The Strange Story of Linda Lee by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online Page A

to you. Whenever we travelled, you would stay in luxury hotels and all the year round live a life of leisure. Now, what do you say?’
    There were tears in Linda’s eyes. Getting up, she went over to him, stooped, and kissed his rosy cheek. ‘Oh, Rowley,’ her voice quavered, ‘you needn’t havementioned the clothes, jewels and travel. Your age and figure—they don’t really count. It’s yourself that matters, and you’re the most lovable person I’ve ever met. Anyway, if after all you’ve done for me I didn’t let you have your wish, I’d be the meanest girl in the world. Come, darling. Let’s go up to bed.’
    After that night Linda’s life entered a new and still happier phase. She no longer had to struggle five days a week with that baffling shorthand and she had acquired a great deal of useful knowledge from her special classes. These, combined with all that Rowley had taught her on their visits to museums and galleries, had given her as good a background in history, literature and art as is acquired by most girls who have been sent to expensive schools.
    Now that all this was behind her, Rowley said that the time had come for her to assume a definite position in the household and act as his hostess. Then, a few evenings later, he told her that he had invited their first guest to dinner.
    This was a Wing Commander Eric Dutton. Rowley said that they had met in the latter part of the war, when he had been the Meteorological Officer at an R.A.F. station, and Dutton, a very young fighter pilot who, during the Normandy landings and the last year of the conflict, had so distinguished himself that he had been awarded both a D.S.O. and a D.F.C. After the war he had left the R.A.F., entered the Foreign Service and served in several Embassies abroad as Cultural Attaché. For the past two years he had been
en poste
in Persia, and had only recently returned, to be given a job at a scientific establishment.
    ‘Why would they want a Cultural Attaché at such a place?’ Linda enquired innocently.
    Rowley gave her a slight smile. ‘The term covers a multitude of activities, my dear, particularly where a knowledge of aircraft is concerned. Security is one of them, but we needn’t go into that. Anyhow, now he is back in England we shall be seeing quite a lot of him, as whenever he’s had a job in this country and comes to London for a night or two, I’ve always put him up.’
    He then told her why, on this occasion, Dutton was to be their only guest. It was to prepare the way for her meeting with Elsie and Arthur Spilkin. At his Club that day Rowley had given Dutton lunch, and confided to him his true relationship to Linda; but he alone was to be made privy to this secret. They had then hatched a pretty little plot. Linda was to be passed off to the Spilkins and other acquaintances of Rowley’s as Dutton’s cousin; and, when he came to dinner, they would work out the details of this deception which would give her a respectable background.
    That afternoon Rowley set the ball rolling by writing to Elsie to make certain that she and Arthur would be staying to dinner on the following Tuesday, thanked her for all she had done for him since her mother’s accident, and explained that new work he had undertaken now made it essential for him to have a full-time secretary, who would also in future save her the bother of supervising his household. He added that he had been most fortunate in finding just the type of young woman he needed, in a relative of his old friend, Eric Dutton. He felt sure Elsie would like her and, naturally, he expected Elsie and Arthur to continue to dine with him on Tuesdays whenever they were not otherwise engaged.
    Linda felt it was one thing for a girl to have an affair with a man near her own age, and quite anotherfor her to be kept by a middle-aged gentleman; so, although she appreciated the soundness of Rowley’s plan, she was none too happy about being produced as his mistress to the gallant