Wife or Death Read Online Free PDF

old Gerald Trevor said gallantly. “How would you like to work for me?”
    â€œOh, Mr. Trevor!”
    â€œDown, daddy,” Ardis Wyatt said dryly. “You’re not in Hollywood now.”
    The old tycoon chuckled, and Norm Wyatt said uncomfortably, “I thought you knew I was making a funny, Angel. Why on earth would you want to get back to the rat race?”
    â€œI see.” Angel’s lower lip was quivering; there were tears in her eyes. My God, Denton thought, she actually took him seriously. “That was darn mean of you, Norman. You oughtn’t to go around kidding people about things like that! Anyway, how do you know I can’t act?”
    â€œWell, of course,” Norm Wyatt began.
    There was a great crackling flash, a thunderclap that shook the house. The lights went out.
    They came on again immediately. The two women had jumped up. Ardis was about to say something to her husband when the lights flickered and began to dim.
    â€œThat must have hit a transformer, Gerald,” Wyatt exclaimed. He started for the front door, his father-in-law hurrying after him.
    â€œI hate lightning and thunder,” Ardis said. “I’d better rustle up some flashlights and candles …Damn!”
    The lights died and remained dead. The tar-barrel darkness choked off all noise. Then some woman giggled, and everyone began to chatter and laugh. There were some scuffling sounds, a slap, a guffaw. A man’s voice said angrily, “That was my foot you just jabbed with your heel!” and more laughter.
    A bare arm brushed Denton’s hand as someone moved past him. Since Ardis Wyatt’s Queen Elizabeth costume had long puff sleeves, he knew the arm must have been Angel’s. Why didn’t she stand sensibly still in the dark? The little woman’s up to something, Denton thought, and he began to follow cautiously. He had taken a dozen shuffling little steps in the darkness when he bumped into someone. There was a male grunt.
    Denton said, “Sorry.”
    He took a few more careful steps, this time with his hands out before him. His fingers brushed a bare shoulder, and he stopped.
    It was Angel, all right. He heard her throaty undertone, “Still set, darling?”
    A masculine whisper, farther away, nearly inaudible, breathed, “Uh-huh. Just take a suitcase.” Denton could not identify it.
    â€œSame place, same time?” Angel again.
    The man whispered a reply which Denton could not make out. Then someone a few yards away struck a match and Denton caught a flickering glimpse of Angel’s bare back directly before him. As Denton raised his sights to focus on the man she had been whispering to, someone cursed and yelped and the match went out.
    Someone else ignited a cigarette lighter just as the lights suddenly surged back on. There was a rousing cheer.
    Denton discovered that he was standing about halfway between the staircase and the front door. Angel was a foot away. The man was gone.
    â€œWell, I hope that’s over with,” Ardis Wyatt’s voice said in his ear with relief.
    â€œI have a hunch it is, Ardis,” Denton said absently; he was making a surreptitious survey of the immediate terrain.
    Ralph Crosby was still at the bar. Young Arnold Long was just inside the living room, almost under the arch from the hall, talking to Corinne Guest. Norm Wyatt was coming back from the door, where Gerald Trevor was peering out at the storm through one of the three little panes of glass set in its upper part. Fallon, the cartoonist, was near Trevor, lighting a cigarette. George Guest was in the living room, looking around as if for Corinne.
    For an instant the image remained fixed on Denton’s retina, like a film that had stopped; then motion resumed, and everything dissolved in confusion.
    â€œThey must have cut in an emergency circuit,” Norm Wyatt was saying. “Hey, Corinne, where you going?”
    Corinne said, “Home, if