The Wife of the Red-Haired Man by Bill S. Ballinger

Author:Bill S. Ballinger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: murder, suspense, crime
Publisher: Signet
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 13

“AH… MY LOVE, my sweet, my own!” Rohan jammed his hands in his trousers pockets and turned excitedly around the room. He was gay, abandoned in his good humor, and he talked and walked with the exaggeration of a boy. Since the night in the motel, on the highway from Virginia, he had alternated between moods of hilarity and depression. His conviction that the police now knew of his presence at the time of the murder of Albert Turner had released his passions. It was as if he courted the discovery and was anxious for the course to be run. During the day, at least, he seemed content, although in the hours of darkness his fears and uncertainties returned. In the hours of light, he busied himself with wild and illogical plans for their escape. Mercedes listened to them, without comment, but knew that the course she had determined was the one which held their only chance of escape.

Rohan threw himself in the chair, twisting in the seat, and the revolver in his pocket bunched. Reaching behind, he pulled out the weapon, and held it in his hand, regarding it. “All that’s left of Beaudeaux,” he said softly, and hefted the revolver in his hand.

“We must get rid of it,” the woman told him, “it is a direct link… evidence…”

Rohan disagreed. “No,” he said, “I’ll keep it. It’s become an old friend. And, besides, it’s too difficult to get another.”

“But if we’re ever caught, and the revolver is found…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

Rohan laughed. “If they ever find it on me,” he assured her, “it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”

Her eyes drifted away from him gently, but her thoughts remained. She doubted that he would ever turn the weapon on himself. Of all the events which had changed and twisted him, since they had first loved, she was not sure. She was remembering him as he’d been… young, slender, and with hair the red of heraldic paint; shy and anxious, ill at ease in his new surroundings, fired by ambitions.

The day they had first met, his eyes had found her in a room of confident chattering girls. With uneasy dignity, he had taken their orders and waited on them, and something in her had been touched. She had spoken to him on that long-ago day with a gentleness and a new maturity, strange to her youth. To her surprise, she had returned to see him again and again, between classes, when the fountain had been nearly deserted—anxious to see him, to feel him near her.

She had invited him to the Thanksgiving dance, which Bently held each fall, and he had declined. At first, she had been angry with him until she realized that his refusal had been dictated both by shyness and pride, and she—possibly for the first time in her life, looking into her motive—discovered that her invitation had not been offered in equality but in charity. Contrite, she had given up the party

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.