The Insulators by John Creasey Read Free Book Online

know.
    She did not want him to leave her. The Project would be a dread and dreary place without him now. Yet as she allowed that thought to drift through her mind there was a companion thought, that this was absurd. How could she fall so desperately in love in a few hours?
    His arm was firm and strong about her waist; he was holding her close and with the pressure of his body, comforting her and giving her reassurance.
    “That’s why you can’t—” she had begun, the picture of that hideous attack on Paul vivid in her mind.
    “That’s why I must escape,” he had interrupted.
    Why had he said that? Why had he spoken as if she would understand?
    Hazily, she did begin to understand.
    “Janey,” he whispered, “this is like a concentration camp.”
    She caught her breath: “No!”
    He shifted his position slightly, making her aware of the lean strength of his body, the rippling power of the muscles in his stomach, in his legs. Now his cheek was against hers, his voice just reached her and she knew that he was trying desperately to make sure that no microphone picked up his words.
    “It’s happened too often before in modern history. When a man’s nerve is broken, he disappears. If a man’s soul rebels, he disappears. Only if he does what he is told, only if he asks no questions and meekly accepts the life he’s allotted, can he live in peace and safety. That’s true here. You must be aware of that by now. You of all people can’t be blind.”
    But she had been blind, because she had wanted only to live in her world of personal sorrow and of grief.
    There had been disappearances; there had been others from different departments who had shown signs of the same nervous tension as Paul; and vanished. She was aware of another thing: not another man or woman had talked of this to her. She, like everyone else, simply accepted the situation; why else could it be, but because they were afraid?
    The fear was in Arthur Leadbetter, in Freddie Ferris, and it had become naked in Paul Taylor. About them was a wall of silence. Despite the awful noise and the vibrations which never ceased, there was a conspiracy of silence. In all the time she had been here no one had talked about the conditions of their living, or anything except generalities, or music, the arts, the sciences. No word about working conditions, for instance, nor about the men who commanded them. Oh, in the common room there would be fast and furious arguments about politics and about foreign affairs, but these had long since lost their bite. It was as if they were living apart from the world.
    A ‘concentration’ camp . . . ?
    Philip whispered: “We can’t let it go on without trying to escape so as to tell the outside world what’s going on. Janey, everyone here is a slave.”
    “Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t go on.”
    “But you know it’s true,” he insisted.
    “I don’t—I don’t want to think about it.”
    “Don’t you?” he said in a queer voice. “Well, I haven’t thought about anything else for a long time. Except—” he broke off, and eased away from her so that although they were still close from the waist down, she could see his face as he could see hers. His hands moved and his strong fingers played so gently with her, there was a curve at his lips and she had not realised before how strong and handsome he was. “Except you,” he went on much more clearly, as if it no longer mattered whether he was heard. “Except you, Janey. How I love you!”
    She thought, exultantly: How I love you!
    But almost at once doubts crowded into her mind. He would say that to reassure her, he might even say that he loved her because of what had happened between them, but his motive both for loving and for saying that he loved her could be the same: to win her help in a bid for escape, the very thought of which she hated.
    He kissed her, gently, and began to speak softly again: “We mustn’t talk except in whispers.”
    She could not stop