The Man in the Net by Patrick Quentin Page A

John, you know I’m not going to a doctor. I’ve told you.”
    “You’re going—or else.”
    “But I’m not sick. Are you out of your mind? Nothing’s the matter with me, nothing at all. It’s only you all the time, pressing, distorting, trying to make me that way.” She got up, her face set in a stubborn, threatening mask. “If you go on talking that nonsense about a doctor, I’ll go upstairs. I shall drink all the rest. I’ve got a bottle hidden. You’ll never find it. I’ll drink it all.”
    He knew then that she’d played her last card. Never before had she admitted her secret drinking. Even if he’d found her hidden bottle, she’d disowned it. The hidden bottle had always been the unmentioned threat. Now, at last, she had brought it out into the open. It was meant to shatter him, to bring him round even now to her purpose. It was pitiful if you looked at it that way. Of course it was. But what difference did that make?
    “Okay,” he said. “Go drink your bottle.”
    She collapsed then, as he’d known she would. Slowly, almost like an old woman, she sank into the chair.
    “So you won’t take the job?”
    “No.”
    “And you won’t leave here—not even because of Steve?”
    “I don’t believe you about Steve.”
    “You don’t believe me?” She gave a little dry laugh. “So that’s it. That’s funny. That’s really funny. You don’t believe me.”
    “And you’ll go to a doctor, either here or in New York.” She started to sob again, softly, hopelessly. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go. I’ll go to anyone. I’ll do anything. But you can’t leave me. You can’t throw me out. Where could I go? What could I do? You can’t. Oh, you can’t …” Her voice babbled on and, as he listened more to the sound of it than to the words, he felt the net narrowing again. He wasn’t free of her. For a moment—it had seemed wildly, improbably—just possible that he had escaped. But it had to be this way. He had to give her the chance of the psychiatrist. If he didn’t, she’d be on his conscience to his dying day.
    Something had been achieved, at any rate, much more than he had ever hoped for at his most optimistic. Or had it? What would she be like tomorrow?
    The exhaustion had come back now. Eventually the words stopped pouring out of her and she too seemed half dead from fatigue, slumping back against her chair. He helped her up the stairs. She undressed herself and went into the bathroom. She didn’t take another drink. He was almost sure of it. She climbed into the bed and, while he was still undressing, fell sound asleep. He wanted to move into the guest bedroom. Now that he was still committed to her, he wanted at least a few hours of illusory independence. But her sleeping face was the serene, vulnerable face of a child. Even the swelling under the eye looked innocent and comical—like a child with mumps. She was terrified of sleeping alone. She might wake up. Oh well …
    When he came out of the bathroom he slipped into his side of the bed and turned out the light.
    Steve Ritter, he thought. And then, suddenly, a picture came of his first meeting with Linda. At the Parkinsons’. She was moving through the crowd of guests in a white dress with her hair in a pony tail, looking lost and shy but fresh as a spring flower, so different from the others.
    “Hello.”
    “Hello.”
    “Are you enjoying this party?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “Aren’t parties terrible?” She looked up at him from those great solemn green eyes. “I can’t imagine why people go to them. Everyone so phony, just trying to impress the right people! A world without parties. Think of it. How wonderful it would be…”
    He turned over on his side but he didn’t sleep for a long time. To help him relax, he thought of the children.

6
    IT WAS after six and the train had passed Sheffield. John Hamilton, sitting next to Brad Carey, who was doing a crossword puzzle,