Prelude to Terror by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

north, then east, he was certainly not bound for the Pierre on Fifth Avenue. Marck’s stride was brisk. His exhaustion from his hard day of travel must have vanished, along with his urgent need of sleep.
    Grant opened the cab door, ignoring the doorman’s galvanic rush into last-minute assistance, and climbed in. “I think,” he told the man, “I have enough strength to close the door myself.” He banged it shut, gave the driver his address. Then he was thinking of Marck again and that well-organised flow of instructions. An intelligent, capable man; slightly devious, too. But it was no concern of his how Marck spent his time off the chain. He had plenty of his own business to complete: a pad of paper on his desk, thorough notes to be made and read with concentration. He’d be lucky if he got to bed before three o’clock. That wasn’t a complaint. Now that he was by himself, he could admit to a rising excitement. He laughed out loud.
    The cab driver glanced at him in the rear-view mirror, and shook his head. Some guys had all the luck. Good looks and clothes to match, and not one goddamned care in his world. If he had a wife in the hospital and one kid into dope, the other pregnant (my God, what kind of high school was that?), and was hacking at night to make ends meet, shut away like a bloody prisoner in this cab with a protective screen to guard his head and a wrench at his feet ready to use—yeah, just let him feel like a laugh then. The tip was generous, something he hadn’t expected after the Albany doorman’s brush-off. He grunted his thanks, gave a nod, drove off with a screech of gears and the rattle of tin.
    New York, New York... Grant went indoors, and to work.

5
    Grant left Kennedy at seven o’clock, scarcely believing that he had actually caught the flight for Vienna. All kinds of small details—the must-dos and the have-tos and the don’t-forgets—had piled up in the last few days. Who said bachelor life was an easy one? Not when O’Malley’s apartment, with a good collection of books and records and elaborate stereo systems, had to be made secure, quite apart from discontinuing the small services that simplified daily life. But the newspapers and magazines had been cancelled (don’t leave them gathering outside the door, the superintendent had warned him: invitation to forced entry) and the laundry collections and the milk and twice-weekly food deliveries; and O’Malley’s mail (a couple of letters addressed to the apartment instead of his office) forwarded to him in Geneva with a scrawled note that Grant was leaving for a week or two in Vienna. Add to all that, a trip to lower Manhattan to have his camera registered: he had left it too late for the mails to handle, had forgotten, in fact, that his passport was on the point of expiring—he still broke into a mild sweat at the memory of that discovery.
    However, he had finished his article for Perspective, and shaken himself free from Ronnie Brearely’s sweet sympathy. No more offers of a room with a view on Long Island. Three ’phone calls had come after her Medusa performance outside his front door. The first two he had cut off, didn’t reply to her gentle “Colin?” The third had caught him unawares and he had answered it at once. The usual invitation to a week-end on a cool beach.
    “I’ll be out of town in August,” he said when Ronnie paused for breath.
    “Where?”
    “Vienna.” She’d find out anyway. She went to talkative parties.
    “All alone, Colin?” She sounded horrified at the dreariness of his situation.
    He could see where that was leading, and quickly scotched the snake. “No. I’ll be with the prettiest redhead this side of the Mississippi.”
    A long pause. “Do I know her?”
    “I wouldn’t think so. She’s much younger than you.” Cruel, but necessary. “Goodbye, Veronica.” Most definite.
    She hadn’t returned the goodbye. The receiver was banged into place. A quick and final end.
    Final? Yes. In