Psycho Read Free Page A

over four thousand paid off already. I figure another couple of years and I'll be clear."
    "But I don't understand—if you're in debt, then how can you afford to take a trip like this?"
    Sam grinned at her. "I won it in a contest. That's right—a dealer's sales contest sponsored by one of these farm-machinery outfits. I wasn't trying to win a trip at all, just hustling to pay off creditors. But they notified me I'd copped first prize in my territory.
    "I tried to settle for a cash deal instead, but they wouldn't go for it. Trip or nothing. Well, this is a slack month, and I've got an honest clerk working for me. I figured I might as well take a free vacation. So here I am. And here you are." He grinned, then sighed. "I wish it was our honeymoon."
    "Sam, why couldn't it be? I mean—"
    But he sighed again and shook his head. "We'll have to wait. It may take two—three years before everything is paid off."
    "I don' want to wait! I don't care about the money. I could quit my job, work in your store—"
    "And sleep in it too, the way I do?" He managed a grin again, but it was no more cheerful than the sigh. "That's right. Rigged up a place for myself in the back room. I'm living on baked beans most of the time. Folks say I'm tighter than the town banker."
    "But what's the point?" Mary asked. "I mean, if you lived decently it would only take a year or so longer to pay off what you owe. And meanwhile—"
    "Meanwhile, I have to live in Fairvale. It's a nice town, but a small one. Everybody knows everybody else's business. As long as I'm in there pitching, I've got their respect. They go out of their way to trade with me—they all know the situation and appreciate I'm trying to do my best. Dad had a good reputation, in spite of the way things turned out. I want to keep that for myself and for the business. And for us, in the future. Now that's more important than ever. Don't you see?"
    "The future." Mary sighed. "Two or three years, you said."
    "I'm sorry. But when we get married I want us to have a decent home, nice things. That costs money. At least you need credit. As it is, I'm stretching payments with suppliers all down the line—they'll play ball as long as they know everything I make goes toward paying off what I owe them. It isn't easy and it isn't pleasant. But I know what I want, and I can't settle for less. So you'll just have to be patient, darling."
    So she was patient. But not until she learned that no amount of further persuasion—verbal or physical—would sway him.
    There the situation stood when the cruise ended. And there it had remained, for well over a year. Mary had driven up to visit him last summer; she saw the town, the store, the fresh figures in the ledger which showed that Sam had paid off an additional five thousand dollars. "Only eleven thousand to go," he told her proudly. "Another two years, maybe even less.
    Two years . In two years, she'd be twenty-nine. She couldn't afford to pull a bluff, stage a scene and walk out on him like some young girl of twenty. She knew there wouldn't be many more Sam Loomises in her life. So she smiled, and nodded, and went back home to the Lowery Agency.
    She went back to the Lowery Agency and watched old man Lowery take his steady five per cent on every sale he made. She watched him buy up shaky mortgages and foreclose, watched him make quick, cunning, cutthroat cash offers to desperate sellers and then turn around and take a fat profit on a fast, easy resale. People were always buying, always selling. All Lowery did was stand in the middle, extracting a percentage from both parties just for bringing buyer and seller together. He performed no other real service to justify his existence. And yet he was rich. It wouldn't take him two years to sweat out an eleven thousand dollar debt. He could sometimes make as much in two months.
    Mary hated him, and she hated a lot of the buyers and sellers he did business with, because they were rich, too. This Tommy Cassidy was