The Man in the Net by Patrick Quentin Read Free Book Online Page B

drink—just the two of you to talk it over quietly between yourselves. You can take the two o’clock train. It’ll get you there just in time.”
    Trust me , he remembered. Just this once. It’s so important to trust me. So, even then, only five minutes after he’d told her the news, she’d decided what she was going to do. That’s why she’d stayed away from the party. The deviousness of it, the enormity of the betrayal brought anger flooding into the vacuum of his exhaustion. And it wasn’t only that. It was worse. Looking at her smiling up at him, sublimely confident of victory already achieved, he realized what he had never realized before. She despised him. Under all the layers of pretense (Dear John, help me! What would I do if it wasn’t for you?) she had him tabbed as a nothing, a piece of play in her hands to be molded into whatever shape her whim directed. I’m tired of New York. I’d like to live in the country. I’ll get him to give up Raines and Raines. That’s how she’d seen it in New York. And now she was thinking: I want all that money and I’m bored with it here. I’ll fix it to make him go back. If she hadn’t been drunk, of course, she wouldn’t have been quite so blatant about it. But the same feeling would have been there. Wouldn’t it?
    His thoughts reeled away from the complexity of it all and, in his anger, he decided: I’ll call Charlie now. I’ll tell him my wife was drunk—and to hell with his job. But even as he thought it he knew he couldn’t do it. Not over the party line. He’d have to go to New York anyway to undo this damage.
    His anger was merged now with the odd, heady feeling that after this he owed her nothing any more, that he was free of her at last.
    He said, “You’re smart, aren’t you?”
    “Not smart. Just being sensible, that’s all. Sensible for both of us. I understand your pride. Of course I do. You’d rather die than admit the critics were right. It’s only natural. But really, deep inside, you do know—deep inside you know it hasn’t worked out. You’re not going to make the grade. You don’t have it in you. And to ruin everything just for foolish pride. To turn down the only good offer you may ever get just because …”
    The anger was suddenly out of control. He slapped her across the mouth. She gave a whimpering cry, throwing her hand up, watching him from eyes distorted by astonishment and fury and fear.
    He’d never hit her before, but he felt no shock. Rather, he felt elation.
    “Okay,” he said. “Now there’s no explaining to do at the Careys. That makes your little speech one hundred per cent correct.”
    She had backed away from him and sat down in a chair, her hand still up to her mouth.
    “You hit me,” she said.
    He crossed to the bar-table and, deliberately, poured himself a shot of bourbon.
    “John …” Her voice came from behind him, low, faltering. “John …”
    He didn’t turn.
    “John,” she said, “you mean—you mean you’re still not going to take that job?”
    He swung round with the glass in his hand. “What do you think?”
    “But you must.” There was only panic on her face now. “You’ve got to. I told Charlie Raines. I said you were going to take it. We’ve got to go to New York. I can’t stay here. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t …”
    “Then go,” said John. “If you don’t want to stay here – go.
    She got up, half stumbling over the skirt of her green dress. She ran to him. She clutched at his arms and then let her hands move spasmodically up and down the sleeves of his coat. He could have pushed her away, but he didn’t. He was luxuriating now in his sense of freedom from her. Let her clutch and grab. What difference did it make?
    “John … maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. I didn’t know. It was such a terribly difficult decision. I didn’t know what to do. But … if I did it the wrong way, forgive me.