Hell Hath No Fury (1953) by Charles Williams

Author:Charles Williams [Williams, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Noir Fiction, Thriller
Google: rzN0nQEACAAJ
Amazon: B006UOWMSS
Goodreads: 2797091
Publisher: Gold Medal
Published: 1952-12-31T12:00:00+00:00

12

That was all there was to it. They had to let me go. I saw his face as he told Tate to give me a lift back to Lander and it had the expression of a mathematician who’d just seen it proved that two times three is five, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. If Dolores Harshaw had seen me there at the beginning he had no case, and he knew it.

“I’m sorry, Madox,” he said stiffly. “There wasn’t anything personal about it. I’d have picked up my own brother on the same evidence.”

“What the hell,” I said. “It’s a job, like selling cars. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If I ever go into the bank-robbing business, I’ll move out of your county.”

He stared at me thoughtfully. “Yeah. Do that, will you.”

Tate was silent as we drove back to Lander, and I didn’t feel like talking either. My mind was too numb to handle anything except the fact that I was free. It was dark by the time we got to town and Tate dropped me off at the rooming house.

I got out. “Thanks,” I said. “So long.”

“I’ll see you.” He lifted his hand and drove off.

I wanted to see Gloria Harper. I’d take a shower and change clothes, and then I’d call her. I’d take her to dinner at the restaurant. We’d go riding somewhere. I didn’t do any of it. When I got in the shower and the warm water hit me I began to dissolve like a cake of yeast. I hadn’t known how bad the pressure really was or how tight I’d been until it started to let go. The reaction unloaded on me, and I just made it into bed before I quit operating.

I awoke sometime before dawn and sat straight up in bed, staring. Who was free? Supposing for a minute that that Sheriff was naive enough to buy something that easily, which he wasn’t—just what was Dolores Harshaw selling?

I was still his Number One boy as far as he was concerned, and if I dug up the money and tried to leave the country I’d be picked up before I got out of the state. Maybe he’d just pretended to believe her so I’d try it.

And that still left her. What did she want?

After a while I dressed and went downtown. Only a few people were on the street. The waitress did a double take when I came into the restaurant, and I knew a lot of people were going to be surprised to see me around here again. I ordered some breakfast, and stared at the Houston paper without seeing it.

Why had she done it? She’d said she had seen me there at the fire a few minutes after it broke out when she knew damned well she hadn’t; she also knew something else none of the rest of them did—that I’d been inside that building and knew what a firetrap it was. Maybe she had some ideas of her own.

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