Judge Me Not by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

downward toward the bowels of the earth. The train rushed on, faster and faster, out of control, rocking on the tracks, whistle shrilling, heading for the final and inevitable.…
    He woke up in shuddering, cold-sweat darkness. He sat up, spinning, liquor-sick. His mouth was a loose numb area. The bed swung twice, slowly, the way a pitcher winds up, and then did a gut-wrenching outside loop, spilling him out onto the harsh grass rug that scraped his face and his naked hip. Grass rug. That meant the camp. Damn fool to get so stinking. How did it happen? He went slowly across the rug on his hands and knees. It was cold. He shivered violently, but could not stop sweating. His head butted the doorframe. He turned a bit to the left and crawled out onto the porch, spreading out with his naked chest on the cold boards, his head over the edge of the porch. He fingered the back of his tongue and was sick, wrenchingly, agonizingly, meagerly. He lay for a time, panting with exhaustion, then crawled back to the door.With his fingers on the doorframe he pulled himself erect. When the camp swung dizzily, he hung onto the doorframe with all his strength, his eyes tightly shut. When it steadied a bit, he reached around the frame, opening the door with his arm, finding the light switch.
    Light exploded against the windy night. He stared in at the naked woman on the floor near the bathroom door. Her back was toward him, legs drawn up.
    “Got drunk with old F’lice,” he said out loud.
    He blundered through the doorway, lost his grip on the frame. The camp tilted and he ran across the room, big arms flailing. His shoulder smashed against the back of the single overstuffed chair, and he went over with it, smashing a table, hitting his elbow painfully against the wall.
    He sat up, rubbing his elbow. “Take it easy,” he said. He grinned. “Who shoved me? You shove me, Felice?” He looked at her. Now he could see her face. Her dark horrid face, her staring eyes completely white-rimmed, the blackened tongue swollen so that it held the jaw open. Like a face you make to scare people. A face to send kids screaming to mamma.
    “Cut it out, F’lice,” he said petulantly.
    He crawled over to her. He put his hand on her hip. It took long seconds for the chill message to come back from his hand, crescendo in his brain. He pulled his hand back and stared at it. “Felice is dead,” he said, forming the words precisely with his numbed lips.
    Got to think. Got to figure out what happened. Got to get sober, boy. Sober up fast. Shower. No, the lake. Colder and faster. Come on, boy. Get into that water.
    He fell twice on the way down the path. When he got to the dock he made no attempt to dive. He merely walked off the end. He floundered clumsily, and slowly precision came back to his muscles. When he hauled himself, gasping and shivering, up onto the dock, the memory of the two Snerds slid quickly into his mind. He walked up the path. His car was there. Hers was gone.
    He walked in and closed the door. He was still unsteady on his feet, still nauseated, yet his mind was beginning to work. Choice one—get dressed and drive to the nearest phone and report it to the troopers.
    “Yes, sir, two men wearing Mortimer Snerd masks came in and …”
    How nice that would be! Teed Morrow and the mayor’s wife. Teed Morrow, still too loaded to walk anybody’s chalk line. That would be dandy. A nice slap across the mouth for Powell Dennison. A scandal so fat and juicy that Powell’s findings in regard to municipal graft would have all the effect of a penny whistle in a whirlwind.
    Somebody knew she was coming out to the lake. Somebody knew he was meeting her there. And, to make the frame nice and tight, it was equally obvious that someone else was due to arrive and find him still out like a light, the body on the floor.
    He trotted out and got in his car, swung it around without turning the lights on, backed it carefully down to the porch. He opened the