The Threateners by Donald Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

stirred within me as I remembered another woman I’d met in times of desperate trouble who, unable to find her way back to a satisfactory way of living afterward, had wound up killing herself.
    I said, “You indicated you were doing pretty well with that law firm up in Denver. ”
    “Yes, and I was doing pretty well as Mrs. Walter Maxon, too, for the first year or so; at least Mr. Maxon seemed to think so. For God’s sake, darling, I’m not bad-looking and I’m not dumb. I know the moves and I can fake them pretty well even when I don’t, well, feel them. I can put on a swell loving-wife performance for a husband and I can manage a very convincing bright-but-modest-associate routine for the partners. All it takes is a little hypocrisy and a little acting ability. And all the time I’m bored out of my skull. My God, two years with that sweet little boy in that sweet little house-well, it wasn’t so damn little—with the biggest excitement of my day being whether or not I got his eggs soft-boiled just right in the morning. Even then there was no danger of his beating me if I goofed, dammit, or even complaining; he’d just look a little sad. Well, I made a showplace of his lousy shack in return for his giving me his veddy, veddy respect-able name, and I entertained Ms business contacts beautifully, if I do say so myself, and I was very sneaky and clever about helping him with his work without ever letting him know that as a lawyer, he made me want to scream. Not that he didn’t know his law, he was a walking law library, but he had about as much gumption as a three-toed sloth, no enterprise, no inspiration, just meticulous hard work, which is okay in its place, but occasionally you’ve got to come up with something a little more dramatic, and there was no drama in him. Not in the courtroom and not . . . not in bed.”
    After just making love to the lady, I didn’t feel right about discussing the sexual prowess of her former husband or listening to her discuss it.
    I said, “Well, come to that, I’ve never considered myself a particularly dramatic lover.”
    She said judiciously, “Maybe you’re not quite Casanova reincarnated, but at least you act as if there was another human being in the bed with you, willing and reasonably durable, not a porcelain doll too precious and fragile to . . . No, damn it, that’s dirty. I mustn’t talk about him like that. He was just as sweet as he could be and he loved me; loved me enough that, when I had to leave, he let me go without making me feel too awful about it. Just as you did when I decided to marry him. I’ve always respected you for that.”
    In spite of my modest disclaimer, I wasn’t quite sure I liked not being Casanova reincarnated. I said, “Golly gee, ma’am, it makes me feel warm all over, being respected like that.”
    “You bastard,” she said. “You know what I mean. You’re not—and neither is Walter—the kind of selfish and possessive lover who grabs a gun when he finds the gal with another man and blows away the two of them. That kind of hysterical freak doesn’t really love anybody but himself. He’s just telling the world how badly his poor little feelings have been hurt. If you love somebody, you want them happy, preferably with you but if not with somebody else, don’t you? If you really love them, you certainly don’t want them dead!”
    I said, “It’s very pleasant to lounge on a bed alongside a pretty girl in her underwear, drinking whiskey and talking about love, but I’m afraid it isn’t getting us very far. . . .”
    I stopped, hearing a sound outside. Happy was barking in an odd way. Labradors don’t bark much as a rule and he’s pretty quiet even for a Lab, although like most dogs he will serenade the postman and the UPS man—I sometimes wonder what those guys do to attract so much loud canine attention. But this was a sharper and more excited bark than the deep routine woofing designed to warn me that the defensive