Read The Man in the Net for Free Online

insisted upon the Morelands’ slides. In the living-room furniture was moved; the screen and projector were hilariously set up. Timmie and even Leroy were tracked down and settled cross-legged on the floor. As the lights were extinguished and Gordon Moreland, in a high stilted voice intended to parody an affected lecturer, started to show the slides, John sat in the darkness, fighting the worm.
    They were out of Cortina on their way to Austria when he heard a laugh. It came from behind them, from the hallway—a suppressed, excited, giggling laugh. For one moment of sickening unease he thought: Have I reached a point where I’m hearing her when she’s not there? Then the laugh came again and Linda’s voice called gaily:
    “Yoo-hoo. Anybody home?”
    A slide of the Tyrol stopped half-way across the screen. Gordon Moreland exclaimed, “It’s Linda.” The others called out, “Linda? Darling! It isn’t you? Linda!”
    “Don’t stop. You know I want to see the slides, all of them. Darlings, please. Go on, do. It’s only me.”
    Turning, John saw his wife’s figure in the living-room doorway, silhouetted by the hall light behind her.

4
    A LIGHT was turned on. Then another. Everyone had swung round, but, instinctively respecting the theatricalism of the moment, kept their places while Linda came down the few steps from the upper level by the door. She was wearing her new green dress and walking with a carefulness that was only a fraction too careful. She was triumphantly the center of attention. Her smile was only a shade too fixed, her eyes only a trifle too bright. But John, looking at her with a sinking heart, knew she had reached the most dangerous stage, the intermediate stage when she was still in control of the liquor but when her malice was rampant, at its most destructive.
    This is it, he thought. How could I have been such a fool as to trust her? And then, with a stirring of hope: Maybe they won’t realize, maybe they’ll think it’s just the migraine, if I can get her out of here fast enough.
    The others had all started to converge on her. As he pushed forward too, he saw a puffy red swelling running from under her left eye down her left cheek. So she’d fallen. A sickening picture came of her standing by the bar-table with the metal measuring glass in her hand, sipping the gin, thinking out some devious plan, and then starting for the stairs, stumbling, hitting her face, giggling, getting up, climbing the stairs to put on her green dress …
    “Happy birthday!” She had come to a stop on the bottom step and was blowing kisses from her hands. “Darling, darling Vickie, happy birthday. Happy birthday, dear Careys. Happy birthday, dear Morelands. Happy birthday, all.”
    John tried to get at her, but Vickie had put her arms around her and was kissing her cheek while the others crowded behind, chattering.
    “Darling … how marvelous … but why didn’t you phone? Brad would have come to pick you up … What did you do? Walk? You couldn’t have walked—not all the way.”
    “Of course I walked. Down through the woods. It was divine. Once I’d decided to come, it was far more amusing to be a surprise. And I just had to come. I decided it was too absurd, too childish to stay at home merely because …”
    She broke off and for the first time her eyes sought out John’s. They were flat and hard, and he knew then that his fears had been right. After he’d gone she’d been lying there, thinking of the twenty-five thousand dollars, flogging herself back into hating him again, distorting him in her mind into the Enemy who was depriving her of all she was entitled to in life. She’d gone down to the bar-table. He said I was drunk. I’ll show him. That’s what she’d come here for. He was sure of it now. It was to have her revenge against him.
    They were all watching her, not getting on to it yet but reacting to the unnatural tension in her.
    Quietly, knowing