Read Online Holes for Faces by Ramsey Campbell - Free Book Online

made him grab it. “What is it now?” he demanded.
    “Someone was scared you weren’t playing any more, Eric.”
    “I thought your friend was meant to be in hospital,” Edgeworth said in triumph.
    “She’s your friend, Eric, only yours. You’re the only one she can turn to about films.”
    “Can’t she even speak for herself now?”
    “I’m here, Eric.” Mary Barton’s voice had lost some strength or was designed to sound as feeble as the prank. “They’ve fixed me up for now,” she said. “I had to come back tonight or I’d have lost everything.”
    “Trying to make a bit extra for your children, are you?”
    “I’m trying to win as much as we need.”
    Was she too preoccupied to notice his sarcasm, or wouldn’t that fit in with her game? Could she really be so heartless that she would use her children to prolong a spiteful joke? His grandmother never would have—not even his mother, though she’d had plenty to say about any of Edgeworth’s shortcomings that reminded her of his unidentified father. “Ready to help?” the man with Mary Barton said.
    “What will you do if I don’t?”
    Edgeworth heard a suppressed moan that must be meant to sound as terrified as pained. “Up to you if you want to find out,” the man said.
    “Go on then, do your worst.” At once Edgeworth was overtaken by more panic than he understood. “I mean,” he said hastily, “ask me about films.”
    “Be careful, Mary. See he understands.”
    The man seemed more amused than ever. Did he plan to ask about some detail in the kind of recent film they knew Edgeworth never watched? Edgeworth was ready with a furious rejoinder by the time Mary Barton faltered “Which was the film where Elisha Cook played a gangster?”
    There were three possibilities; that was the trick. If she and Rivers hoped to make Edgeworth nervous of giving the wrong answer, they had no chance. “ The Maltese Falcon ,” he said.
    “Wider, Mary.”
    “That’s not right, Eric.”
    Her voice had grown shriller and shakier too, and Edgeworth was enraged to find this disturbed him. “He was a gangster in that,” he objected.
    “It isn’t what they want.”
    “Then I expect they’re thinking of The Killing .”
    “Wider again,” the man said as if he could hardly bear to put off the end of the joke.
    “No, Eric, no.”
    It occurred to Edgeworth that the actor had played a criminal rather than a gangster in the Kubrick film. The piercing harshness of the woman’s ragged voice made it hard for him to think. “Just one left, eh?” he said.
    “Please, Eric. Please be right this time.”
    She might almost have been praying. Far from winning Edgeworth over, it embarrassed him, but he wasn’t going to give a wrong answer. “No question,” he said. “It’s Baby Face Nelson .”
    “Wider still.”
    “What are you playing at?” Edgeworth protested. “He was a gangster in that.”
    “No, it was his son,” the man said. “It was Elisha Cook Junior.”
    “That’s what you’ve been working up to all along, is it?” Edgeworth wiped his mouth, having inadvertently spat with rage. “What a stupid trick,” he said, “even for you.” He would have added a great deal if Mary Barton hadn’t cried “No.”
    It was scarcely a word. It went on for some time with interruptions and rose considerably higher. Before it had to pause for breath Edgeworth shouted “What are you doing?”
    “It’s a good thing we aren’t on television.” By the sound of it, the man had moved the phone away from her. “We couldn’t show it,” he said gleefully, “and I don’t think you’d want to see.”
    “Stop it,” Edgeworth yelled but failed to drown out the cry.
    “Relax, Eric. That’s all for you for now,” Terry Rice said and left silence aching in Edgeworth’s ear.
    The number was withheld again. Edgeworth thought of calling the police, but what could that achieve? Perhaps it would just prove he’d fallen for a joke after all. Perhaps