Killdozer! Read Online Free PDF Page B

is conceived all over again, and possession takes place once more, then and there. To be spared that, I never deny what I have said, and never apologize for it. It would only make it worse.
    “That’s how it happens, Eddie, and it can’t be changed. I was always susceptible, and I made the condition permanent and acute by my experiments when I was alone in the mountains. I can’t change, Eddie. I shouldn’t have married you, shouldn’t have done this to you. I—guess this is the wind-up. I’ll get out.” She tried a weak little laugh. “Good thing we haven’t been married long enough to have collected a house and a mess of furniture, eh?”
    “Yeh,” I said. I watched her as she got up, slipped into a house coat, and began to pack. She moved swiftly about the place, collecting the little odds and ends that I had just been learning to expect in my apartment. It had taken some learning, too. Bachelor digs sure get made over when a woman comes into them. After a while I went over and got into the bed. It was still a little warm and smelled nice. I turned my face to the wall, and in a minute I heard her thump a suitcase down beside the others in the middle of the room. She was looking at me; I could feel her eyes on the nape of my neck. I knew she was dressed for the street, all ready to go.
    “Maria …”
    “Yes, Eddie?” She answered a little too quickly to hide the fact that she wasn’t as collected as she hoped.
    “Wake me up around four, will you? We’ll eat us some scrambled eggs and then take that spin around the park like we did when we were single.”
    There was a thump when she dropped her handbag, and then she was all over me. I put my arms around her and held her until she gasped for breath, and then I ginned at her and got me some sleep.
    After that I did my clubbing solo and let Maria build me a home. She loved it. If she missed not seeing people, she didn’t complain. I guess she got used to it after a while; I know I did. Things went alongbeautifully until Ivor Jones, the station manager, called Jakie Feltner and me into his office one evening. Neither of us knew what was up, but we both had guesses.
    Jones pursed his lips and took off his glasses as we came in. He was a dried-up little man, a stickler for detail but a pretty good man to work for. He told us to sit, handed cigarettes around.
    “Boys, I want you to help me. I don’t have to tell you how the station is making out. I think we all are satisfied with it, but you know and I know that a small independent broadcasting station can’t make as much or pay as much as a big network outlet. Now, one of the network stations here is shutting down. It needs complete new equipment, and the corporation wouldn’t mind doing it. But since there are too many stations here already, and since we are equipped up to the hilt with all the latest, I rather think they’d like to take us over. They’d boost our power ten thousand watts. We’d run all their releases and therefore share in their income. You boys, as staff announcers, stand to get a twenty-per-cent raise. How’s it sound?”
    “Swell,” said Jakie. I nodded.
    “I’m sold on it,” said Jones. “If we could get Shanaman, the general manager of the Eastern Network, to feel the same way, we could come to terms. I’ve done all I could think of in a business way. But it’ll take a little more than that. If I can mellow the old boy down a bit with a swell dinner-party, I might get him to sign the papers then and there. I want you two to come and bring your women. It’ll be next Friday night. Shanaman’s bringing his wife. My house. You’ll be there?”
    “Formal?” asked Jakie. Jones nodded.
    “I’d rather not, Mr. Jones,” I said. “I sort of had an engagement—”
    “Break it,” Jones said. “Shanaman’s interested in meeting you. As a matter of fact, your show is a high spot, a real selling point for the station. You’ve got to come. And bring that new wife of