Swindlers Read Online Free PDF Page A

she
was in my arms and I could not think of anything but how much I
wanted her.
    “Danielle!” shouted St. James as he suddenly
came out on deck. He was still looking the other way.
    “God, if he sees us…!” whispered Danielle,
clutching my arm.
    I started to tell her that it was all right,
that he had started in the other direction, but she turned and
vanished into the darkness.
    “Oh, it’s you, Morrison,” said St. James as,
less than a minute later, he approached. He had removed his coat
and loosened his tie. He held a drink in his hand. “I had to get
out of there,” he explained with a gruff laugh. “Can’t stand people
who can’t hold their liquor. Besides, I had some work to do. Have
you seen Danielle? I thought I heard her come up on deck.”
    I could taste the lipstick on my mouth.
Danielle’s scent was all around me.
    “I just came out a few minutes ago.”
    A trace of disbelief, or so it seemed to my
guilty eyes, edged its way across his face. He offered me a
cigar.
    “Oh, I forgot – you don’t smoke. Neither do I
- just these.” He lit the cigar and with a practiced movement of
his slender wrist made the match go out. “You say you haven’t seen
her.” His gaze roamed the distant shore. “Must have been mistaken,”
he said as he puffed on the cigar. “Sound carries out here. She’s
probably down below.” His gaze, shrewd, knowing, and, if I was not
mistaken, sad with disappointment, moved slowly back to me. “Down
below with one of my guests, probably in bed.”
    I felt an emotion I clearly had no right to
have, a sharp twinge of jealousy, not because of what she was doing
with someone else – I knew very well she was not doing anything –
but the sinful, taunting knowledge that it was the kind of thing
she had done before.
    St. James puffed on his cigar, his eyes
glistening with something very close to regret. He leaned both
elbows on the railing and flicked away an ash, and then, a moment
later, stepped back and threw his cigar as far as he could,
watching as the faint red glow grew fainter still and finally
died.
    “She had that talent, you know; that talent
some women have. Even when she’s being unfaithful, even when you
know it, she can make you believe that she still belongs to you.” A
smile that beneath its cynicism seemed oddly sympathetic drifted
across his mouth. “You must have felt that, those few moments she
was out here, alone, with you.”
    And then he turned and walked away and did
not look back, and for the first time in a very long time I felt
something close to shame.
    I tried to blame it on the alcohol. I had not
had that much to drink, but the others had, and the rules of
conduct had been forgotten in the late night sensuality of men and
women who could not think but only feel. It was the worst excuse I
had ever heard, blaming my misbehavior on someone else’s state of
mind, like a burglar blaming his victim for leaving the doors
unlocked.
    The night was getting cooler. I pulled my
coat close around my throat and started walking, trying to clear my
head. The sky was full of stars, a shining audience to the brief
drama – comedy or farce? – that had just unfolded: the husband with
the faithless wife who, given half a chance, would be forever
faithful to a man she had only just met; a man with whom, had the
scene lasted just a little longer, she might have run away and
never once had occasion to regret it. I felt a kind of triumph, not
because I thought it might really have happened, but that I was
capable of imagining it. She was married, but what did the rules
mean to me? But then, why that feeling of a guilty secret betrayed
when I realized that St. James had known?
    Twice around the deck and I was through. Like
an actor leaving the stage, I waved my hand at the watching stars
and went below. The dining room had been abandoned, empty glasses
scattered on the table, some of what had been in them spilled on
the chairs. Gold-rimmed plates tumbled against