The Tooth and the Nail by Bill S. Ballinger

Author:Bill S. Ballinger [Ballinger, Bill S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime, OCR-Editing
Amazon: B0000CJ9XH
Publisher: Harper & Brothers
Published: 1954-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

In the magician’s land of make-believe and illusion what one doesn’t see is always there… only one doesn’t see it until the conjurer is ready to show it. The silks are stuffed within the hollow egg, the flowers collapsed within the palm of his hand; the card concealed on the back of his fingers. But Death is the greatest necromancer of all; in a moment of inattention, he makes his sleight and palms a life, and one does not realize that the breathing figure is gone.

The illusion of life persists… you listen for the voice in the next room; you await the footsteps coming up the stairs—the well-known, well-beloved ones; you anticipate the turn of a profile in a busy restaurant, the tinkle of a laugh in a bar, the lovely swiftly moving legs on a busy street. The illusion is there still; yesterday has not yet become today. Today must never become tomorrow, because tomorrow will be too late.

Hope lingers on, the last soft breeze in the trees before winter; the last strain of music before silence. It is there before despair wilts completely the last bouquet of make-believe flowers, and Death takes his curtain bow before the black velvet drapes.

The delicate, well-remembered lips brush your cheek in the night, but in the morning there are only the twisted bedclothes beside you. In your own mind alone the voice remains; only behind your sleeping eyes does the face become reality. In the misery of the endless nights, the wretchedness of the matching days, hope vanishes. Then is the illusion completed! Because only then, is she gone forever…

I didn’t lose Tally in the street before the McAndrews that afternoon, nor on Locust Street… nor on any of the other little Philadelphia streets. She disappeared one night several months later in New York. I was lying on my back, on the sidewalk, in front of a bar on Eighth Avenue; I was lying there because I had been thrown out. I had been thrown out because I had been unable to pay for my drinks—and I couldn’t pay for my drinks because I hadn’t worked since Philadelphia. Thinking to myself without indignation what a cheap lousy joint to get bounced from, I lay there for a moment looking straight up into the sky. I could see no blue, no stars, no heavens. Only the murky haze… half translucent, half opaque… of blue neons and red neons, yellow fluorescents and green fluorescents; white Mazdas and amber General Electrics. They were all there in the murk above the street, mixed into a brown fog of quivering colors. Rolling over slowly on my stomach I pushed myself to my feet and staggered to the building—leaning against it for support. Wretchedly I spewed the cheap liquor back over the building in which I had drunk it. That was the moment I decided to murder Greenleaf! In the morning I went to see my agent. I had slept in my clothes for a week, my shirt

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.