Read Online Fury on Sunday by Richard Matheson - Free Book Online Page B

thepolished effulgence of a Chopin waltz. Forgetting the auto accident that had caught him in the middle of his rising concert career, killed his bride and snapped the bones of his future like toothpicks, driving a wedge of madness into his brain.
    She remembered that as she watched the son of Saul Raden sobbing on her couch, broken and mad. And she remembered the night she had tried to get Vince in bed with her.
    Once again she was in the bedroom of Saul Raden’s penthouse apartment, holding Vince’s lean, hungry body against hers, both of them half-clothed, her naked breasts pressing into him, the dark room swept with hot winds of forgetfulness.
    Then the light had flared, blinding them. Saul Raden stood in the doorway, a supercilious twist on his lips, not the shadow of an emotion on his face. Vince started up with a gasp, his face mottled with shame. And Saul’s voice fell over them like a spray of splintered ice.
    “Dear boy, do go to the bathroom and wash off your face. You look positively bizarre.”
    She remembered the fury in her, the snapping of control. She remembered shattering the whiskey bottle over the edge of the table and lunging at Vince—knowing, even in her madness, that the only way to hurt Saul was to hurt Vince’s hands.
    And the whiteness, the sudden rigid pallor of Saul’s face; she remembered that. Remembered his lean, white-scarred hands clamping on her wrists, the twisted wound of his mouth shouting at her, “If you dare touch his hands, I swear to God I’ll kill you!”
    And now that son of Saul Raden was looking up at her, brushing aside tears and swallowing.
    And saying in a low, throaty voice, “Bandage my arm.”
    She blinked and looked down at the gauze, tape and iodine still in her hands.
    Without thinking she walked to the couch and sat down beside Vince. “Put it down,” she said, looking at the gun that shook in his hand. “I’m not going to take it away from you.”
    Vince rested the pistol in his lap. “You’d better not try,” he warned. “I’ll kill you if you do.”
    Words, words, she thought, hardly hearing what he said. She was winding gauze around his upper arm, over the wound. She didn’t tear open his shirt.
    “Do you want iodine on it?” she asked, suddenly conscious of the fact that Stan was standing near the bedroom door, watching.
    Vince’s throat moved. Why did she have to ask him? He hated to concentrate on extraneous things. He had to concentrate on one thing—making it crowd out all unimportant things.
Kill Bob, kill Bob, kill
…
    “Yes,” he said quickly.
    “It’ll hurt,” she said. “A lot…”
    “Then don’t put it on!” he snapped in a nerve-ragged voice. “What’s the matter with you?”
    Jane’s lips pressed together, her mind more conscious of the situation again. He’s like a sullen little boy, she thought—only the little boy was wounded and he had a big gun in his hand. She wondered idly if the gun was really loaded.
    Stan was standing near the bedroom door. Could he run in, lock the door and get the gun before Vince could shoot open the lock? His throat tightened. It seemed reasonable enough. But he didn’t move. He kept watching the two of them on the couch. He heard Jane say “You’ll have to go to a doctor.”
    Vince started to answer, then gritted his teeth in pain and anger. She was just trying to make things more complicated. She knew he couldn’t go to a doctor. And he couldn’t leave there because they’d call the police and the police would take him back and they’d kill him for stabbing Harry with the bottle.
    Why did everyone conspire against him? Why did everything go wrong? He had to get to Bob McCall. He had to free Ruth. It was his duty.
    Your duty is to the piano, Vincent, only to the piano.
    Saul’s words again filtering through the years like a poisonous gas. Liar! He had no duty to the piano. He looked down at his arm, feeling the throbbing hot pain in it. Then, in a moment of terrible shock, he