Read Online Man on a Leash by Charles Williams - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Williams
Ads: Link
over the side. We made Steve as comfortable as we could with the pain-killers from the medicine chest, but we were absolutely helpless.
“We were near the Los Angeles-Honolulu steamer lane, and late that afternoon we sighted a ship on the horizon and fired off some distress flares, but either it didn’t see us or didn’t give a damn, because it went on. And just about sunset, Steve died. I still wake up with a cold sweat, dreaming about that night. Jeri and I didn’t think we’d ever see dawn again, and before the night was over, we were so beaten we didn’t really care a great deal whether we did or not. But when daylight did come there was another ship in sight, way off on the horizon. All we could do was fire off the last of our flares and pray. Then we saw it had changed course and was coming. It was the Fairisle.
“Your father sent over a boat and took us off. An autopsy was performed on Steve when we reached Honolulu, and the doctors said he’d died of internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. I’d had it with oceans for all time, or thought I had. After I got back home and began to recover a little, I wrote the usual letters thanking him and the boat crew and also to the line praising him for his seamanship and for the royal way we’d been treated after we were picked up.
“That would have been the end of it, normally, except that about a year later I was in San Francisco on a shopping jag and walked out of the City of Paris one afternoon and bumped right into him. He invited me to have a drink. I don’t know what he did three days later, when the tugs pulled the Fairisle away from the pier and she started down the bay, but I went back to the Mark and collapsed; I think I slept the clock around twice. Your father was one hell of a charming and fascinating man, and he had a way with women, as perhaps you’ve heard.
“When he came back from that trip, I was waiting for him in San Francisco, flew to Los Angeles to see him there, and then flew to Honolulu. The following trip I sailed with him, to Hong Kong, Kobe, and Manila—the Fairisle has accommodations for twelve passengers, you know. In the next three years I made three more trips to the Orient with him, and when he retired, I was partly responsible for his settling here. He wouldn’t even consider La Jolla.
“There was never any question of marriage. I was in no hurry to be married again, and certainly not to him, and he said from the start he’d never try it again, that he wasn’t cut out for domesticity—which I could see even then was probably the understatement of the century.
“I have no doubt he had another girl, or perhaps several of them at different times, in San Francisco, but whether she or one of them was Jeri Bonner, I don’t think so. She was only twenty-four, for one thing, and surprisingly, he didn’t go for very young women. I know this is contrary to the classic pattern of the aging stud, needing younger and younger girls to get it off the runway, but maybe he was saving that phase for his eighties and nineties; his theory was that no woman under thirty even knew what it was all about. And there was the drugs; if she was using heroin, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with her at all.”
And still the stuff had been in the house, and she’d known it was and just where to find it, Romstead thought. You never came up with any answers, only more questions. And though he liked her, the sexy Mrs. Carmody’s hymn to his father’s virtuosity as a lover was beginning to bug him; he’d been twenty days at sea. He thanked her for the drink, went back to the motel, and called Mayo.
“What did you find out?” she asked.
“Nothing you’d believe,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. Around eleven P.M.”
“I’ll wait for you at your place.”
“Good thinking.”
“Sure. I thought it would be convenient. So if you’re going to whizz through town in five minutes again, you can tell me
“We were near the Los Angeles-Honolulu steamer lane, and late that afternoon we sighted a ship on the horizon and fired off some distress flares, but either it didn’t see us or didn’t give a damn, because it went on. And just about sunset, Steve died. I still wake up with a cold sweat, dreaming about that night. Jeri and I didn’t think we’d ever see dawn again, and before the night was over, we were so beaten we didn’t really care a great deal whether we did or not. But when daylight did come there was another ship in sight, way off on the horizon. All we could do was fire off the last of our flares and pray. Then we saw it had changed course and was coming. It was the Fairisle.
“Your father sent over a boat and took us off. An autopsy was performed on Steve when we reached Honolulu, and the doctors said he’d died of internal bleeding from a ruptured spleen. I’d had it with oceans for all time, or thought I had. After I got back home and began to recover a little, I wrote the usual letters thanking him and the boat crew and also to the line praising him for his seamanship and for the royal way we’d been treated after we were picked up.
“That would have been the end of it, normally, except that about a year later I was in San Francisco on a shopping jag and walked out of the City of Paris one afternoon and bumped right into him. He invited me to have a drink. I don’t know what he did three days later, when the tugs pulled the Fairisle away from the pier and she started down the bay, but I went back to the Mark and collapsed; I think I slept the clock around twice. Your father was one hell of a charming and fascinating man, and he had a way with women, as perhaps you’ve heard.
“When he came back from that trip, I was waiting for him in San Francisco, flew to Los Angeles to see him there, and then flew to Honolulu. The following trip I sailed with him, to Hong Kong, Kobe, and Manila—the Fairisle has accommodations for twelve passengers, you know. In the next three years I made three more trips to the Orient with him, and when he retired, I was partly responsible for his settling here. He wouldn’t even consider La Jolla.
“There was never any question of marriage. I was in no hurry to be married again, and certainly not to him, and he said from the start he’d never try it again, that he wasn’t cut out for domesticity—which I could see even then was probably the understatement of the century.
“I have no doubt he had another girl, or perhaps several of them at different times, in San Francisco, but whether she or one of them was Jeri Bonner, I don’t think so. She was only twenty-four, for one thing, and surprisingly, he didn’t go for very young women. I know this is contrary to the classic pattern of the aging stud, needing younger and younger girls to get it off the runway, but maybe he was saving that phase for his eighties and nineties; his theory was that no woman under thirty even knew what it was all about. And there was the drugs; if she was using heroin, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with her at all.”
And still the stuff had been in the house, and she’d known it was and just where to find it, Romstead thought. You never came up with any answers, only more questions. And though he liked her, the sexy Mrs. Carmody’s hymn to his father’s virtuosity as a lover was beginning to bug him; he’d been twenty days at sea. He thanked her for the drink, went back to the motel, and called Mayo.
“What did you find out?” she asked.
“Nothing you’d believe,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there. Around eleven P.M.”
“I’ll wait for you at your place.”
“Good thinking.”
“Sure. I thought it would be convenient. So if you’re going to whizz through town in five minutes again, you can tell me
Similar Books
