You're All Alone (illustrated) Read Free

office must have heard the slap if they hadn’t seen it. But with the universal middle-class reluctance, Carr thought, to recognize that nasty things happened in the world, they pretended not to notice.
    The big blonde flicked into place a shellacked curl, glancing around her as if at so much dirt. Leisurely she turned and stalked out.

CHAPTER II
The most terrible secret in the world? Here’s a hint. Think about the people closest to you. What do you know about what’s really going on inside their heads? Nothing, brother, nothing at all . . .
    CARR walked back to his desk.
    His face felt hot, his mind turbulent, the office sinister. The dumpy man in blue jeans had already taken the girl’s place, but Carr ignored him. He didn’t sit down. The scrap of paper on which the girl had scribbled caught his eye. He picked it up.
Watch out for the wall-eyed blonde, the young man without a hand, and the affable-seeming older man. But the small dark man with glasses may be your friend.
    Carr frowned grotesquely. “. . . walleyed blonde . . .”—that must be the woman who had watched. But as for the other three—“. . . small dark man with glasses may be your friend . . .”—why, it sounded like a charade.
    “Carr, if you can spare a moment . . .” Carr recognized Tom Elvested’s voice but for the moment he ignored it. He started to turn over the paper to see if the frightened girl had scribbled anything on the other side, when—
    “. . . I would like to introduce Jane Gregg,” Tom finished.
    Carr looked around at Tom—and forgot everything else.
    Big Tom Elvested was smiling fatuously. “Jane,” he said, “this is Carr Mackay. Carr, this is Jane.” And he moved his hand in the gesture of one who gives a friendly squeeze to the elbow of the person standing beside him.
    Only there was no person standing beside him.
    Where Tom’s gesture had indicated Jane Gregg should be standing, there was only empty air.
    Tom’s smiling face went from empty air to Carr and back again. He said, “I’ve been wanting to get you two together for a long time.”
    Carr almost laughed, there was something so droll about the realism of Tom’s actions. He remembered the pantomimes in the acting class at college, when you pretended to eat a dinner or drive an automobile, without any props, just going through the motions. In that class Tom Elvested would have rated an A-plus.
    Tom nodded his head and coyly asked the empty air, “And does he seem as interesting, now that you’ve actually met him?”
    Suddenly Carr didn’t want to laugh at all. If there was anything big Tom Elvested ordinarily wasn’t, it was an actor.
    “She’s a cute little trick, isn’t she, Carr?” Tom continued, giving the air another playful pat.
    Carr moved forward, incidently running a hand through the air, which was quite as empty as it looked. “Cut the kidding, Tom,” he said.
    Tom merely rocked on his heels, like an elephant being silly. Once again his hand moved out, this time to flick the air at a point a foot higher. “And such lovely hair. I always go for the page boy style myself.”
    “Cut it out, Tom, please,” Carr said seriously.
    “Of course, maybe she’s a little young for you,” Tom babbled on.
    “Cut it out!” Carr snapped. His face was hardly a foot from Tom’s, but Tom didn’t seem to see him at all. Instead he kept looking through Carr toward where Carr had been standing before. And he kept on playfully patting the air.
    “Oh yes,” he assured the air with a smirk, “Carr’s quite a wolf. That’s the reason he had those few gray hairs. They’re a wolf insignia. You’ll have to watch your step with him.”
    “Cut it out!” Carr repeated angrily and grabbed Tom firmly by the shoulders.
    What happened made Carr wish he hadn’t. Tom Elvested’s face grew strained and red, like an enraged baby’s. An intense throbbing was transmitted to Carr’s hands. And from Tom’s lips came a mounting, meaningless mutter, like a