Conjure Wife Read Online Free PDF Page B

were clever, all right. You had me eating out of your hand, you had me taking everything lying down, you had me scared. But once I got my first suspicion, I saw the whole plot clear as day. Everything fitted, everything led back to you, everything —”
    “Including the fact that you were flunked out of two other colleges before you ever came to Hempnell?”
    “There! I knew you were prejudiced against me from the start!”
    “Jennings,” Norman said wearily, “I’ve listened to all I’m going to. If you have any grievances, present them to Dean Gunnison.”
    “Do you mean to say you won’t take any action?”
    “Yes, I mean just that.”
    “Is that final?”
    “Yes, it’s final.”
    “Very well, Saylor. Then all I can say to you is, Watch out! Watch out, Saylor. Watch out!”
    There was a click at the other end of the line. Norman gently put the phone back in its cradle. Oh, damn Theodore Jennings’ parents! Not because they were hypocritical, vain, reactionary stuffed-shirts, but because they had such cruel pride that they were determined to shove through college a sensitive, selfish, wordy, somewhat subnormal boy, as narrow-minded as they were though not one-tenth as canny. And damn President Pollard for kowtowing so ineptly to their wealth and political influence that he had let the boy into Hempnell knowing perfectly well he’d fail.
    Norman put the screen in front of the fire, switched out the living room lights and started toward the bedroom in the yellow glow fanning out from the hall.
    Again the phone jangled. Norman looked at it curiously for a moment before he picked it up.
    “Hello.”
    There was no reply. He waited for a few moments. Then, “Hello?” he repeated.
    Still there was no reply, He was about to hang up when he thought he caught the sound of breathing
    — excited, uneven, choked.
    “Who is it?” he said sharply. “This is Professor Saylor. Please speak up.”
    He still seemed to hear the breathing. That was all.
    Then out of the small black mystery of the phone came one word, enunciated slowly and with difficulty, in a voice that was deep yet throbbed with an almost fantastic intimacy.
    “Darling!”
    Norman swallowed. He didn’t seem to recognize this voice at all. Before he could think what to say, it went on, more swiftly, but otherwise unchanged.
    “Oh Norman, how glad I am that at last I’ve found the courage to speak where you wouldn’t. I’m ready now, darling, I’m ready. You only need to come to me.”
    “Really?” Norman - temporized in amazement. It seemed to him now that there was something faintly familiar about the voice, not in its tone, but in its phrasing and rhythm.
    “Come to me, lover, come to me. Take me to some place where we’ll be alone. All alone. I’ll be your mistress. I’ll be your slave. Subject me to you. Do anything you want to me.”
    Norman wanted to laugh uproariously, yet his heart was pounding a little. Nice, perhaps, if it were real, but there was something so clownish about it. Was it a joke? he suddenly asked himself.
    “I’m lying here talking to you without any clothes on, darling. There’s just a tiny pink lamp by the bed. Oh take me to some lonely tropical isle and we’ll make passionate love together. I’ll hurt you and you’ll hurt me. And then we’ll swim in the moonlight with white petals drifting down onto the water.”
    Yes, it was a joke all right, it just had to be, he decided with a twinge of only half-humorous regret. And then there suddenly occurred to him the one person capable of playing such a joke.
    “So come, Norman, come, and take me into the darkness,” the voice continued.
    “All right, I will,” he replied briskly. “And after I’ve made passionate love to you I’ll switch on the light and I’ll say, ‘Mona Utell, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’”
    “Mona?” The voice rose in pitch. “Mona?”
    “Yes indeed, Mona!” he assured her laughingly. “You’re the only actress I know,