Mr. Zero Read Free

don’t indeed.” The tears were falling faster now. They welled up, ran over, and fell. They kept on falling. They put out Gay’s little angry flame. She would have to take a hand. She had known that all the time of course. You can’t just let an idiotic creature down because it doesn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. She tossed back her hair and said,
    â€œOh, I’ll help you. You always knew I would. Stop crying, Silly Billy baby, and tell me what it’s all about. Whatever have you been and gone and done?”

III
    Sylvia drew a long sighing breath, Dabbed her eyes with a mauve handkerchief, and opened a grey suede bag with a diamond initial on it.
    Gay cocked her eye at it.
    â€œWedding present?” she enquired.
    â€œNo—Francis—for Christmas. Rather nice, isn’t it?” From an inner pocket she produced a scrap of newspaper. “There—you’d better read it.”
    The piece of paper was about five inches long and two inches wide. It looked as if it had been torn off the edge of the Times . On the blank margin there was scrawled in pencil:
    â€œSame place. Same time. Same money.”
    The words stood one below the other like the rungs of a ladder, the letters coarsely printed with a blunt blue pencil. Gay frowned at them:
    â€œWhat does it mean?”
    â€œI didn’t go,” said Sylvia in a tired voice. “Then I got this one.”
    She fished out another piece of newspaper. A tear splashed down on it and smudged the blue pencil, but it was legible enough. In the same coarse scrawl Gay read:
    â€œTomorrow without fail, or your husband will know.”
    Her lips tightened. What an absolute first-class prize idiot Sylvia was.
    â€œLook here, Sylly, it’s no good beating about the bush. What have you been doing that Francis mustn’t know? Is it another man?”
    â€œOh, no!” said Sylvia. “Oh, no—really not, darling. I—I wouldn’t!”
    Gay was a good deal relieved, because if there wasn’t another man, the obvious thing to do was to tell Francis Colesborough and get him to wring this blackmailing creature’s neck. She said so with a good deal of vigour. A vivid little creature in spite of the dark grey coat and black beret. Eyes, colour and lips were all alive as she pointed out the folly of practising concealments from your husband.
    â€œYou go straight home and tell him and you won’t have any more trouble.”
    Sylvia paled visibly, clasped and unclasped her hands, and appeared completely panic-stricken.
    â€œOh, Gay—I couldn’t!”
    â€œWhy couldn’t you?”
    â€œOh, Gay, I couldn’t—I really couldn’t!”
    Gay leaned back against the bed. What was it all about? She said,
    â€œSylvia, what’s Francis like?”
    Because, after all, that was what really mattered. You could tell things to some people, and you couldn’t tell them to others. Everything really depended on what Francis was like.
    Sylvia responded with a slightly puzzled air.
    â€œWell, he’s tall—and fair—and—”
    â€œYes—I saw him at the wedding, and that time at Cole Lester. But I don’t want to know what size collar he takes, or what his handicap is at golf—I want to know what he’s like in himself.”
    â€œWell, he’s much older than I am. Let me see—you and Marcia are the same age—and Marcia is twenty—and I’m two years older—so I’m twenty-two—and Francis was twenty years older than me when we married—and that was a year ago—”
    Gay looked at her almost with awe.
    â€œIn fact, he’s forty-two. Sylly, can’t you really remember how old you are without counting up from Marcia and me?”
    â€œYou’re so good at figures,” said Sylvia in a helpless tone.
    The conversation seemed to have slid right away from Francis. That was what happened when