The Paris Deadline by Max Byrd

Author:Max Byrd [Byrd, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

IN THE NEXT ROOM THERE WAS, IN FACT, a bottle of red wine on one of the back shelves and a set of six unmatched glasses. Nobody else was in sight. Thunder boomed overhead, and a lamp flickered off and on in the corner. The front door looked locked and bolted. I could hear the angry hiss of rain sweeping across the ceiling, and feel the cold night air rubbing around and around the corners of the ancient building like a cat. Some days in Paris it failed to rain. The door to the third room was closed.

I don't like thunder, I don't like locked doors. I don't like it when the power goes off and the lights start to flicker.

Miss Short had visited our family farm, he said, in Alsace.

But Elsie Short said she had just met Saulnay a week ago. She had only just come over from New York.

I turned around. "No," I said.

The door to Saulnay's workroom had not quite closed. At the table I could see the pale bristly dome of his head bent over the duck, whose worried black eyes seemed to be fixed on mine, pleading.

"No," I said and stepped back into the workroom. Before Saulnay could move I pushed the empty carton to one side and picked up the duck. "No," I said, as if third time were a charm, "I've changed my mind, I think. I'm taking it back."

Slowly, slowly Saulnay rose from his stool, spilling shadows. His head bumped the swinging lamp. His big shoulders spread out like a cape.

"You are," he said, "a quite stupid American."

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