Gold Comes in Bricks Read Online Free PDF Page A

she’d show me if our positions were reversed. I want you to—” Carter had noticed she’d come into the room and had coughed significantly. Mrs. Ashbury had looked up, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and started talking about something else with the swift garrulity of one who is trying to cover up.
    Alta was silent for a while after she told me that, and then said moodily she supposed she was telling me things she had no right to, but for some reason or other I inspired confidence, that she felt I was loyal to her father, and that if I was going in business with him, I’d have to watch her stepmother, Bob, and Bernard Carter. Then she added a few words about Dr. Parkerdale. He was, it seemed, one of the fashionable boys with a good bedside manner. Every time Mrs. Ashbury had a dizzy spell from eating too much, Dr. Parkerdale became as gravely concerned as though it were the first symptom of a world-wide epidemic of infantile paralysis.
    She told me that much, then clamped her lips shut lightly.
    I said, “Go ahead.”
    “With what?” she asked.
    “The rest of it.”
    “The rest of what?”
    “The rest of the things I should know.”
    “I’ve told you too much already.”
    “Not enough,” I said.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “I’m going in business with your father. He’s going to invest a bunch of money. I’ve got to see that he gets a fair return on his investment. I’ve got to get along with Mrs. Ashbury. I want to know how to do it.”
    She said hastily, “You leave her alone. Keep out of her way, and listen. Don’t—don’t ever—”
    “Don’t ever what?” I asked.
    “Don’t ever trust yourself alone with her,” she said. “If she wants to take exercise in the gymnasium, be sure to have someone else there all the time she’s there.”
    I made the mistake of laughing and said, “Oh, surely she wouldn’t—”
    She turned on me furiously. “I tell you,” she said, “I know her. She’s a creature of physical appetites and animal cunning. She simply can’t control herself. All this high — blood — pressure business is simply the result of overeating and overindulgence. She’s put on twenty pounds since Dad married her.”
    “Your father,” I said, “is nobody’s fool.”
    "Of course he isn’t, but she’s worked out a technique that no man can fight against. Whenever she wants anything and anyone balks her, she starts working herself up to a high pitch of excitement, then she telephones for Doctor Parkerdale. He comes rushing out as though it were a matter of life and death, takes her blood pressure, and starts tiptoeing around the house until he’s created the proper impression. Then he takes whoever is responsible off to one side and says very gently and with his best professional manner that Mrs. Ashbury really isn’t herself, that she simply mustn’t become excited, that if he can only keep her perfectly calm for a period of several months, he can cure her blood pressure, that then she can start taking exercise and reduce her weight and be her normal self, but that whenever there’s an argument and she becomes excited, all the good that he’s done is wiped out, and he has to go back and begin all over again.”
    I laughed and said, “That seems to be a hard game to beat.”
    She was furious at me because I’d laughed. “Of course it’s a hard game to beat,” she said. “You can’t beat it. Doctor Parkerdale says that it doesn’t make any difference whether she’s right or wrong, that one mustn’t argue with her. That means you have to give in to her all the time. That means she’s becoming more selfish and spoiled every minute of the time. Her temper is getting more ungovernable. She’s getting more selfish, more—”
    “How about Bernard Carter?” I asked. “Does he get along with her?”
    “Bernard Carter,” she snorted. “Bernard Carter and his business deal! He’s the man who comes around when Father goes away. She may fool Dad with