David's mind was muddled, surrounded by a cloud of confusion. The beautiful creature was now sobbing, her whole body racked by tremors.... Then he heard another voice coming from the outer room. It was Janice!
Contents
| [ONE] |
| [TWO] |
| [THREE] |
| [FOUR] |
| [FIVE] |
| [SIX] |
| [SEVEN] |
| [EIGHT] |
| [NINE] |
| [TEN] |
| [ELEVEN] |
| [TWELVE] |
| [EPILOGUE] |
ONE
The alarm clock was ringing. There was another sound in the room as well—the more distant peal of door chimes. Oddly enough, it was the chime music which penetrated most sharply into David Loring's awakening mind. Each fragment was a tinkling and the tinklings ran the gamut of the musical scale. An ice-crystal music in caverns measureless to man. Rising, falling, almost dirge-like at times.
The alarm clock, having exhausted itself, stopped ringing. But the chimes continued. The ice crystals broke, shattered and re-formed again.
Another day, Loring thought, stirring drowsily and blinking sleep from his eyes. He let his gaze roam over the room. The floor was thick with dust, and the record player on its handsome walnut stand, the ornamental decoy duck on the mantel and the uneven bricks on the built-in fireplace all needed dusting badly. In fact, the whole damned apartment needed the attention of a cleaning woman.
Well, it wouldn't be long now. The mere fact that he could afford a cleaning woman and no longer had to worry about the expense was reason enough for putting it off. The place could be made spic-and-span at a moment's notice and he profoundly disliked having his precious knick-knacks roughly handled by a stranger. It would be all right for Janice to take over. Wonderful, in fact.