Shadow of Guilt by Patrick Quentin Read Free Book Online Page B

printed at the top of the page: lord. I slammed the book shut as if leaving the page open would not only expose Ala but endanger all of us. Anything else? I went into the bedroom. It was dark and dismal. Flung down on the unmade bed were two large open suitcases, both of them fully packed. Surely, he couldn’t have taken all that with him to Massachusetts for the weekend. Had he then not been unpacking but packing again? Had he been planning to make a getaway? Suitcases, papers burnt in the fireplace, surely…
    I went on into the bathroom. Nothing there, just a wrinkled yellow bath mat and a red towel thrown down on it, a cluttered wash basin, a clammy plastic shower curtain.
    I went back to Ala. Something had happened to her in the few moments of my absence—a kind of delayed shock. The waxlike look was gone; her face was contorted with terror. The instant she saw me, she ran to me, clinging to me desperately.
    “George… oh, George…”
    I held her tightly, trying to soothe her. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
    “But they’ll know… the police. They’ll find out about yesterday, about me and Don, about… about all the things Connie said. And, when they know I was here, when they know how he…he fooled me… what’ll they think? What will they do?”
    “They won’t do anything, because they won’t know.”
    “Won’t know?”
    “You didn’t think I was going to call them? Why? What good would it do? You don’t know anything. You can’t help. Listen, honey, I’m getting you out of here. He’s been killed, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us. What do we know about him? Or how many people wanted to get rid of him? It’s none of our business. Be quiet, honey. Just be quiet. If we can get out without anyone seeing us…”
    She was all right again, suddenly, almost astoundingly calm. She looked at me for one moment from blue, almost wary eyes. Then she smiled the incredulous smile of a little girl realizing the dreaded punishment isn’t going to come after all.
    “Let’s go,” I said.
    Vaguely I had thought I would feel some compunction. I had never consciously done anything before which flagrantly broke the law. But now this seemed the most natural thing in the world. I was, I suppose, getting used to this new life where it was our wits we needed rather than our ethics.
    I took a last look around the room, as unmoved by Don Saxby as if he’d been a sack of cement. No, there was nothing, surely, to show that Ala had been there. I went to the door and opened it a crack. The radio music still blared from behind the closed door of the neighbor’s apartment. What about the neighbors and the shots? Had the radio drowned out the noise? Or had the neighbors just been typical New Yorkers about it? Didn’t that sound like shots? Just a car backfiring, baby.
    The elevator was still at our floor. Turning, I beckoned to Ala. She slipped out with me into the corridor. I closed the door and tried it. It had locked itself. I drew back the cage door of the elevator and we rode down to the entrance hall. No one was there. Ahead of Ala I moved out onto the steps. A couple of people were strolling toward Fifth Avenue on the other side of the street, paying no attention to anything. That was all.
    In a few minutes we were in the car, driving toward Madison. It was twenty minutes to five.

 
SEVEN
    I had got her away, but this of course was only the beginning. When Don Saxby was found, the police would certainly trace a connection between him and my family. There would be interviews, questions, detectives to be outwitted. The whole thing would be a rat race. Now that the immediate danger was by-passed, I felt an enormous exasperation with Ala. The little idiot, blundering about, threatening us all with catastrophe!
    She was sitting very close to me in the car, reminding me poignantly of the tense child who used to sit tightly wedged at my side when we drove to the shore on summer weekends, while