did small law firms have that kind of cash?"
    "Can't Tony go to the Conways?"
    "Tony
won't
go to the Conways. She's sick. He