Duck Season Death Read Online Free PDF Page A

became convinced. She even looked for word from him, but when no letter came she told herself that, of course, it would not be proper for him to get in touch with her yet.
    But that did not stop her from raking the crowded city streets and passing to and fro in front of the hotel where she knew he stayed when he was in Melbourne. But, of course, he intended waiting until they met again at their first place of meeting—the Duck and Dog at Dunbavin. It was the sort of romantic gesture that she could appreciate, and she began to mark off the dates on her calendar.
    Thus, as the weeks went by and became days, Adelaide worked herself up to a feverish, erotic pitch which was as pitiful as it was dangerous.
    IV
    I should have checked in to a larger hotel, thought Jeffrey. Here I stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe if I talked like some of these Aussies—“Oi’m stying at the Hotel Broight,” he essayed aloud, and made a derisive sound.
    â€˜Stying’ is just about it, he thought, staring at the dirty curtains which shrouded dirtier windows overlooking the rubbish-littered backyard of the hotel. Lying on the bed, cradling a glass of beer on his chest, he remembered the way the chambermaid had said, “You’re an American, aren’t you? Just fancy!” as though he was someone from Mars.
    Hell, didn’t they remember the Yanks here? It wasn’t so long ago. Maybe folks’ memories are short when they know they should be grateful. It didn’t seem that long ago to him since they had been here. Camp Pell, they had called it. He had taken a ride out there, just for old times’ sake, to have a look at it—to remember himself as a kid in olive drab, sweating it out in the South Pacific Theatre. The cab driver had asked him if he had ever come up against that American soldier who murdered those three women.
    Jeffrey’s body grew taut and his fingers suddenly clenched on the glass. He raised his head and, finishing the beer, set the glass on the bed table which already had a film of dust on it before the ashtray overflowed with his own cigarette ends. He lay back again, his hands under his head and a wry grin on his lips. That’s a word you’ll have to get used to, son, he told himself.
    â€˜But they won’t get me like they got Leonski—I’m not a psychopathic strangler. There’s a difference between murdering for the hell of it and—the bastard, the dirty rotten bastard!’ he thought suddenly, burning up.
    Funny how the years hadn’t minimised his fury or mellowed his bitterness. He had carried the injury with him all this time, so that he felt almost that he had grown up with it—that it was as much a part of him and as familiar as his own body. He always knew that one day he would come back to do what he had sworn to do on that reeking, sweltering atoll somewhere in the Pacific where he had received the news. Instinctively his hand crept to his inside coat pocket, encountering first the holster where his Luger lay snug against his side, then the old shagreen wallet where he had kept the letter from that moment outside the master-sergeant’s palm-thatched hut. Return and revenge had been his goal in the same way as other men’s goals were to be president of a company or captain of a baseball team. He had worked towards it, preparing himself both physically and mentally.
    Sometimes he had tried to fight against inexorable ambition which kept driving him on, telling himself that the years werepassing, what did it matter, what had happened to him had happened to other men and would happen again. But still he went on making plans and marking every saved dollar for a special purpose.
    A knock at the door caused him to start up tensely. “Are you there, Mr Jeffrey? There’s someone to see you.”
    He guessed who it would be, but still he asked for the name before unlocking the door.
    A neatly dressed, middle-aged man, rather