The Corpse That Walked by Octavus Roy Cohen

Author:Octavus Roy Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

Chapter Sixteen

SOMETHING WAS happening to Sunny Ralston; something she neither understood nor liked.

Sunny was falling in love.

She left Chuck in the living room and walked upstairs. She was badly shaken, and thought it was because she was angry. In her bedroom, with the door locked against intrusion, she found her thoughts racing to this fantastic conclusion:

Yes, she was afraid--but not for herself. She was afraid for Alan Douglas. And the reason she was afraid... "It's got me," she whispered fiercely into the darkness. "God, am I a sap!"

Sunny Ralston, christened Fay by a mother she could not remember and a father she would have preferred to forget, had learned to look out for herself. She distrusted everybody. She taught herself to hate sentiment because she didn't believe it was healthy. Sentimental people were always being knifed in the back. That was what she had seen, and that was what she believed. Her deity was physical comfort, shelter from the bitterness and cruelty that had warped her childhood.

In her struggle against adverse conditions, she had been generously favored by nature, which had supplied her with a glorious body and a clear brain. It hadn't taken her long to discover that a girl could travel pretty far with such assets. She gave value received for what she got--but she got it. Until this night she had never been bothered by morals or conscience or gentleness of any sort. If occasionally she had done nice things, it was only because it amused her to do them. There never had been a time when she considered the well-being of anyone other than herself.

Until tonight.

She walked to one of her bedroom windows and stood staring into the moon-drenched night. The window was open and the air felt pleasantly cool against her hot body, protected as it was only by a sheer chiffon gown and a white housecoat of softest velvet. She tried telling herself over and over again that it wasn't true, that this had not happened to her; but her fiercest arguments got her nowhere. It was incredible. It was impossible. But it was true.

Here then was a contingency that even so astute a person as Lew Hartley could not have foreseen. Lew knew Sunny; he knew that she was heartless, unscrupulous, and merciless. Those were qualities so akin to his own nature that they appealed to him strongly. In his own hard way, he was fond of her. She had entered without scruple into their bargain, and had fulfilled her part of the contract to the letter. She was an amenable and pleasant companion. She had a beautiful body, a quick wit, and a keen perception. She never nagged, never demanded, never argued. She could be trusted because it paid her to be trustworthy. She made no pretense of being in love with him, or even of possessing the capacity for love. And that was all right with Lew, because it gave him delightful feminine companionship, which he wanted, and did not burden it with sentimentality, which he hated.

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