The Heat of the Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

you a thing or two that might surprise you." "Why, what are you, then--a private detective?" She laughed, genuinely and without a touch of hysteria. "To be fair," she said, "before we go any further I ought to tell you, I do often wonder whether you are quite ordinary in the head. That's to say, I still wonder--you know what I took for granted you were, originally." "Frankness again, ha-ha," said Harrison. "Yes, what a day that was. However, we cleared up _that__ misunderstanding." "I'm not so sure." "What, though, makes you wonder specially now?" "I don't know. I suppose, in some way, the war." "Oh, you mean the war? Yes, it's funny about the war--the way everybody's on one side or the other. Look, I insist on your smoking one of my cigarettes!" He came across to her with his case open: it was as hypnotising as being offered a cigarette across a consulting-room desk or a lawyer's table, and with just that rebellious subservience she had to take one. He returned the case to his pocket, then struck a match--but he fumbled over the business; the flame shook and she drew unkindly back to stare at the shaking hand. He observed it also: "Yes, funny, you know," he said, "this has never happened. Must be being here with you, all on your own like this, if we _are__ doing nothing better than splitting words.--Look here, if it's your nature that's up against me, _be__ up against me; it's your nature I want--you as you are." "Exactly what _do__ you want?" "You to give me a break. Me to come here, be here, in and out of here, on and off--at the same time, always. To be in your life, as they call it--your life, just as it is. Except--" He stopped, to mark the crux of the matter, command himself and, from then on, alter his tone. He returned to the fireplace, picked up the photograph, turned it face to the wall. "Except," he said, "less of that. In fact, none at all of that. No more of that." She could not believe he was saying what he could be heard to say, so looked at him in hardly more than surprise. Evidently he thought she was acting blank. "Don't let's waste time," he said, "_I__ know how it is. I've checked up on that affair." She said, indifferently: "I imagine most people know." "Most people don't know the half--in fact, no one does. Certainly not you." "What don't I know?" "What I know." "You want me to ask what that is?" "Better not, I think. Better just take the hint." "Or you would not," she said, "would you, call this an attempt at blackmail?" He looked at her out of the corner of one eye. Whereupon she flamed up. "You're suggesting," she asked, white with tension and rage, "that I should break off one friendship, begin another--with you? And I'm to do both at once, in a minute, now, with no more questions than at a government order, less trouble than I should have these days in changing my grocer, less fuss than I should make about changing my hat? Nothing, you take it, could be simpler--what _I__ call feeling does not enter at all. Even so, with what may no more than look like feeling, one has got, I'm afraid, to waste just a little time. That you do not expect to waste time you make quite clear. You keep hinting at something, _something__, that should cut out all that. It may, of course, be simply that you see yourself, as you manifestly do, as a quite exceptional man. But no, no--you mean to convey that there's something more. What, then?---then what? I should like to know what you mean. I should like to know what you think you have up your sleeve. You mean, I am to do as you say--'_or else__,' 'otherwise'...? Well, otherwise what?" "It's funny," said Harrison, "when you begin 'you mean,' you remind me of a girl I met in the park. I would say, for instance, 'How blue the sky is,' whereupon she'd say, 'You mean, the sky's blue?' " "I cannot wonder at her; quite ordinary things you say have a way of sounding, somehow, preposterous. But in this case you are saying something preposterous--or trying to. You must be clearer,