Fear by Night Read Free

glasses.

CHAPTER III
    Charles arrived full of apologies, but even more full of the damage to his paint and the enormities of a system which loosed half-witted invertebrate rabbits upon the highways in superannuated heaps of scrap iron.
    â€œHe calls the thing a car!” said Charles, still pale with fury. “Said he was learning to drive it! Will you have grape-fruit or hors d’œuvres ? The thing would have dropped to pieces where it stood if it hadn’t been for the rust! I can’t think how it ever started, and I don’t know now why it stopped short of smashing my petrol tank! Oughn’t to eat hors d’œuvres , you know—you’ll spoil the rest of your I lunch.”
    Ann took a delicious mouthful of sardine and egg. Lovely food! Lovely, lovely food—and lots of courses still to come! She smiled forgivingly at Charles and spoke the exact truth.
    â€œI’m starving,” she said.
    â€œAll right,” said Charles, “put it away. I love to see you eating. You’re about the only girl I know who does. I took a young thing out the other night, and she dined on four cocktails and two spoonfuls of grape-fruit. Most embarrassing for me, because I’d been playing golf and was all set for a good square meal.”
    Ann ate every scrap of her hors d’œuvres . There was Indian corn, and little button mushrooms, and Russian salad, and cucumber, and sardine, and anchovy, and egg, and a fat green olive. When she had finished the last grain of Indian corn she felt better. Charles’ face came into focus again and stayed there. It was much more comfortable like that. She hoped he had not noticed anything, but for the first few minutes or so the room had been full of little dancing sparks, very horrid and dazzling, with Charles’ face coming and going in the middle of them like a conjuring trick.
    The waiter changed her plate and gave her a thick creamy soup with asparagus tips in it. After that there was going to be salmon, and cold pie, and pêche Melba . She smiled so sweetly at Charles that he very nearly lost his head, and only saved himself by immediately plunging into anecdote. He would certainly propose to Ann before lunch was over, but common decency forbids a host to offer marriage with the soup, because if the girl says no—and Ann was quite certain to say no—there is bound to be a blight over the rest of the meal. Besides, he had better tell her about Bewley first. He finished a story rather lamely, and said,
    â€œI’m putting Bewley up for sale.”
    Ann laid her fish-knife and fork together upon an empty plate. Hors d’œuvres , soup, salmon—and she felt as if she had only just begun. She hoped there would be a very big helping of pie. Could you ask for a second helping at the Luxe? Charles had said something about Bewley. He was repeating it with that quick, dark frown of his.
    â€œBewley’s got to go.”
    Why didn’t she say something? Was it going to make a difference? Would she take him with Bewley, and say no if Bewley had to go? Did he want her if she was like that? He didn’t know the answers to the first two questions, but he knew that one. Whatever she did and whatever she was, he wanted Ann. Lord—how he wanted Ann! He said sharply,
    â€œWhy don’t you say something?”
    Ann found something to say. She said,
    â€œI’m sorry”; and then, “Is it because of money?”
    Charles saw Bewley under the August sun—dark woods, moorland purple with heather, a blue edge of sea, security, five hundred years of possession, the oaks that were there when the Stuarts reigned an an Anstruther had ridden out to die at Marston Moor He said,
    â€œI can’t keep it up. The whole show’s dropping to pieces—bottom falling out of everything. It’ll have to go.”
    â€œYou should look out for an heiress,” said Ann lightly.
    If she did not speak lightly and