All These Condemned Read Online Free PDF Page B

hanging around the grownups so much.
    “Your house is absolutely lovely,” Mavis told Wilma.
    “Thank you, darling. Now come on, dears. I’ll show you your room. José should have your luggage in by now.”
    We went off the terrace through a door in a glass wall and through a perfectly tremendous room, and then down the corridor of what was apparently a bedroom wing, to the first door. José was putting the last suitcase on a rack. We had a big window overlooking the lake. The room was paneled in some silvery wood. Everything was built in. A big dressing room between the bedroom and the bath turned it into a semisuite.
    “Gosh!” Mavis said. It was the first honest sound I had heard out of her in a month. She recouped lost ground immediately, saying, “It’s perfectly dahling, dahling.”
    “Suppose I send José in with a drink while you dears are freshening up,” Wilma said.
    “Please,” Mavis said. “A Martini …”
    “Extra dry, coming up. And you, Paul?”
    “Bourbon and water, thanks,” I said. Mavis gave me the stone glare. I am supposed to take up Martinis. It makes no difference to her that to me they taste like battery acid and get me howling drunk in twenty minutes. I’m supposed to conform.
    Wilma left and we did some unpacking in sepulchral silence. Mavis stalked into the bath first. José brought the drinks, Mavis’ in one of those little bottle things the way they’re served in the better bars. I laid out a pair of fresh slacks and a gray gabardine shirt. Mavis came out of the bathroom with her dress over her arm and took a fast knock at the Martini.
    “Go easy on that nitro, honey,” I told her. “Last time you lost your sawdust.”
    “Did I indeed?” she asked, one eyebrow high, a Wilma look.
    “Your samba with that Hayes phony was more utilitarian than graceful.”
    “Gil Hayes is a talented artist.”
    “Gil Hayes is a carefully calculated eccentric. The rhythmic integrity of spatial design.” I made a rude noise.
    “Oh, shut up,” she said. It was the second honest sound she’d made within twenty minutes. Maybe there was hope left. From the neck down she looked very pink and pleasant indeed. She detected the examination and turned away quickly, saying, “Don’t get messy.”
    When I came out of the bathroom she was gone, glass and all. I sat on the bed and finished my bourbon and thought dark thoughts about the week end. We couldn’t legitimately leave until Sunday before noon. That meant getting through two evenings and one day of fun and games. And it would be a week end like one of those simplified models of the structure of the atom, with Wilma as the nucleus, and all her pet electrons whirling around the edge.
    I dressed and went out. I found Randy in the big living room. He was biting his lip and fiddling with Wilma’s high-fidelity setup. It was built into the west wall. I know a little bit about such things, so I went over and watched him diddle around. There was a Magnecord tape recorder racked the way you see them in radio studios. It had the hubs for one-hour tapes. There was a big Fisher amplifier, a Garrard changer fitted into a drawer, a Craftsman tuner, a big corner speaker enclosure. There was a control panel with switches marked for the various rooms so you could shunt the music around where you wanted it, an electronic mixer panel, anda studio mike. It looked like a good three thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. Randy, with shaky hands, was trying to thread the tape around the empty hub and across the heads of the recorder. He gave me a nervous smile. “Little music coming up,” he said.
    Wilma came in off the terrace. “Really, Randy,” she said in a most unpleasant voice. “A simple little thing like that. Just get out of the way. Here. Hold my drink.”
    He held her glass. Her fingers were deft. She threaded the tape, fastened it to the empty reel, turned on the recorder. The tape began to turn slowly onto the empty reel. “Bring me a fresh