The Listening Walls by Margaret Millar Read Free Book Online

Mrs. Kellogg, no more hysterics. The other patients on the floor are sleeping.”
    â€œWilma’s dead.”
    â€œI know,” Rupert said. “But you must think of your­self now.”
    â€œTake me home, take me out of this terrible place.”
    â€œI will, dearest. Just as soon as they let me.”
    â€œCome now, Mrs. Kellogg,” Escobar said smoothly. “This isn’t such a terrible place. We’d like to keep you here for a few days of observation.”
    â€œNo, I won’t stay!”
    â€œFor a day or two . . .”
    â€œNo! Let me go! Rupert, get me out of here. Take me home!”
    â€œI will,” Rupert said.
    â€œAll the way home? To my own home and Mack and everything?”
    â€œAll the way, I promise.”
    It was a promise which, at the moment, he intended to keep.

5.
    Gill Brandon came downstairs wearing his composite morning expression: anticipation over what the day would bring and suspicion that something was bound to spoil it.
    He was a short, stocky, vigorous man with a forceful manner of speaking that made even his most innocuous re­mark seem compelling, and his most far-fetched theory sound like a self-evident truth. To heighten this effect he also used his hands when he talked, not in any dramati­cally loose European style, but severely, geometrically, to indicate an exact angle of thought, a precise degree of emotion. He liked to think of himself as mathematical and meticulous. He was neither.
    Gill kissed his wife, who was already at the table with the morning paper in front of her opened to the lovelorn column. “Any phone calls?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s damned peculiar.”
    â€œWhat is?” Helene said, knowing perfectly well what was, since Gill had talked of nothing else for a week. Thank God it was Monday and he had to go into the city to work. If the stock market was fluttery, so much the bet­ter. It would take his mind off other things. “Here’s a terribly funny letter from some woman in Atherton. I wonder if it’s anyone we know. It could be Betty Spears. Listen. ‘Dear Abby: My problem is my husband is so stingy that he even snitches my green stamps.’ I know for a fact Johnny Spears saves green stamps. . . .”
    â€œWill you listen to me?”
    â€œOf course, dear. I didn’t know you were saying any­thing.”
    â€œRupert’s been down there for a week now and I haven’t heard a word since that first phone call from his secretary. Not a word about how Amy is and what’s going on, when they’ll be back, nothing.”
    â€œHe may be busy.”
    Gill scowled at her across the table. “Busy doing what, may I ask?”
    â€œHow should I know?”
    â€œThen stop making up nonsensical excuses for him. Nobody’s too busy to pick up a phone. He’s damned in­considerate. And what Amy ever saw in him I’ll never know.”
    â€œHe’s very good-looking. And very nice.”
    â€œGood-looking. Nice. Great Scott, is that what women marry men for?”
    â€œYou’re hungry, dear. I’ll ring for breakfast.”
    Helene pressed the buzzer under the table, feeling a mild surge of power. She had been born and raised in an Oakland slum, and never, in all her twenty years of mar­riage, had she become accustomed to the miracle of ring­ing for anything she wanted. Breakfast, martinis, choco­late creams, tea, magazines, cigarettes—you pressed a button, and bingo, whatever you wanted, there it was. Sometimes Helene just sat and thought of things to want so she would have the pleasure of pulling the tasseled bell cord or pressing the buzzer underneath the table.
    Occasionally she visited Oakland but more frequently her parents came down the Peninsula to see her, Mrs. Maloney wearing her teeth and Sunday clothes, Mr. Maloney sober as a judge and dry as a herring. After the ini­tial greetings of genuine