The Black Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

one another, even after they were inside with him and the door was closed. We stood there, the two of us, in a frightened little world of our own, with nobody else around.
    He said, “They think I——” He stopped and started over again. “Well, look, there was a——”
    â€œI know, I know about it. It wasn’t you. Tell them. Kirk, not you. Tell them.”
    â€œYeah, tell us, Kirk,” one said.
    We didn’t hear them; we didn’t even know they were there. One had wandered off, anyway, to look around the place.
    â€œHow did you know? The radio——?”
    â€œI was there,” I said. “I was right there when you——”
    I saw the start of surprise he gave. He reached out with his free hand and touched the extreme corner of my mouth in a sort of caress. But one finger lay across both lips at once, the upper and the lower, so I knew what the caress was for.
    A voice from somewhere outside the two of us said, “What’d you just say, lady?”
    Kirk said quietly, “She didn’t say anything.”
    His foot slid out a little along the rug, unnoticeably, and touched mine warningly. I had sense enough not to look down.
    â€œShe said she heard it on the radio,” Kirk said.
    â€œTell them, Kirk,” I kept repeating futilely. It was the only thing I could think of to say.
    He smiled at me a little. “I have been, for hours past. It doesn’t seem to help.” The point was he was coming back to me, more and more every minute; I could feel it. Not from this police business, from her , I mean.
    â€œYou don’t think so, do you?” And when my swimming eyes had told him the best they could, he said: “Well, I have that much at least.”
    I had him back again.
    I turned to the one who had stayed right beside us. He’d had to, because of that little steel chain. “He couldn’t have, don’t you see?” I even plucked at the chain, childishly trying to get rid of it, but that only brought both their hands up at once in a double gesture that was somehow horrible. “He couldn’t have,” I kept on saying. “He was at his office. He was at his office until after six. I phoned him there; he’d just left; the girl’ll tell you——”
    It was like talking to stone. Even his eyes were stone. They were fixed on me, but they gave no sign of mobility.
    The other one came in from the hall. He was carrying Kirk’s packed valise with him. “Yeah, here it is,” he announced quietly.
    The one with us said, “We better let him go, Flood. She says he couldn’t have done it.” He didn’t even crack a smile. He had refined cruelty down to a science. Or maybe he didn’t even know he was being cruel at all.
    Flood said, with a touch of lazy compassion, a sort of passive tolerance at best, “Aw, don’t rib her, Brennan. I’ve got one of my own home. I know how they are.”
    â€œYeah,” Brennan marveled, as though I wasn’t within hearing of them at all. “Ain’t it wonderful the way they’ll go to bat for these guys? They don’t even know what it is, where it is, or anything else about it, but right away it couldn’t have been him because they say so.” He sucked something and it made a pop inside his cheek. “All right, ready? Let’s go.”
    I flung my arm convulsively around Kirk’s neck, as if to hold him there with me. Across his shoulder I pleaded to the one called Flood, in whom I thought I’d detected a soft spot: “But he was still at his office after six, don’t you see? I was over there myself at her place; I was there, I tell you, around five, and she was already——”
    Kirk’s cuff mate gave me a withering look; he was plainly disgusted by such a transparent prevarication; that was an insult to their intelligences. “Sure,” he said dryly,