Call After Midnight Read Online Free PDF Page A

very annoying to you. Headlines. Mrs. Peter Vleedam attempts suicide?”
    Fiora sat up again violently. She pushed back her blond hair, which she wore long and full around her pretty face. “I didn’t attempt suicide! Stop saying that! Somebody shot me. I don’t want to die. I want a doctor.”
    “You’re not going to die, dear.” Blanche rose and went to Peter. Her eyes warmed and glowed; her face was now smiling and warm, too. Men always liked Blanche; she seemed to turn on a kind of feminine radiance at will. “Peter, I’m only trying to help you both. Besides—I don’t like to say this but I must—it’ll be difficult to explain, won’t it? I mean, Jenny. Her presence here. How are you going to explain that to the police? Don’t you think that they may wonder just what terms you are on with Jenny? They may even jump to the conclusion that you and Fiora quarreled because of Jenny. Oh, I know you didn’t! I’m only talking off of the top of my head—trying to think of every possibility, trying to help you both—”
    Fiora said shrilly, “But I wanted Jenny, too …She’s my friend,” she added and gave Jenny a curious look which Jenny could never in her life have interpreted. She glanced at Peter whose face showed nothing.
    Blanche smiled at Fiora. “Oh, Fiora! You really must face facts. Jenny was Peter’s wife and you—that is, we all know the situation.” She flashed a smile at Jenny. “Forgive me, Jenny, This is all rather unpleasant for you—”
    Fiora cut in swiftly as a knife, “I wanted Jenny to come! I told Peter I was glad he had phoned to her!”
    Jenny felt that things had gone far enough; she also felt as if she were walking through a strange and shadowy jungle. But one thing was clear. She said, “Cal is right. He’ll call the doctor—”
    Cal spoke from the doorway. “No use arguing. It’s been done. He’ll be here in fifteen minutes or so.” He came back to his chair, settled down, lifted his glass and said, “We may as well make ourselves comfortable and wait.”
    Blanche turned toward Cal so Jenny could not see her face, yet somehow she imagined a change in it from radiance and warmth to utter but polite blankness. She said, “You’ve done a harmful and unnecessary thing. I’m sorry.” She sat down and took up her cigarette.
    “Peter, I’m frightened,” Fiora said.
    “I don’t think there’s any need to be,” Peter said. “Calling the doctor is merely a precaution.” He sat down on the end of the sofa. Fiora put her hand in a proprietary way on his arm. Jenny looked away.
    Cal said, “By the way, what happened to the gun?”
    Peter looked slowly at Cal. Blanche replied. “Fiora put it back in the drawer in the hall—”
    “I didn’t!” Fiora cried. “I never touched that gun.”
    “Your gun?” Cal said to Peter.
    “I’ve got a gun, yes. I keep it in a drawer in the table, right there in the hall. It’s still there.”
    “We looked,” Blanche said. “But we didn’t think of looking for it until after I’d got bandages and Peter had got some brandy for Fiora. She was here on the sofa. She had plenty of time to get the gun from wherever she dropped it and put it back in the drawer—”
    “I didn’t!” Fiora said furiously. “You keep saying that—”
    “What did you do with the slug, Peter?” Cal asked.
    “I pitched it out into the Sound.”
    Cal said shortly, “Let me see the gun.”
    “All right,” Peter said agreeably, rose and went out into the hall. Cal followed him. The women could hear their voices.
    “Hasn’t been fired,” Cal said. “Not lately. At least I don’t think so.”
    Peter sounded a little surprised. “Do you know, I never thought of that! Shows you, I really did lose my head.”
    “Do you have any other guns?”
    “No.”
    “Then somebody did come into the house and take a shot at Fiora.”
    Fiora said to Blanche, “I told you so.”
    “Too bad you threw away that slug,” Cal said, in the hall. “It