John D. MacDonald

Venomous Lady...

Chapter One

Whisper From the Past

The city of Sayreton, Iowa — population 14,000 — steamed and sweltered on the relentless hotplate of an airless August day. Peter Hume, blissfully cool in the small restaurant, thought longingly of a tall collins, of several tall collinses, stood up with regret and walked with his check to the cashier by the door.

“Terrible hot day, Mr. Hume,” the girl said.

She dropped his change onto the green rubber mat and he picked it up. “I hate to go out into it, Helen.”

She smiled at him. “When’s the wedding, Mr. Hume?”

“Next Monday. Four days away.”

“Miss Owen is a lovely girl, Mr. Hume. Where you going on the honeymoon?”

“Lake Louise.”

Helen gave him a dreamy look. “Oh, baby!” she said softly.

Peter blushed and pushed the door open. The heat was like a steam bath. When he stepped off the curb, his heel seemed to sink into the asphalt. A day to fry eggs on the pavement. A day to sit in the tub.

He realized that if it weren’t for the wedding coming up, he would be tempted to quit for the day. But he wanted to leave a clean desk behind him and there was a lot to do.

In his office building, he got out at the fifth floor, walked down the corridor and paused for a moment to admire the discrete gilt lettering on the opaque glass panel of the door.

Peter B. Hume

Attorney at Law

Whistling, he opened the door, threw his hat and grinned with satisfaction as it looped over the hook on the coat tree.

Robina Bray, seated at her desk in the outer office applauded languidly. “Hooray for dead-eye!”

She was a girl with rusty red hair and a spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were sea green. Her face was too long for beauty, her mouth too wide and her teeth too big. When, after his discharge three years before, he had returned to Sayreton and let it be known that he needed a secretary for his law office, she was the first one to appear.

He had asked her a few times about what she had done during the years since he had last seen her. They had been in high school at the same time. She had been a sophomore when he had graduated and gone away to school.

She made a few vague comments about working in New York. He found out from other sources that the man she had intended to marry had been killed overseas. She was a top-notch girl, an excellent secretary. She never told him why she had come back to Sayreton. In fact, he wondered why he had come back. Annaly Owen, no doubt.

Robina Bray’s face was even a bit homely, but the rest of her was superb. Tall and broad shouldered, with long legs, a high slim waist, nice curves. She seemed continually and wryly amused by the combination of face and body, and wore clothes which accentuated her build.

After she had worked for him for eleven months, he had kissed her. He remembered it well. She had been getting ready to leave for the day. She had responded, warmly and quickly, and then moved away from him.

“No dice, Peter my lad. This is a small town. No dice at all. Once more and you get yourself a new secretary.”

And that had been all.

He might have been tempted to try again, had not Annaly Owen appeared on the scene, fresh from college, five years younger than Peter’s twenty-seven. Pale angel. Blonde hair like cobwebs in the moonlight, amethyst eyes. Soft gentle lips and a sweet gravity. Breathlessness in her voice.

Her father was a retired contractor. Her mother was dead. Annaly ran the house with a firm hand, which seemed strange in anyone so young, so soft, so melting...

Peter unbuttoned the seersucker jacket and pulled his soaked shirt away from his skin. “Phooo,” he said.

Robina Bray looked up at a lock of hair on her forehead. She stuck her lower lip out and blew it back. “Tomorrow I come in a swim suit. I warn you.”

“It ought to increase the clientele, Robby.”

“You say the sweetest things, boss. Robby has a surprise for you.” She took a small, pale blue envelope from her desk. She held the envelope up to her nose, inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and said, “Ahhhh!”

He snatched it out of her hand. On the front of the envelope in jet black, tiny feminine handwriting, it said, Peter Hume.

He frowned. “That’s not Annaly’s handwriting!”

“That’s what makes it so much fun! I found it under the door when I unlocked the joint after lunch.”

He too smelled the envelope. It had a sharp clear scent, oddly exotic.

“Essence of Malayan orchids,” Robina said.

It touched a half-forgotten memory. The room was suddenly cool. Peter Hume bit his lower lip, tore open the small envelope.

Peter, Darling:

I suggest that you come to see me in room 414 at the Sayreton House at precisely three this afternoon.

Your

Lynda

Sweat was cold on the palm of his hand. He crumpled the note as though to throw it in the basket beside Robina, then shoved it into his coat pocket, turned and went into his office, slammed the door.

As in a dream, he walked around to the far side of his desk, slumped in the chair and looked at the far wall. It was incredible and unbelievable.

But it had happened. Oddly he felt that he had always known it would happen. He glanced at his watch. One twenty. One hour and forty minutes to go.

He sat and remembered the past. It came back with a rush of vividness that startled him.

Early 1944. He had been a service officer in the OSS detachment in Calcutta. Though he had volunteered for many missions, they thought too highly of him in a supply and administrative category to let him go. They had said many kind words to him, but in the end he was left in the midst of routine in Calcutta.

The worst of it was having nothing to do when the work was done.

Nothing until he found Lynda Stanley. He was twenty-three at the time. She was thirty. By now she’d be thirty-four. She was in Calcutta working as a civilian with one of the information agencies.

There had been something intriguingly foreign about her. She was a small woman with jet black hair, dark eyes, a sallow skin. She had private means over and above her substantial salary, and lived with three servants in a small bungalow in the Tollygunge area. He had met her in a large party at Firpo’s. She had been with a British major who had passed out early in the evening in a most dignified manner.

He had taken her home, had made a date for later in the week. They had gone to several movies together, more for the reason of taking advantage of the air conditioning than to see the pictures.

Her attitude toward him had been one of amusement. It had become a challenge to him to take that look of amusement out of her eyes and replace it with something more flattering. He had tried to kiss her several times, but she had laughed at him.

One night she had invited him to a dance at the Tollygunge Club. To his surprise she began to drink rather heavily. They stayed until the dance was over and the other guests had gone home. They sat alone on the terrace in the moonlight. The moonlight glinted on the dark water in the swimming pool.

Suddenly she leaned over and kissed him. She looked up at him with challenge in her dark eyes. “What’s the matter, big boy?” she asked softly. “You afraid of me?”

After that he saw her constantly. The faint look of amusement did not fade out of her eyes, but he was too far gone to care. Besides, when his mouth was pressed fiercely to hers, she could not laugh at him...

She would never talk of herself. His infatuation grew rather than diminished. At last, in spite of his efforts to avoid it, he was sent home on points for discharge. On the last night before he left she asked him, “Do you love me, Peter?”

“You know I do!”

“Here is a present for you, Peter. No, don’t turn on the light to look at it. It is a ring with a star sapphire. Does it fit?”

It fit perfectly.

She said, “The ring is in part for being sweet and in part for doing me a favor.”

“Anything, Lynda.”

“When you leave me I will give you a box of K ration. You will take it back with you. You will carry it with other boxes of ration, but you will mark it in some way so you can tell which is the one I gave you. When you get to the States, you will wrap it up and send it by parcel post to this address, which you will memorize. Say it after me: Gerald Rhine, P. O. Box 812, Jersey City, New Jersey.”

He repeated it after her and said, “But I don’t understand? What’s in—”

“Part of the favor is in not asking questions, my darling... It’s a full ten minutes since I’ve been kissed.”

Down the river from Calcutta to the sea and down to Trincomalee and over to Perth; then to Pearl and L.A. The box was with him. With every tossing mile of open sea that widened between the fantail of the APA and the Calcutta dock, the spell of Lynda Stanley grew less. And the curiosity about the package increased. Gems? Possibly.

Two days out of Los Angeles, he sat on the edge of his bunk and carefully undid the waxed ends of the package. It was filled with a fine, white, crystaline powder. He removed a pinch of it, heated the wax with his cigarette lighter and resealed the package.

He tasted one grain of the powder. It had no particular taste. He remembered stories he had read and, taking the slightest pinch on the back of his hand, sniffed it up his nostrils. After several minutes, a great warm wave of comfort and exhilaration swelled over him. He wanted to sing. He felt three times life size and capable of putting his naked fist through the steel hull next to his bunk.

He could remember the funniest stories he had ever heard, and could make up even funnier ones. He could write a great novel, or a wonderful song. Then all things swam away from him, and he seemed to be growing to an enormous size. He stretched out in the bunk and he could not tell when thought stopped and dreams started.

He didn’t awaken until the next morning. He felt washed out and jaded. There was a cottony taste in his mouth.

He did a lot of thinking the rest of the trip. He thought of Lynda and how she had led him on, and he thought of the stuff he was supposed to smuggle in. He lay awake cursing her for the way she had used him.

After debarkation he asked to talk to the Port Commander. He annoyed a lieutenant, a captain and an elderly major by refusing to discuss his business with them. After a six hour wait, he was permitted to see the colonel.

After listening to the first three sentences, the colonel stopped him and made two phone calls. Twenty minutes later, two brisk young men in well-tailored suits showed up and Peter Hume was permitted to tell the entire story. A stenotype was brought in and finally, at midnight, the complete statement was ready for Peter’s sworn signature.

They took the box and took his fingerprints. They put him up at a good hotel and assigned a man to stay with him. The next morning they told him that he could rejoin his shipment for discharge.

No, it will not be necessary for you to appear at the trial, Captain. We appreciate your informing us. You have done a very fine thing, Captain. Yes, we will keep your name out of it if possible. Thank you very much. Yes, we have mailed the box. Good-by and good luck, Captain.

During the three years since his discharge, memories of Lynda had faded. He forgot exactly what she looked like. But he could remember her smile and the smell of her dark, shoulder-length hair.

And he could remember the perfume with which the blue note had been scented.

Your Lynda!

His office door opened and Robina stood in the doorway. “Trouble, boss?”

He nodded. She pursed her lips. “The past is rearing its ugly head?”

“Something like that.”

“From the smell of the billy doo, chum, she is something spectacular. And, as I told you some time ago, thees Fon du Lac, she ver’ small town, Musseer. Better stick the fair Annaly’s head in a sack until the ex does a dust.”

Peter smiled grimly. “It’s not so simple, Robby.”

“Then, my boy, you’ve had it.”

“I wish I could tell somebody about it.”

Robina walked in, sat down in the visitor’s chair, crossed very lovely legs and said, “Try me.”

“I can put it in one sentence: While I was overseas I made an ass of myself over an American gal seven years older than me who, when we parted, gave me this ring and a box to smuggle into the states — but I opened the box, found narcotics and turned her in when I arrived in L.A.”

Robina Bray’s sea green eyes widened and her eyebrows climbed up toward her rusty hair. “And this is the dish? The note came from her?”

He nodded. Robina whistled softly. “She wants to see you, no doubt.”

“At three. At the Sayreton House.”

Robina tilted her head on one side and stared at Peter with a speculative look. “She has a legitimate gripe, you know.”

“How so?”

“If you didn’t want to get your little fingers all dirtied up with smuggling, you could have dropped the nasty old box over the side.”

Peter nodded. “I thought of that. Then I remembered how I thought all the time I knew her that she was laughing at me. And I thought of all the other suckers who would be used to bring the stuff in...

“I’ve seen snowbirds, you know. I’ve seen them when they couldn’t stop yawning and when they batted at the empty air in front of their noses, trying to chase away flies that weren’t there. I’ve seen them sweat and moan and shake when they’re off the stuff. Not pretty, Robby. Not pretty at all, at all. And if I had chucked the box over the side, she would have angled somebody else into bringing the next package.”

“So you turned her in,” Robby said.

Peter stood up, flushed and angry. “Damn it, Robby, she was playing me for a sucker! Depending on her charm to keep me from messing with that box she gave me.”

“And especially you didn’t like being laughed at?”

His anger faded. He managed to grin at her. “Maybe that’s closer, lady.”

Robina stood up. “I still love you, Peter my lad. Be on your guard. One would suspect that she means you no good.”

She closed the door behind her and Peter put his head on the desk, his cheek on the back of his right hand. The light came through the blinds, and the six points of the perfect star in the sapphire ring sparkled. He yanked the ring off and dropped it into his desk drawer.

Chapter Two

Hot Eyes of Hate

Room 414 was at the end of the corridor. His footsteps made no sound on the thick corridor rug. His mouth felt tight and dry.

He lifted his hand, took a deep breath and knocked on the dark door. It was two minutes after three. A familiar, throaty voice said, “Come in, Peter darling.”

His hand was cold and wet on the knob. He opened the door. It opened into a small sitting room. Beyond was the bedroom. Lynda Stanley stood at the window, looking down into the court. She wore a house coat of pale blue taffeta. She was much thinner than she had been in Calcutta.

She turned away from the window. For a moment she was silhouetted against the light and he couldn’t see her face. She walked toward him, hands outstretched.

“How nice to see you, Peter,” she said softly.

“Nice to see you, Lynda,” he mumbled.

She took his hands and turned so that the light struck her face. An ugly puckered scar started by the lobe of her left ear and slashed down across her cheek. It disappeared and then reappeared low on her throat, disappearing into the top of the house dress.

She knew he was looking at it. He licked dry lips.

“Pretty, isn’t it, Peter?”

Her voice was still soft. He looked into her dark eyes. They were like dull chips of black marble. Lifeless, dead, ugly and completely mad. He felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

“What... what happened to you?” he asked.

“Oh, it was a present from you, Peter. A lovely present from my lovely little man, my brave and righteous little man.”

“I don’t underst—”

She let go of his hands and traced the angry, puffy scar with one finger.

“See, Peter. It was a girl named Wanda something or other. She was in there because she had killed her two children. Poor thing, she had wanted to go away with a pleasant truck driver and the children were in the way. Horrid place, that prison. She worked beside me in the laundry. See my hands, Peter. A three-year sentence. I served two and a half years in the laundry. Do you think the swollen knuckles will ever go down? Red and cracked, aren’t they?”

“Look, I—”

“Don’t you want to hear about it, Peter? Wanda thought I was trying to steal her boy-friend guard... She took a pair of scissors from the tailor shop and walked up to me and slashed me. She had the general idea of removing an eye, but I ducked.”

Her cheeks were faintly hollow and the new thinness of her face made her dark, dead eyes look unnaturally enormous.

She stepped closer to him, her lips parted and said, “But I’m still attractive to you, aren’t I, Peter?”

He saw the bottle on the table by the window. He smelled the rye on her breath. With a quick stride, he reached the bottle, twisted the top off, tilted it up to his lips, swallowed deeply and nearly gagged on the tepid whiskey.

He sat down on the small couch. “Lynda, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I... what do you want?”

“Why, I wanted to see you, Peter!”

“But what can I—”

“I wanted to thank you for the favor you did me. You had to save the world from such a nasty, unpleasant woman, didn’t you?”

She sat beside him, half facing him. She giggled. “I should be on the other side of you, darling. Then the scar wouldn’t show so much.”

Peter had never felt so terrible in his life. He didn’t know what to say.

She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and smiled up at him. The dark eyes were full of hate, and as dead as two lumps of coal. But she smiled. The scar was lurid and the closeness of it made his stomach turn over.

“Remember how you told me you loved me, Peter?” she asked softly. “You still love me, don’t you, Peter? Take me in those strong arms of yours. You can draw the shades and the scar won’t show.”

“You’ve had your fun,” a new voice said. A male voice. Peter spun around quickly and saw a man leaning against the door frame. He must have been standing in the bedroom listening to the conversation.

He was anything but impressive — a smallish man with an oval gray face, sparse brown hair, faded blue eyes, a nose like a damp cruet. His voice was thin and tired. The brightest spot of color in his face was an oversized underlip which sagged away from small pointed teeth. The lip was purplish red, mottled and swollen. He wore an oxford gray suit which looked much too thick and warm for the day, but he didn’t appear to be sweating. His skin looked dry and dusty.

He licked a good third of a cigarette and put it carefully in the middle of his mouth. He lit it and left it there. It flapped as he said, “You’ve had your fun, Lynda. Let’s get down to business.”

Lynda crossed the room and sat on a chair facing Peter.

“Who are you?” Peter asked.

“Call me Miss Stanley’s manager, Hume.”

“What kind of business have you got with me?” Peter demanded.

The man began to count on tiny white fingers. “One is the house on South Walker Street. Number 809. When your father died two years ago, he left it to you. It’ll bring fifteen thousand cash money on the open market, more if we had time to play around. Two is the farm on the Mill Road. Two hundred and forty acres. Twenty-five thousand quick money. Three is the big four-hundred-acre place ten miles north of town. The one your grandpappy started. It’s worth forty thousand in a quick sale if its worth a dime. Four is a small mortgage on your office furniture and fixtures. Your credit is good. Throw in your car and you can get a thousand.

“Five is your prospective father-in-law. He has large bills tucked away. He’ll make a loan of five thousand without any questions. Give him a mysterious line about a wonderful opportunity you can’t discuss yet. The whole amount comes to the grand total of eighty-six thousand bucks. We’ll give you exactly one week to get it all together, and we want it in cash. Small used bills, nothing bigger than a fifty. You may have to drive up to Des Moines to secure some of it.”

Peter sat very still. He looked at his knuckles. He fingered the smooth place on his finger where the sapphire ring had worn the hair from it.

He said, “And why should I pay you eighty-six thousand dollars?”

“Compensation for Lynda’s injuries. Time spent in the can. For shooting off at the month.”

“I won’t pay you a dime,” Peter said.

The man laughed. “Look, brother. You don’t know what a break you’re getting. Lynda over there is real sore at you. You know what she wanted to do? She wanted me to hire some punk to come down here and fill you with hot lead. She wanted me to spend good syndicate money to maybe have you snatched and have you taken apart slow with a dull knife. But I don’t go for that kind of thing. I play it fair and square. We get the eighty-six thousand and we leave you alone.”

Peter shook his head. This couldn’t be happening in the clean little Iowa city of Sayreton, population 14,000. He said, “You’re wasting your time. I don’t scare easily.”

The man laughed again and said, “You know, she even asked me if we could cross you up and take the dough and then spray a little acid across the face of that pale babe of yours. But I told her, I said, ‘Lynda, when Archy Krakow makes a bargain with a guy, he don’t cross him up before it’s over.’ You got to understand, guy, that Lynda is real mad at you.

“Now you take the syndicate. Hell, they’re not mad. We spent good money getting Lynda planted in that overseas slot so she could handle shipments for us. You ratting on her was just one of the breaks of the game. We don’t hold a grudge. But Lynda’s different. She takes it personal.”

Peter looked over at Lynda and then looked quickly away. An avid desire for his death was plain in her eyes. But it was the thought of what might happen to Annaly that really got him.

“Suppose I don’t want to pay,” Peter said.

“Guy, I hope you’re just asking out of curiosity,” Krakow said. “Just as a teaser, I might have Lynda go to your house, tear her dress and scratch herself up a little and then phone the cops. This is a small town, Pete. People don’t go for that sort of stuff.”

“This is extortion. There are laws against it.”

Krakow licked another cigarette. “Call the cops, guy. Lynda is an old overseas pal of yours. No harm in looking you up, is there? You just want to give her a little present, guy. Eighty-six thousand bucks. Let her pick out her own present.”

“It’s only money,” Lynda said hoarsely. “It’s not enough. I hope he doesn’t pay. I hope he tries to get wise.”

“Shut up,” Krakow said gently.

Lynda stood up and her mouth was a thin, tight line. She walked over to Peter, looked down at him and said, “I told myself every night for nearly three years, Peter, that one day I’d watch you roll on the floor and scream. I might still do that, you know. I might do something worse.”

She went into the bedroom, pushing by Krakow, slamming the door behind her.

Krakow smiled sleepily. “You got her real mad, guy. And she was a snowbird once before the syndicate had her cured.” He tapped his forehead. “Gotta watch those snowbirds. They get the cure, but they aren’t always okay up here. Get me?”

Peter stared at his clenched fists.

Krakow said, “Don’t take it so hard, guy. It’s only money. I’ll keep her from marking up your bride. But don’t go to the cops, or I’ll turn her loose. She doesn’t give a damn if she burns for murder. She’s pretty sore about losing her looks. You know how woman are.”

Peter rose. “I’ll have to think about it.”

Krakow sighed. “You got no thinking to do, guy. You got to spend your time raising money. Run along, now. We’ll be in touch. You want to get hold of me, I’m in 413, right across the hall.”

Peter walked numbly out into the corridor. The door slammed behind him. He went down in the elevator and walked out and got behind the wheel of his car. If they had not known everything about him, he would have had more confidence. He knew the valuations Krakow had placed on his property were accurate to the last dollar.

He sat stupidly behind the wheel of the car, his sweating hands on the steering wheel. The whole scene made him think of tense movies he had seen. Murder and death. Then you walk out of the darkness of the movie and there you are in the bright afternoon sunshine, blinking at the everyday street scenes, grinning a little because the movie had somehow made you think that you were going to walk out into a damp and foggy night where a dark figure waited for you in an alcove.

But this was three-forty in the afternoon in Sayreton and what went on up in Room 414 wasn’t a movie. He thought of Annaly and shivered.

He put the key in the ignition, started the motor and drove out into traffic without looking. Tires screamed on the asphalt and- somebody yelled at him. He shook his head to clear it and tried to concentrate on his driving.

Minutes later he put the car in the lot, rode up in the elevator and walked into his office. Robina stopped typing and looked up at him. She stared at him for a moment, then pushed her chair back and hurried to him.

“Peter!” she said. “You’re ill!”

He smiled feebly and shook his head. “I’m not sick. Just — upset.”

He went on into his own office, leaving the door open. She came in and closed the door. She had a paper cup and a pint bottle.

She poured a stiff jolt and handed it to him. His hand shook as he lifted it to his lips. The liquor had a wet cardboard Taste from the paper cup. It burned his throat.

She sat beside the desk and looked anxiously at him. “What happened?”

“She had a friend with her. They want a little money. She was in prison for two and a half years. She was hurt. Bad scar.”

“I didn’t like the way you said ‘a little money’.”

“All I can borrow, plus all I have.”

“Shall I get Chief Daniels on the phone?” She reached for the phone on his desk.

He caught her wrist. “No!”

“Why not?” she asked, puzzled.

“Robby, she’s mad. Absolutely insane. Some syndicate or other put her in that overseas spot to handle shipments to this country. Right now they’re using her madness to get money out of me.

“But she isn’t interested in money. She wants me dead. If I don’t play ball, they’ll just turn her loose on me. She’s of no use to them at anything else in her current condition. It’s as though you were in a yard and a man had a vicious dog on a chain, and he told you to throw him your purse or the dog might get away from him. What would you do?”

Robina leaned back in the chair and bit her lips. “How about getting police protection and telling them to go to hell?”

In a low voice Peter said, “They know about Annaly. They said something about acid. She’d like to throw acid on Annaly. She hates every woman that isn’t scarred like she is.” He shook his head hopelessly. “You didn’t see her, Robby. You didn’t see the way her eyes look. Bead. Like the coal on top of a furnace fire after it’s been banked. There’s fire underneath, but you can’t see it. Yet you know it can blaze up!”

“Hey,” she said. “Take it easy!”

He cupped his palms over his eyes, his short fingernails digging deeply into his hairline.

“Peter, you must have turned her in to federal officers.”

He nodded.

“Then maybe they can give you protection.”

For a moment he felt a surge of hope. Then it faded. “What have they got on her to warrant picking her up? I couldn’t take a chance. In ten minutes of freedom she could ruin Annaly’s life. I’ll have to pay.”

Robina set her jaw. “I’d fight! I wouldn’t let them get away with it.”

“I made a mistake and I’ve got to pay for it.”

“Nuts! This baby was a grown-up girl. She was having her fun. Don’t go all soft and sorry on me, my lad.”

“I’ve got to pay them,” he said.

He took out his cigarettes. She took one and he lit hers and his own. His hand was a bit steadier.

She slouched so that her rusty hair was against the top edge of the back of the chair. She looked up at the plaster ceiling while she slitted her eyes and blew a fat, slow smoke ring.

After a moment she said, “Peter, why don’t you tell Annaly the whole situation? Tell her what danger she’s in. Send her away. Send her up to Des Moines and have her register under some other name. Or drive her up yourself. Daniels will give you a permit to carry a gun. Come on back here and tell them all to go to hell.”

He thought it over. It seemed all right except for one detail. There was no point in explaining that detail to Robina. He sighed. “I’ll try it, Robby.”

She stood up and grinned at him. “Now you’re my boy. Run along and I’ll brush off the clients that are swarming in the outer office, I hope.”

Chapter Three

Annaly the Golden

Annaly’s heels made firm clacking sounds on the parquet floor as she walked down the hall to the screen door. Her pale hair, which Peter liked better at shoulder length, the ends curled softly inward, was piled high on her head, giving her a look of fragility, emphasizing the slender and delicate contour of her throat.

“Why Peter!” she said, pushing the screen door open. “What are you doing here at this time of day? I thought you had work to do.” She wore a crisp cotton dress, smooth and tight around her tiny waist. Her lips were coral pink and soft.

She was a haven, a place of refuge, a place of forgetfulness. He took her hungrily in his arms, kissed the side of her throat just under her ear, and then her lips.

With the warm breathlessness he loved, she pushed him away. “Really, darling!” she said, laughing.

“Is your father around?”

“He’s in the upstairs study. Do you want to see him?”

“No. I want to talk to you.”

“I have a guest...”

“Send her away, darling. This is important.”

Annaly shrugged and led the way down the hall to the drawing room. Peter gave a start of surprise as he saw the tall young man standing by the fireplace.

“Peter, I want you to meet Jimmy Cowl. Peter Hume.” Her voice was high, slightly nervous. “Jimmy was taking graduate work at Harvard when I was at Wellesley, Peter. He worked for the State Department.”

James Cowl was blond and tanned and thick through the shoulders. His gabardine suit was steel gray. His handshake was firm.

“Always glad to meet bridegrooms,” he said. There was a faint undercurrent in his tone that Peter couldn’t quite understand, but his voice was hearty and open.

“Surprise visit?” Peter asked.

“In a way. I’ve always threatened to drop in on Annaly. Haven’t I?” he said, turning to her.

“That’s right,” she said cheerfully. “Jimmy, Peter has something he wants to talk to me about. Would you be a dear and take your drink out onto the back terrace for a little while. Right through that door there.”

James Cowl smiled pleasantly, picked up a tall cool drink and walked out of the room.

Annaly frowned at Peter. “Now what is so horribly important, darling?”

He sat down heavily. She stood over him, her hands on her hips and looked down at him. It wasn’t the time or the place for the story he had planned to tell. His mind raced. He said:

“Annaly, honey, some people have arrived in town. You know I was in OSS during the war. Well, I was forced to make trouble for them. They’ve come to get even with me somehow, and I’m worried about you. I think it would be a good thing if you left town for a while. A week, maybe.”

Her hand went to her throat. “But the wedding, Peter! What could they do to me? Would... would they want to hurt me? But that’s ridiculous!”

“They know the wedding is in four days, honey, and they’ve got us over a barrel. We might have to skip it. Postpone it.”

Her eyes widened. “But what about you, darling? If I went away, wouldn’t they try to do something to you?”

He reached up and pulled her down into his lap. She turned, and was light and warm against him, her face in the hollow of his neck and jaw. Her coral lips were touching his as she murmured, “At this point I should say, ‘But Peter! It’s only afternoon!’ ”

He held her fragile warmth tightly and thought that should anything happen to her, there would be nothing left to live for.

Despite the heat, he shivered.

“These people are dangerous,” he said.

“But this is our own city. Full of our friends... Are they really dangerous?”

He remembered the look in Robby’s eyes as she had said, “I’d fight!”

In the quiet room the threat of Lynda seemed far away. Yet this girl was too important to take chances with.

“I can buy them off,” he said.

“Buy them off!”

“It will mean that I’ll have to get rid of the property I own. And go into debt. We won’t be as well fixed as we had planned.”

She sat up on his lap, touched her fingertips to her pale hair, looking oddly like a little girl who had just been denied an ice cream cone. She gave him a quick, alert look.

“What have you done, darling?”

“What? I don’t—”

“Oh, come now, Peter! My goodness! I know the sound of blackmail. If they want money, it means that you’ve done something you shouldn’t. If it weren’t that way, you could go to the police.”

He looked at her miserably. “It isn’t exactly that way, honey. There was a woman overseas and—”

She quickly slid out of his lap, no expression on her face, turned and put her cool fingertips against his lips.

“Don’t tell me about it,” she said, “I hadn’t planned on marrying an angel, you know. I don’t want to hear anything about her. I hate her already. Just tell these people, whoever they are, that the Mrs. Hune-to-be far prefers her husband to hang onto his money, and that she won’t be upset by anything they can tell her.”

“But you don’t—”

“Hush, darling. I know about blackmail. You run along and don’t worry. And don’t try to frighten me into going out of town so that they can’t tell me these horrid things about your past. If I get any letters that look odd, I’ll give them to you unopened. If I get any phone calls from strangers, I’ll hang up. And I won’t talk to anyone I don’t know. You go back and work hard, like a dear.” She pushed him gently toward the front hall.

The screen door slammed behind him. As he went down the steps, he looked back to wave at her through the screen. But she was — already gone.

He was back at the office at quarter to five. Robina’s raised right eyebrow was a question mark. He stopped by her desk and said, “Get me Tom Wenther on the phone.”

“He buys... Peter, you’re not going to—”

“Get me Tom Wenther!”

He slammed the door to his private office. When Wenther was on the line he said, “Tom, you still interested in my house?”

“Not particularly, Pete.”

“Sacrifice, Tom. Eighteen thousand cash deal. On the line.”

Wenther laughed. “Pete, it’s too hot for humor. Every time I laugh I start sweating again. On a cash deal I’d give you twelve. Not a penny more.”

“Split the difference?”

Wenther coughed dryly. The line was silent. “Deal for fifteen cash,” Wenther said. “We’ll fix up the papers tomorrow. Meet me at the bank at eleven.”

“How about the Mill Road farm? Cash deal. Make an offer?”

“Pete, boy, are you in trouble?”

“I need the money for a hot investment.”

“You sound more like a guy who has made an investment that wasn’t so hot. Try Murray Graham. See you tomorrow.” The line clicked and was dead.

Before he hung up, Robina, on the same line said, “Shall I get Murray Graham for you?”

“Immediately.”

Murray Graham was oily and slick and careful. He had cleaned up during the war and was putting large bundles of cash into farm properties when the price was right.

He haggled and whined and finally made a tentative offer of sixty-six thousand for the two farms, but refused to make any offer for either of them separately. Peter accepted the offer and Graham promised cash in five days.

After he hung up, he sat with his face in his hands, his elbows on the desk. Robina came in slowly, stood looking at him. He lifted his face and gave her a weak smile.

“I take it the bride wouldn’t cooperate?”

“No, Robby.”

“So you’re letting the ex have her way?”

“Not a flattering way to put it, Robby. I can’t take chances with Annaly. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her. Money isn’t very important when you weigh it against some things.”

“Where will you live?”

“The Wintons are leaving one of the upstairs apartments. We can rent it from Tom.”

“This is going to make Annaly very happy.”

“She’ll get used to it. I’ll get the money back.”

“In no less than fifteen years, chum. Let me see — Annaly will be thirty-seven at that point.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“That love may be blind, but it can still add.”

“What have you got against Annaly?”

Her sea green eyes got very round. “Why nothing, Peter! How can you say such a horrid thing to poor little me?” She went out and slammed the door behind her.

After dark that night Peter walked the night streets of Sayreton. The voices of the children at play under the big elms were shrill. An ice cream man tinkled his interminable bell. He had a date with Annaly, but he called up and said that he couldn’t make it. She replied that it was all right with her because she didn’t feel well. It was a short cool conversation.

A million locusts sang in the trees and the fields. In the swamp near the edge of town the peepers made shrill chorus. Once he stopped, doubled his fist and slammed it against a tree between the sidewalk and the curb. All it did was hurt his knuckles. It didn’t make him feel any better.

The next day he signed the proper papers and transferred the fifteen thousand into his account. He worked quietly and moodily in his office. Robina had little to say. The day was as depressingly hot as Thursday had been.

Krakow phoned at one fifteen. His thin, tired voice was low and confidential. “You’re playing this real smart, guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“A deed was recorded at noon over at the courthouse. I got a glimpse of the tax stamps. Fifteen. You got time to get it out of the bank. Bring it on over as a down payment, guy.”

“When?” Peter asked weakly.

“Soon as you can make it. Get the cash and put it in a brown paper bag. I’ll be up in my room.” He hung up.

Peter walked blindly down to the bank, wrote out a check for the fifteen thousand. The cashier looked at him peculiarly as he said, “Small bills. Nothing more than a fifty.”

“Trouble, Mr. Hume?”

“Of course not! Do as you’re told!”

“Sure, Mr. Hume. Sure.”

He shoved the bills into his briefcase, walked back up to the office. With the door shut, he transferred them to a brown paper bag.

He heard a soft step behind him and half turned before his head exploded into fragments and he fell down through unending space into blackness.

He came to on the floor, stretched out on his back. Somebody was bathing his forehead with cool water. He opened his eyes, winced and reached up to touch the lump over his ear.

Robina smiled down at him and said, “Good morning, morning glory.”

He struggled up to a sitting position. “Somebody hit me!”

“The heat hit you, Peter. Heat stroke, I guess. I went down the hall for a minute. When I came back I found you on the floor. You’d keeled over and hit your head on your desk on the way down.”

“Brown paper bag!” he gasped.

“Say, are you off your wagon?”

He lurched to his feet, wavered dizzily. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“The brown paper bag!”

It was completely and definitely gone. He sat down heavily behind his desk. In a dull tone he asked, “Did you see anyone leave the office?”

“Didn’t see anyone come or go.”

“Robby, that bag had fifteen thousand dollars in it.”

Her mouth was a round O.

“I was supposed to take it over to — her.”

“What do you do now?”

“I’ve got to go tell Krakow. He’s the man with her. He’s expecting me.”

Chapter Four

Nightmare

Krakow opened the door to 413, his right hand out of sight behind the door. He sighed, said, “Come in, guy. Where’s the bag?”

He stuffed a small blue-black automatic pistol back under the oxford gray suitcoat. It went into place with an audible click.

“I haven’t got the bag. I haven’t got the money,” Peter said hopelessly.

“Leave us not have fun and games, guy. This is a town I want to get out of. Maybe you’d like Lynda to go calling on Miss Owen this afternoon?”

“I had it all ready. I swear it. I had my back to the office door. Somebody came in and hit me. See the lump?”

Krakow jabbed the lump with the tip of his finger. “So that’s the angle, guy? Not good, my friend. Not good. That won’t save you either the dough or a lot of trouble.”

“But I tell you somebody slugged me and took it!”

Krakow looked at him for five slow seconds and then said softly, “You know, I can almost believe you. Yes, I do.”

His small white fist whipped up and smashed against Peter’s mouth. Peter staggered but didn’t fall. He lowered his head and started toward Krakow. The gun appeared in the man’s hand. “Go sit down on the bed, guy. Honest, I could lick you, but it would take a little time and you might mark me. Sit down.”

Peter sat on the bed, dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief and looked dully at the spots of blood on the white linen.

“That was for being careless,” Krakow said. “Who knows the whole story?”

“Nobody but you and me and Lynda.”

“Oh, come now. How about the beautiful Annaly?”

Peter shook his head.

“How about that redheaded crow in your office?”

“She doesn’t know anything.”

“What kind of phone setup you got in there?”

“A phone on her desk and a PBX on mine.”

Krakow sighed. “Maybe I was careless. Maybe I ought to give you a poke at me. But I won’t. Our baby is the redhead. She heard you on the phone. What’s her name?”

“Robina Bray.”

The door swung violently open. Krakow spun toward it, the gun still in his hand. Lynda stood and looked at Peter. She merely looked at him. But it made his mouth dry and tightened the muscles in his back and shoulder.

She wore the same taffeta housecoat. One hand was half hidden in the folds of the skirt. She smiled widely, an idiot smile. She took small mincing steps toward Peter. The room was very still. He heard the distant sounds of traffic on the street outside the hotel, the drip of a tap in the small bathroom.

Her lips pulled away from her teeth and she lunged at Peter, small nail scissors clenched in her hand. She drove them toward his eyes. Even as he rolled back away from her, he heard a thudding sound. She fell limply and rolled off onto the floor. The nail scissors were on the counterpane beside him.

Krakow shut the room door. He had slapped her across the temple with the barrel of the automatic. She lay on her back, her eyes shut, breathing heavily through her open mouth.

“See the trouble I’ve got?” Krakow said. “Her room door is open. Open this one and take a look at the hall. If it’s clear, Jet me know.”

The hallway was clear. “Okay,” Peter said.

Krakow picked her up easily. Peter stood aside. Krakow grinned. “After you, guy. Always after you.”

Inside Lynda’s room, Krakow threw her roughly onto the couch, brushed his hands together and said, “I got her clothes locked up, but I don’t know how long I can keep her off your neck. She’s worse since she saw you yesterday.”

Peter licked his lips. “What’s going to keep her from coming back here after you take her away?”

“The syndicate keeps bargains, guy. You pay off and no trouble. She won’t be back.”

“How do I know that?”

“You don’t. I take her back to the coast and put her back on the snow and then we unload her on a friend. The snow will keep her in line.” He chuckled. “Old Lynda will probably wind up in one of those peep-hole joints in Cairo or Shanghai.”

Peter swallowed thickly. He looked at the thin, beaten, unconscious woman on the couch and thought of the way she had looked in Calcutta. He thought of the yellow evening gown she had worn, of the way she had looked in the moonlight.

Krakow sighed. “There’s the phone. Tell that Robina chicken of yours to get herself over here, but quick.”

“No!” Peter said.

“Stop being an eagle scout! I’m not going to kill her.”

Slowly, Peter walked to the phone, got the number.

“Peter Hume’s office. Miss Bray speaking.”

Hoarsely, “This is Peter.”

“Yes?”

“I wonder if you could come over to the Sayreton House right away, Robina.”

“Oh! You can’t talk.”

“Right.”

“And the way you said my name. It’s about the robbery?”

“Room 414, Robina. And you might as well bring along the papers on the Daniels case. I’ll sign them here and you can mail them in the lobby on your way out.”

He hung up. Krakow grinned. “Still a cutey pants, hey? Daniels is the chief of police here. So she comes with cops?”

Lynda stirred and sat up, slid her feet down onto the floor. She didn’t say a word. She merely began to stare at Peter again. She ignored the trickle of blood that began to dry on her cheek. Her dark hair was tangled. She made no effort to smooth it back.

Krakow took a key out of his pocket and threw it to her. It landed in her lap. She kept looking at Peter.

“Your clothes are locked in my closet, Lynda. There’s the key. Go get dressed. Maybe you’ve got work to do.”

“No!” Peter said.

Krakow grinned. “Shut up, guy. You stopped having anything to do with this the minute you said the name Daniels.”

Lynda walked out of the room and across the hall. Krakow lit a cigarette. Time passed slowly. Time of nightmare. “What are you going to do?” Peter asked.

Krakow yawned. “I’m tired of you and sick of this filthy little town. I’m going to grab back the fifteen thousand and leave. The hell with it. You crossed me up and I cross you up. Lynda is your problem. When she gets dressed, I’ll save her to turn loose on your redheaded crow if I have to. You just aren’t smart, junior.”

Through bloodless lips Peter said, “What about the police?”

“In the first place, they’ll cover the joint, front and rear. They’ll send this Robina up with the hick cop idea that if she doesn’t show in fifteen minutes, they come up after her. They haven’t got enough to go on to come up here with her. I think I can talk her into telling them it was all a big mistake and to please go away now.”

“You seem pretty confident about what they’ll do.”

“After a few years you get to know how they think.” He held up his hand and listened to the distant clang of an elevator door. “That’ll be baby. You let her in when she knocks.”

There was a hesitant knock on the door. Peter turned the knob to open it. As soon as the catch was released, the door crashed in at him, driving violently back.

As he fell, he rolled, catching one quick glimpse of Krakow’s contorted face. The automatic made a thin crack which was swallowed up by the harsh heavy boom of a heavier gun.

Peter looked up at Krakow. The small man sagged back against the wall and grinned foolishly. His knees bent and he slowly slid down so that he was sitting on his heels. He coughed once, almost apologetically.

“Told them this was a lousy idea,” he said to Peter. “Fooled me. Redhead fooled me. Private talent. Didn’t know — had — any around. It is to laugh.”

He coughed again, gave a start of surprise and agony, and slid over onto his side, blood frothing in the comer of his mouth.

Peter scrambled up. A wide young man with a dark, bitter face holstered the thirty-eight he held in his big hand. He gave a casual glance at Peter, walked in and dropped heavily onto one knee beside Krakow.

“Too good,” he said softly.

Peter turned toward the door, saw the startled face of Chief Daniels and the taut, alarmed face of Robina Bray.

Daniels said in his high fussy voice, “You’re perfectly all right. I heard the first shot. He fired the first shot. Self-defense.”

Peter hurried to Robina, took her hands in his. She was shaking.

“I was afraid you were hurt, Peter. It would have been my fault. Last night I got these men by phone in Moines and hired them. They’re — investigators. I gave them the whole story before I came to work this morning. When you got the call from this man, I phoned them. I told them to use their own judgment. They took the money!”

The one who fired the shot said, “I’m Regan. Don’t fret about the dough, Hume. We’ve got it all intact to hand back to you.”

Suddenly Peter remembered Lynda. He looked beyond Robina, saw the door to 413 ajar, ran to it and flung it open. The room was empty!

He turned to Reagan. “The woman — she’s insane. Annaly! She’s gone after Annaly!”

“Relax, Hume,” Regan said. “I brought along one of our boys and posted him at your girl’s house. Sorry I had to clip you. I thought it would bring things out in the open.”

Peter said, “We better get over there. Fast!”

“Sure, Hume. Sure. But Miss Owen’s okay. I guarantee it.”

Regan, Robina and Peter went down in the elevator, leaving Daniels with Krakow’s body. Peter ran over to the desk. “Did a woman with a on her face leave here a few minutes ago?”

“Miss Stanley? Yes, sir. She caught a cab right out in front.”

Regan’s car was around the corner. He walked with exasperating slowness. Peter wanted to tug at his arm. The car was a small black sedan. Regan got behind the wheel, Robina and Peter beside him.

“I tell you everything’s okay,” Regan said. “If the woman is a nut, we’ll get her committed. Relax, Hume.”

Robina patted the back of Peter’s hand. “She’ll be okay, lad.”

As they rounded the corner onto the quiet street where Annaly lived, Regan pointed ahead and said, “See? There’s George. Right on the job.”

Suddenly he leaped closer to the windshield and squinted ahead. He gasped and the car jumped ahead. He pulled it into the curb in a screaming stop and piled out.

George was a lanky man in a tan suit and dirty white shoes. He stood on the sidewalk, rocking from side to side and making a whimpering noise like a whipped child. He held his hands cupped over his eyes.

As they ran toward him, he took his hands down, and his mouth twisted into an inverted smile, the gesture of a person trying to open eyes that are stuck together.

But where his eyes should have been were pockets of torn, ragged tissue, wet with blood and fluid which ran down his lean, tan cheeks.

Robina screamed and turned her face toward Peter’s jacket. Regan was cursing in a low, almost monotonous tone. The thirty-eight was in his hand as he pounded up the front steps. Robina braced herself, walked to George and took his arm.

“George,” she said, “your eyes are hurt. Take it easy. I’ll get you into the house and we’ll phone a doctor.”

“A woman,” George said brokenly. “She stopped and asked me where she could find somebody whose name I couldn’t catch. She was smiling. She had a scar on her face and neck. When I leaned closer to her to catch the name — she j-jabbed — and the lights went out.”

Peter followed Regan into the house. The house seemed still. Too still. The silence of death. Suddenly, from upstairs, there was a choked, ragged scream.

“Come on!” Regan yelled. He took the stairs three at a time, slamming off the wall at the turn in the staircase.

At the top he paused, listened intently and then smashed his shoulder into a closed door. The frame splintered and the door crashed open. Looking beyond him, Peter saw Annaly cowering in a corner, seated on the floor, her pale hair disordered.

Lynda stood above her, holding a small kitchen knife upraised. She turned an empty face toward the door. The eyes were flakes of coal. The scar glowed red. She looked at Regan without interest as he said, “Drop it, lady!”

Ignoring the gun in Regan’s hand, Peter threw himself straight at the two women. The knife drove down toward Annaly’s face. His outstretched hand thrust against her wrist, deflecting the knife. It tore through Annaly’s pale hair, but did not harm her.

Lynda was enormously strong with the unbelievable strength of madness. He dimly heard Regan yelling to him to stand aside. Somehow he found her wrist, held it tight. She tried to spin away from him, but he managed to retain his hold.

They rolled away from the corner, away from where Annaly was slumped in a dead faint. They both came to their feet at the same instant. Lynda yanked her hand free, drew the knife back.

In his mind it was as though the scene was suddenly taking place in slow motion. The blade was floating toward his belly and his balled fist was moving toward her jaw. Already he seemed to feel the hot, steaming pain of the thrust that would disembowel him.

The shock of the blow ran up his arm. The point of the knife touched him, and then moved away, falling from a limp hand as Lynda spun half around and dropped on her face, her hand against Annaly’s ankle.

He stood for a moment and looked down at Lynda, remembering the sultry warmth of the Calcutta nights, the more sultry warmth — of her lips...

Weakly he moved to the wall. He leaned against it and covered his eyes, vaguely conscious that Lynda was being bound, lifted, carried out.

Suddenly a shot crashed in another part of the house. Regan stood very still, his eyes intent, and then he seemed to crumple.

“What was that?” Peter asked.

“George. He must have figured it — I forgot to take his gun away from him.”

They had taken Annaly into the next bedroom. As Regan went slowly downstairs, Peter went in to look at Annaly.

She looked up at Peter with a sort of dull anger. “You were going to pay them!” she said. “You were going to turn me into a... a drudge!”

He tried to smile. “I won’t have to, now.”

She looked confused. Her face brightened. She was the small girl who had been given back the ice cream cone. “Come kiss me, darling,” she said.

“Were you frightened?” he asked.

“She wouldn’t really have hurt me, Peter. Not really,” she said confidently.

Peter looked at her and he suddenly saw her for the first time. A small beautiful, desirable girl, with the mind of a petulant child. Not a partner — but someone to be cared for, looked after.

As from a great distance, he heard his own voice saying, “Annaly, I hope that some day you will grow up. And I hope that when you do, you will meet someone who will appreciate you.”

As he left the room he heard her call plaintively. But he didn’t go back. He knew that she would soon get over the damage to her pride, just as he knew that life would never actually touch her...

It was after nine before all the statements had dictated, typed and signed and before Chief Daniels felt willing to release them. Peter watched Annaly, seeing in her eyes the bright interest of one who attends an interesting movie. He wondered why he hadn’t understood her before. Maybe that Cowl fellow would be willing to shoulder the burden of a child wife.

He wrote a three hundred dollar check for Regan and thanked him. Regan smiled thinly at the check and tucked it away, made no answer.

Robina left first. Peter was released a few minutes later. He hurried out, looked up the dark street in disappointment.

Then he slowed his steps, began to walk wearily home.

He walked near the big elms, his shadow revolving across the dark lawns as he passed the street lights.

“Hello, hero,” the soft voice said.

He stopped and turned. She leaned against one of the huge trees, her cigarette a glowing red dot in the velvet night.

He held her wrists tightly, the cigarette making a tiny shower of sparks as it dropped into the grass. She had a woman’s lips, a woman’s body, a woman’s strength.

There would be plenty of time later on to tell her how he had been wrong about Annaly, how it had been her all the time.

Plenty of time later.

Not right now.

Because, at the moment, Peter B. Hume, attorney at law, was kissing his secretary, and in some silent and mysterious way, they were telling each other all manner of things that could never be expressed in words.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Venomous Lady...

Chapter One Whisper From the Past

Chapter Two Hot Eyes of Hate

Chapter Three Annaly the Golden

Chapter Four Nightmare