The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

She felt immensely pleased with her intelligence. Next she looked at all of herself that she could see: a right arm covered with black and blue marks and scratches, a left arm in a plaster cast. With a great effort she untied the curious white sack that was her nightdress and found more bruises on her chest and shoulders. She pulled herself up to a sitting position and began to want a cigarette—badly.
    The door opened a cautious crack and Peter’s head appeared.
    “Have you got a cigarette?” she asked a little irritably.
    “I have. And you’re better—if a little undressed.” He came in, gave her a cigarette, lit it, tied the tapes of her nightdress carefully and then sat down in the chair by the bed. “You deserve to be dead, you silly little fool,” he said agreeably.
    Fredericka made no attempt to reply. She was enjoying the cigarette and it did not, at that moment, seem to matter very much what Peter or anyone else had to say about her.
    He got up and went to the chest of drawers on the other side of the window. Presently he returned with a hand mirror. “Here,” he said. “A survey of the ruins, please.”
    Fredericka took one look and put the mirror down quickly. Her face was covered with long red scratches. One eye was black and swollen; the other stared out from a deep cavern of a mysterious dark colour and her forehead had a large egg-shaped lump just to the right of centre.
    “Well, I don’t see why you had to show me,” she said crossly.
    “It was good enough to be shared,” he answered pleasantly. “And you’d have had to know sooner or later, females being what they are.”
    “And now that you’ve had your fun, am I to be told anything? I want to know more—all in fact. Just why am I a silly little fool? I think I quote correctly?”
    Peter put back his head and roared with laughter.
    This was too much for Fredericka. She hated him. Never had she hated anyone quite so much.
    Finally he stopped laughing and reached for her free hand. “I don’t care how you look and I like you to be disagreeable. It’s so comfortingly human of you. I’d imagined you to be—but we won’t go into that now—”
    “You’d imagined me to be what?” Fredericka couldn’t help asking, but she took away her hand and then said quickly, “Oh Peter, don’t tease me any more.”
    “Now let me see. You’ve lost some of your—well, primness—down the well perhaps. But I thought you wanted to know what happened on Sunday night—or rather what’s happened since. It is now Wednesday morning, in case you’re interested.”
    “Wednesday morning,” Fredericka gasped. “The bookshop—” She started up in her anxiety. “Calm yourself, woman. The bookshop’s O.K. Connie Carey’s taken over and with this new chapter of antics, you’ve increased the customers by about one hundred percent.” He laughed suddenly, then he went on: “Connie makes them buy, too. If they get their view of the scene, they have to pay for it, and extra for the well.”
    “The well?” Fredericka asked.
    “Yes, that’s where you were. I pulled you out, like little Johnny Stout.”
    Fredericka leant back against the pillows with a sigh of relief. “Even though I do hate you, I have to admit that you are good to me—all of you,” she said simply.
    Peter reached over and patted her hand gently. “You’re worth it,” he said, “even if you do despise me so much.”
    Fredericka turned her head away quickly. In spite of herself, sudden tears pricked against her eyelids. It’s weakness, she thought fiercely, just silly stupid female weakness.
    If Peter noticed, he made no comment. “What I want really is your story. It’s much more important than mine, and I’ve told you the important part already.”
    “Please,” Fredericka said with some effort, “let me have a minute to think it all out. You tell me the rest of yours first.”
    “Right, then. Here it is in brief. I got back at seven A.M. on Monday morning after having turned Washington upside down for a couple of hours, and, though you will never believe it, I went straight to the bookshop with the idea of cadging a breakfast—” He held up a hand when Fredericka started to break in. “No, you wanted my story so you shall have it in toto. I made one hell of a racket trying, as I thought, to wake you up. Then I suddenly panicked because I realized all at once that Jim Brown wasn’t there—the doors were all unlocked, too, and that wasn’t like our