Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith Read Free Book Online Page A

feel tired?’
    It was like a question from a doctor, routine now. ‘No. … I’ve got to telephone a customer tonight between eight and nine.’ It was 8.37 p.m. ‘I may as well do it now, my dear. Maybe I’ll have some coffee later.’
    ‘Can I go with you?’ Georges asked, dropping his fork, sitting back ready to leap out of his chair.
    ‘Not tonight, mon petit vieux. I’m in a hurry. And you just want to play the pinball machines, I know you.
    ‘Hollywood Chewing Gum!’ Georges shouted, pronouncing it in the French manner: ‘Ollyvoo Schvang Gom!’
    Jonathan winced as he lifted his jacket from the hall hook. Hollywood Chewing Gum, whose green and white wrappers littered the gutters and occasionally Jonathan’s garden, had mysterious attractions for infants of the French nation. ‘Oui, m’sieur.’ Jonathan said, and went out the door.
    Dr Perrier had a home number in the directory, and Jonathan hoped he was in tonight. A certain tabac, which had a telephone, was closer than Jonathan’s shop. A panic was taking hold of Jonathan, and he began to trot towards the slanted lighted red cylinder that marked the tabac two streets away. He would insist on the truth. Jonathan nodded a greeting to the young man behind the bar, whom he knew slightly, and pointed to the telephone and also to the shelf where the directories lay. ‘Fontainebleau!’ Jonathan shouted. The place was noisy, with a juke box going besides. Jonathan searched out the number and dialled.
    Dr Penier answered, and recognized Jonathan’s voice.
    ‘I would like very much to have another test. Even tonight. Now – if you could take a sample.’
    Tonight?’
    ‘I could come to see you at once. In five minutes.’
    ‘Are you — You are weak?’
    ‘Well – I thought if the test went to Paris tomorrow —’ Jonathan knew that Dr Perrier was in the habit of sending various samples to Paris on Saturday mornings. ‘If you could take a sample either tonight or early tomorrow morning —’
    ‘I am not in my office tomorrow morning. I have visits to make. If you are so upset, M. Trevanny, come to my house now.’
    Jonathan paid for his call, and remembered just before he went out the door to buy two packages of Hollywood Chewing Gum, which he dropped into his jacket pocket.
    Perrier lived way over on the Boulevard Maginot, which would take nearly ten minutes. Jonathan trotted and walked. He had never been to the doctor’s home.
    It was a big, gloomy building, and the concierge was an old, slow, skinny woman watching television in a little glass-enclosed room full of plastic plants. While Jonathan waited for the lift to descend into the rickety cage, the concierge crept into the hall and asked curiously:
    ‘Your wife is having a baby, m’sieur?’
    ‘No. No.’ Jonathan said, smiling, and recalled that Dr Perrier was a general practitioner.
    He rode up.
    ‘Now what is the matter?’ Dr Perrier asked, beckoning him through a dining-room. ‘Come into this room.’
    The house was dimly lighted. The television set was on somewhere. The room they went into was like a little office, with medical books on the shelves, and a desk on which the doctor’s black bag now sat.
    ‘Mon dieu, one would think you are on the brink of collapse and you’ve just been running, obviously, and your cheeks are pink. Don’t tell me you’ve heard another rumour that you’re on the edge of the grave!’
    Jonathan made an effort to sound calm. ‘It’s just that I want to be sure. I don’t feel so splendid, to tell the truth. I know it’s been only two months since the last test but – since the next is due the end of April, what’s the harm —’ He broke off, shrugging. ‘Since it’s easy to take some marrow, and since it can go off tomorrow early —’Jonathan was aware that his French was clumsy at that moment, aware of the word moelle, marrow, which had become revolting, especially when Jonathan thought of his as being abnormally yellow. He sensed Dr