A Fox Inside Read Free Page B

distance. Even in bright sunshine there was something eerie and inhuman about that strip of shore. It was too savage and too dry. At night it was all the worse. It had been like Charles to go hide himself there. She could only hope that he would remain hidden a while longer.
    It did not occur to her to wonder where she was going . She was too eager to get away for that. She wanted to become lost in the back roads and suburban alleys of the mountain, under the steady drip of the pines and the redwood trees. It seemed to her that every moment she lingered was a bit of her future in jeopardy. She put her head into the wind, to let the fog-laden air clear it, but nothing seemed to clear it.
    When she came out of the yellow adobe tunnel, lined with concrete, and faced the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge, she was doing fifty. It was a windy nightand high above the water, under the criminal glare of the vapour lamps, the bridge swayed alarmingly. She had to stop while her toll money was taken. It was another danger of being identified. Resentfully, afraid to turn her face away, but also afraid to show it, she drew the car up and fumbled in her purse for a dollar bill. Beside her, on the floor, she could see a paper bag.
    The attendant wore a black leather jacket with a fur collar, breeches and boots and a visored cap. He creaked as he moved, and the fog made the stench of leather all the stronger. He took the bill and said good night, but the car had stalled. She got it started again soon enough, but by that time she was shaking. She began to realize she could not get through with this alone. Even if the attendants, huddled up against the fog and impersonal and bored, noticed nothing, she would have to get help before someone did notice something. And she did not know where or how to get it. Charles had always shut her off from any help.
    Before going down the wide, barricaded ramp and through the military Presidio, under more of those glaring yellow lights, she stared helpless at the shadowy and silent city, closed against her on its hills. She had had friends once. She did not have them now. She had lived here most of her life, but there was no one left for her to turn to. She did not know, she never had known, she now thought bitterly, anyone that she could trust.
    From force of habit she turned the car up the Vallejo street hill, angrily shifting gears when the car stalled half-way, and stopped in front of the Barnes-Shannon house. She even started bleakly to get out of the car. But there was no point in going in. She looked at the shadedwindows. She could not use the telephone there, for telephone calls could be traced. And worse than that, the servants had all been chosen by Charles. If they were loyal to anybody, it was not to her. She had not so clearly realized before how even this house was not really hers.
    She swung the car down through the wet spaces of the Italian district and into the deserted financial section of the city. In front of the building in which Charles had his office she passed a water truck, slowly spraying the street and sidewalk with a constant hissing of dirty water. There was an all-night Western Union office down there. It was not until she drew up near it that she remembered that if telephones could be traced, a telegram was that much worse. Nor could she linger where she was, for cars were rare in that district at night and a patrolman might stop to ask her questions. She shivered in the fog that smelled of dust and iodine. It was then she thought of Lily. There was no affection between them, but at least Lily was her mother. She always did have to go back to Lily in the end, and Lily, she knew, preferred that it should be that way and liked it so. This time, she thought grimly, she might not like it so much.
    With a crooked smile she swung out of the canyon of high buildings and over the slough bridges of the factory districts to get on to the express highway going south, which was the