Seed on the Wind by Rex Stout

Author:Rex Stout
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

XI

Lora, lying on the couch in precisely the same position as when Steve had entered a brief fifteen minutes earlier, heard faintly through the closed door the quick nervous rhythm of Janet’s footsteps descending the stairs. Then her ears, despoiled of that diversion, caught at other sounds: other tenants’ voices that came from the court through the open window in the bedroom, the pattering of an animal’s feet—she had never known whether it was a cat or a small dog—on the floor above which topped her ceiling, the rumble of a distant elevated train, the confused medley from the street. For a while nothing was alive but her ears; she had no thoughts or feelings, not even the feeling of herself as a phenomenon; she was neither conscious nor unconscious.

Then she stirred and turned over on her side, and the sounds all at once ceased to exist; her brain awoke. “How do you do,” she said aloud, “you’ve done it this time, haven’t you, darling.” A thought darted at her: how about Steve’s overcoat and two suits? He wore good clothes; the tailor at the corner could probably get a good price for them. Or what about his false information to the draft board? Weren’t rewards offered for things like that? Momentarily the idea diverted her, and she smiled into space; then, frowning, she turned to serious considerations. She might get a loan from Janet Poole, or Mrs. Crosby at the tea-room, or even Mr. Pitkin. She pictured herself making the request, and her frown deepened; she would almost rather steal than borrow; however, it was just as well to have the possibilities in mind in case of desperate emergency. Surely there were other means.

Again she spoke aloud, more for the companionship of her own voice than anything else. “Money is the root of all evil,” she said clearly and distinctly. Ha, it hasn’t any roots, she thought, it’s like that plant in the picture in geography in school which went crawling around through trees without any roots of its own. It was in school too that she had written the sentence, money is the root of all evil, in a clear round hand which, according to the teacher, however legible she might painfully make it, never did sufficiently slant.

I still write that way, she thought, only I almost never write.

The chief difference between her school days and the present, she reflected, was that then other people had always been on hand to point out her mistakes, whereas now she had to find them out for herself. Childhood, so it seemed, had been nothing but an endless process of fresh discoveries of the remarkable and often bewildering boundaries of the permissible. The hardest part of it had been the unbelievable confusion: a thing perfectly all right in one place was utterly wrong in another; actions strictly prohibited in school were overlooked, even encouraged, at home. It changed with people, too; one teacher would smile indulgently at something which another severely reprimanded.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.