Wolf in Man's Clothing Read Online Free PDF Page B

mean—well, I’ve no reason to think that he does, you see. He had every chance.”
    â€œLook here,” I said, still briskly and full of energy and approval. “Obviously you had two people against you in this house—Pop and Alexia. I don’t know Pop, but I can’t say I took to Alexia. Maybe Craig repented his quick marriage and asked his father to get him out of it. But maybe not. As I see it, you’ll have to brace yourself for whatever comes. I mean, have an understanding with Craig.”
    â€œThat’s why I came,” she said in a whisper.
    I went on, “You may have to take it on the chin, you know. Craig is free, white and twenty-one; he could have come to you.”
    â€œI know,” she whispered again.
    â€œOn the other hand, all sorts of things could have happened. It’s a little difficult and melodramatic to suspect people of that particular kind of finagling—I mean, oh, destroying letters, lying, that kind of thing. Still it could have happened.”
    â€œI’ve got to have it clear,” she said.
    â€œRight. It comes under the heading of unfinished business. It …” I stopped abruptly, for someone knocked. I thought it was Anna and went to the door. But it wasn’t Anna; it was a man, young and slender, whose pointed, rather delicate face was instantly familiar to me, although I couldn’t possibly have seen him before. He was very sleek and very elegant with a wonderful brown and maroon color scheme (brown slacks, checked coat, maroon handkerchief and tie) and he seemed surprised to see me.
    â€œOh, I beg your pardon! I thought—Alexia said Drue was here.”
    There was a quick kind of rustle behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and Drue wasn’t there. Dog, coat and all had vanished.
    The word Alexia gave me the clue; he was amazingly like her. This must be the twin brother, Nicky. Hadn’t Drue told me?
    He said, “Where is Drue?” and tried to look over my shoulder into the room.
    It didn’t look as if Drue wanted to see him. I took my fountain pen and my thermometer. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m just going to my patient.”
    He moved aside to permit me to step into the hall. As I turned along it toward the big bedroom where the sick man lay, he dodged along with me as gracefully as a panther and about as welcome. I’m bound to say that I instantly added Nicky Senour to my rapidly growing list of dislikes in the Brent house. He was watching me with a gleam of bright curiosity in his face “I say, you know,” he said, “Drue can’t stay here. She’s got to leave. You must make her leave.”
    I had reached the door to my patient’s room. I opened it and turned to Nicky Senour and hissed (literally, because I didn’t want my patient to be roused), “If I stay, she stays,” and closed the door on his handsome but startled face.
    There was no change in Craig Brent’s pulse or breathing. I didn’t want to rouse him, then, to take his temperature. He had an intelligent and a sensitive face and, from the nose and chin, a will of his own; his behaviour had shown anything but that. I thought of the gaps in Drue’s story. It was brief; it was necessarily elliptical. Obviously there were only two alternatives by way of explanation; either Craig had repented his hasty marriage and ended it in that way (in which case she was well rid of him, but that wouldn’t help Drue just then), or there was actually dirty work at some crossroads. In that case, a few words between Drue and the man before me would clear up a mere lovers’ misunderstanding.
    But nothing in her brief and very deleted account of her almost equally brief marriage even touched upon a question that was beginning to assert itself more and more ominously in my mind. Definitely there was something fishy about the story of the shooting. So Craig Brent had been shot,