Phantom lady Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking at it does something to me—" And then he went on innocently, "How'd you happen to slip up on an item as important as the tie, when you went to all the trouble of matching everything else up? Haven't you got a blue tie?"
    Henderson protested almost pleadingly. "What're you trying to do to me? Can't you see I can't talk about trifles like—"
    He asked the question again, as tonelessly as before. "Haven't you got a blue tie, Mr. Henderson?"
    Henderson ran his hand up through his hair. "Are you trying to drive me out of my mind?" He said it very quietly, as though this small talk was almost unendurable. "Yes, I have a blue tie. Inside, on my tie rack, I think."
    "Then how'd you come to skip it when you were putting on an outfit like this? It cries out for it." The detective gestured disarmingly. "Unless, of course, you did have it on to begin with, changed your mind at the last minute, whipped it off", and put on the one you're wearing instead." • Henderson said, "What's the difference? Why do you keep this up?" His voice went up a note. "My wife is dead. I'm all cracked up inside. What's the difference what color tie I did or didn't put on?"

    It went on, as relentlessly as drops of water falling one by one upon the head. "Are you sure you didn't have it on originally, then change your mind—?"
    His voice was smothered. "Yes, I'm sure. It's hanging from my tie rack in there."
    The detective said guilelessly, "No, it isn't hanging from your tie rack. That's why I'm asking. You know those little vertical notches running down your tie rack, like a fish's backbone? We found the one it belongs on, the one you usually kept it strung through, because that was the only vacant one on the whole gadget. And that was the lowest one of all, in other words all the ties on the upper ones overlapped it as they hung down straight. So you see. it was removed from under all the other ties, which means you must have gone there and selected it originally, not just pulled it off at random from the top. Now what bothers me is why, if you went to all the trouble of lifting up all your other ties and selecting that one from underneath, and withdrawing it from the rack, you then changed your mind and went back to the one you'd already been wearing all dav at business, and which didn't go with your after dark outfit."
    Henderson hit himself smartly at the ridge of the forehead with the heel of one hand. He sprang up. '"I can't stand this!" he muttered. "I can't stand any more of it. I tell you! Come out with what you're doing it for, or else stop it! If it's not on the tie rack, then where is it? I haven't got it on! Where is it? You tell me, if you know! Whats the difference where it is, anyway?"
    "A great deal of difference, Mr. Henderson."
    There was a long wait after that; so long that he started to get pale even before it had come to an end.
    "It was knotted tight around your wife's neck. So tight it killed her. So tight it will have to be cut loose with a knife to get it off."

    The Hundred and Forty-Ninth Day Before the Execution
    DAYBREAK
    A thousand questions later, the early light of day peering in the windows made the room look different, somehow, although everything in it was the same, including the people. It looked like a room in which an all-night party had taken place. Cigarette ends spilling over in every possible container, and many that weren't intended as such. The cobalt blue lamp was still there, looking strange in the dawn with its halo of faded electric light. The photographs were still there: hers a He now, a picture of someone that no longer existed.
    They all looked and acted like men suffering from a hangover. They had their coats and vests off, and their shirt collars open. One of them was in the bathroom, freshening up at the cold water tap. You could hear him snorting through the open door. The other two kept smoking and moving restlessly around. Only Henderson was sitting quiet. He was still sitting on the same