Fortnight of Fear by Graham Masterton

a chilled bottle of Chablis, and switched the television onlow. It was a 1940s black-and-white movie called
They Stole Hitler’s Brain
. I didn’t want to sit there watching it; and at the same time I didn’t want to go to bed either.
    At a little after two, however, the bedroom door opened and Jill was standing there pale and puffy-eyed.
    â€œAre you coming to bed?” she asked, in a clogged-up whisper. “You have work tomorrow.”
    I looked at her for a long time with my lips puckered tight. Then I said, “Sure,” and stood up, and switched off the television.
    In the morning, Jill brought me coffee and left my Swiss muesli out for me, and kissed me on the cheek before she left for the agency, but there were no explanations for what had happened the previous evening. The only words she spoke were, “Good morning,” and, “Goodbye.”
    I called, “Jill?” but the only response I got was the loft door closing behind her.
    I went to the office late and I brooded about it all morning. Around eleven-thirty I telephoned Jill’s secretary and asked if Jill were free for lunch.
    â€œNo, Mr Deacon, I’m sorry. She had a last-minute appointment.”
    â€œDo you happen to know where?”
    â€œHold on, I’ll check her Filofax. Yes … here it is. One o’clock. No name, I’m afraid. No address, either. It just says ‘Apt.’”
    â€œAll right, Louise, thank you.”
    I put down the phone and sat for a long time with my hand across my mouth, thinking. My assistant Fred Ruggiero came into my office and stared at me.
    â€œWhat’s the matter? You look like you’re sick.”
    â€œNo, I was thinking. What does the word ‘apt’ mean to you?”
    Fred scratched the back of his neck. ‘I guess it meanslike ‘appropriate,’ you know. Or ‘fitting.’ Or ‘suitable.’ You doing a crossword?”
    â€œNo. I don’t know. Sheila!”
    One of our younger secretaries was bouncing along the corridor in beaded dreadlocks and a shocking-pink blouse. “Yes, Mr Deacon?”
    I wrote ‘apt’ on my notepad and showed it to her. “Does that mean anything to you?”
    She grinned. “Is this a trick? If you’d been looking for someplace to rent as long as I have, you’d know what that meant.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œApt. Don’t you read the classifieds? Apt equals apartment.”
    Apartment. And whenever Jill mentioned “apartment”, she meant one apartment in particular. Willey’s apartment
.
    Fred and Sheila stared at me. Fred ventured, “Are you okay? You look kind of glassy if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    I coughed, and nodded. “I guess I do feel a little logie.”
    â€œHope you haven’t stopped a dose of the Sichuan ‘flu,” Sheila remarked. “My cousin had it, said it was like being hit by a truck.”
    She suddenly realized what she had said. Everybody in the office knew how Robbie had died. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “That was truly dumb.” But I was too busy thinking about Jill round at Willey’s apartment to care.
    It was still raining; a steady drenching drizzle; but I went out all the same. All right, I told myself, I’m suspicious. I have no justification; I have no evidence; and most of all I have no moral right. Jill made a solemn promise when she married me; to have and to hold, from this day forth.
    A promise was a promise, and it wasn’t up to me to police her comings and goings, in order to make sure that she kept it.
    Yet here I was, standing on the corner of Central Park South and the Avenue of the Americas, the shoulders of my Burberry dark with rain, waiting for Jill to emerge from her apartment building, so that I could prove that she was cheating on me.
    I waited over half an hour. Then, quite suddenly, Jill appeared, in the company of