Read Online Give Up the Body by Louis Trimble - Free Book Online Page B

she said soothingly. But when I laid my head against her side I could feel her muscles shaking. I found her hand and squeezed it and straightened up.
    “Can I use the phone?” I asked Hilton. That was as close as I could get to being the collected reporter again in such a short time.
    “Certainly,” he said. He was very smug without showing it on his face. He stood up and I followed him into the study. I could tell he was smug by the way he walked. He had knocked me down but, being male, he didn’t take the advantage and kick me. He had waited too long. Now I was up again and I would stay that way. I made a face at his back. The first shock was over and I was feeling better. I had learned to come back fast in the army.
    I sat at the larger of the desks and put my hand on the phone. “You have any ideas as to how it was done—or by whom?”
    “A prowler,” Hilton suggested. He stood by the desk, a thin-lipped, owlish figure, again the personification of business despite his muddy and rumpled clothing. “A robber?”
    I gave him a wobbly grin. “Tonight you were halfway human,” I said, “Don’t disappoint me now.”
    He put his hands on the desk and leaned a little toward me. “Really, Miss O’Hara, what did you expect me to say?”
    “Just what you did say,” I told him. “In other words, assailant unknown?”
    “That’s good.”
    I heard another siren quite close. “I thought the police were all gathered,” I said.
    “I believe the sheriff said something about the Assistant County Prosecutor coming,” Hilton said. “It is probably he.”
    Godfrey Tiffin, my pal! I picked up the phone and put my call through to Portland. The night editor seemed pleased even though I gave him the barest of facts. He was almost vehement about it.
    I said, “I’d rather have a bonus,” and hung up.
    The siren faded in and out, wound up to a last peak and exploded almost at the front door. Hilton threw a half smoked cigaret into a cold fireplace.
    “You were very discreet, Miss O’Hara,” he said.
    I felt a quick sympathy for him. Despite his mannerisms he seemed genuinely cut up. I said, “I suppose an employer-employee relationship can produce some very close ties. I’m truly sorry.”
    Light glinted at me from his glasses and his mouth went thin and straighter than ever. “Hardly,” he said. His facial muscles worked a moment. “Frankly,” he almost spat out. “I hated his guts. He was a bastard!”
    That from the precise Mr. Potter Hilton!

VIII
    I JUST STARED stupidly at him. I got to my feet and pushed myself away from the desk. He came striding around it, toward me. Whatever I had expected of his character it was neither what he had just said nor what he said and did now.
    He put his hands on my shoulders. His fingers were frighteningly strong. His face was not three inches from mine. It was all rather horrible, the hard, set line of his mouth and the distortion of his eyes through the thick lenses of his glasses. I fought to hold myself. I could not let him know I was frightened. He had given me the upper hand; it was up to me to keep it.
    “Forget that,” he said harshly. His hands tightened on my shoulders as if he could force his will into my bones.
    He released me suddenly and turned away. He walked to the center of the room and swung around. I could feel the bruises his fingers had left on my shoulders. I wanted to rub at them, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
    “I’m upset,” he said in a gentler tone. “We say odd things when we are upset, Miss O’Hara.” He was not looking directly at me but off to one side. Again I felt that pity for him. I couldn’t explain it. He had been frightening and ruthless, a coldly passionate man, a moment ago. Yet there it was, pity.
    “I won’t say anything unless I’m asked,” I said.
    “You will hardly be asked.” He looked at me now, a small smile on his thin mouth. “I may as well tell you, Miss O’Hara, I rather expected