Curtain for a Jester Read Online Free PDF Page B

do like cats,” Monteath said. “But isn’t it rather—”
    â€œNot really,” Pam said. “And how can anybody sleep after—after all that? Can you, Jerry?”
    Jerry North thought he might; thought he very easily might. But he did not say this. Monteath hesitated. Then he said, “I’d like to. For only a few minutes, I promise,” thus somewhat surprising both of the Norths.
    They stopped. Drinks were suggested, coffee was agreed upon. The cats awoke; they smelled Arthur Monteath, who put a hand close to the floor so that it might be smelled conveniently; who was accepted at once by Sherry, partially accepted by Gin, rejected—but without undue prejudice—by Martini who, when Pam finally sat down (humans wasted more time) occupied Pam’s lap, from that safety to stare at Monteath with the roundest of blue eyes.
    Conversation was not active. Monteath was in New York for a few days only, going then to Washington. He would telephone Jerry before he left and arrange an appointment to discuss the ambassador’s book. Where the world went from where it was, no good place, was anybody’s guess. Monteath was abstracted, the major part of his mind clearly elsewhere.
    â€œMr. Wilmot certainly goes to a lot of trouble,” Pam said at one point. “Why a special face on the dummy?”
    â€œWhy any of it?” Jerry said. “What an evening!”
    â€œAn—an inventive man,” Monteath said, of Wilmot, but let it drop there. Sherry rubbed against his leg and he stroked her, absently. Then he stood up, quite suddenly. He would, he said, be getting along. He appreciated the coffee. He smiled, then, and the smile changed his face.
    â€œThe fact is,” he said, “I’m keeping us all up.”
    The protest was only polite. They went with him to the door, waited until the elevator came, the door closed and the mechanism ground.
    â€œThere wasn’t much point to that, was there?” Jerry enquired, and yawned and undid his tie. “What was all that about not being able to go to sleep?”
    Pamela said she didn’t know, and yawned too. It had been an idea, only an idea; not a good idea. Of course, she added, there was always the ambassador’s book. But to that Jerry, coat-less, removing studs from his shirt, said only, sleepily, “Huh,” dismissing all books by all ambassadors.
    Yet they were too sleepy, too tired, to hurry into bed. In robes, they drifted back to the living room, sleepily they drank more coffee, which did not arouse them. The cats suggested activities. Martini brought a battered catnip mouse, urging that it be thrown, and Jerry threw it, feebly.
    â€œWhy don’t we go to bed?” Pam asked. “Wake up and go to bed?” and absently poured herself the remaining half cup of not hot coffee. Jerry didn’t know; he said he didn’t know, and did not move. Then nobody said anything and then Jerry began to breathe deeply.
    That sufficiently aroused Pam, who sufficiently aroused Jerry. But they still went to their beds without opening the window and Pam was just experiencing a pleasant blurring of thought when she remembered.
    She went to the window, from which one could look down to a quiet street, and raised it wide.
    And then, because of what she saw, she drew her breath in quickly and then cried out, “ Jerry! Jerry! ”
    â€œWha—what!” Jerry said, coming out of sleep. “ What!? ”
    â€œ Something just fell by, ” Pam said. “Something— Jerry, it was a man! Jerry— somebody fell out! ”
    She had turned from the window.
    â€œJerry,” she said. “ I think it was Mr. Wilmot! ”
    There was a group already there. The superintendent of the building was there, with his wife, who hugged around her a robe she filled without shaping. Several people had come out of nowhere to form a circle, and more came. Then the police came in a