The Man in the Net by Patrick Quentin Page A

the anxiety, fermenting inside him, might at any minute splinter into fragments. To steady himself, he made himself believe that Vickie would have located her. She would have called and Linda would be at the Morelands’ or the old Careys’, weeping probably, full of remorse, the fit of hysteria burned out. “Oh, how could I have done it to him? I don’t know what got into me.”
    Soon he had skirted the lake and was driving into the Careys’ gravel parking area. All the downstairs lights in the house were on. As he got out of the car, the door opened.
    “Is that you, John?”
    He saw Vickie on the threshold. Then she was hurrying toward him. She took both his hands.
    “John, dear, isn’t she back?”
    He said, “Did you call?”
    “Yes. I called Father. She wasn’t there. And the Morelands don’t answer. They must have gone to the movies.”
    She was drawing him into the house. In the hall she glanced up at him, her eyes flashing to his face for a second and then flashing quickly away as if whatever she saw was too intimate to be scrutinized.
    “You need a drink.” She took him into the living-room. “Brad, fix John a drink.”
    All the french windows were open on to the terrace. Brad, who had changed from his city clothes into a sports shirt and slacks, was standing by the bar. He made a drink and brought it to John, his eyes flicking to his and then, like Vickie’s, away. Does it show that much? thought John, taking the drink. It must. It had been the same way with Betty Ritter.
    Brad said, “Sit down, John. Sit down.” And, as John sat down on a long sofa, “Vickie called Dad and the Morelands.”
    “John knows,” said Vickie.
    Brad sat down on the arm of the sofa. Their concern for him, their lack of prurient curiosity and their desire to help were obvious. It returned to John some sense of normalcy. These were sensible, nice people. Once he’d told them, the quality of nightmare would go.
    He said, “When I got home, she wasn’t there—and she’d left a note.”
    He hadn’t really stopped to think how it would sound when he told what had happened. He was, of course, conscious of the great gulf between the Linda he knew and the Linda the Careys had been presented with, and dimly he realized that somehow the gulf would have to be bridged. But at first he just blurted out what had happened —the note, the slashed pictures, the broken records, the missing clothes and the suitcase. It was only gradually that their reaction began to dawn on him.
    It was Brad who broke in first. There was no hostility in his tone; there was no feeling of hostility from either of them. The quality in his voice was one of sheer incredulity.
    “But Linda , John! Linda writing a note like that, destroying your pictures? It can’t be Linda.”
    “She’s so gentle,” said Vickie. “Can you imagine Linda hurting a fly? And she—she loves you so much. You’re her whole life. And your pictures—why, they’re almost sacred to her. She’s said so over and over again.”
    “Sure,” cut in Brad. “She was over here the day after the reviews came in on your show. Maybe you didn’t know. I’ve never seen anyone so indignant. To hell with all critics, she said. He’s going to be a great painter. She— she just couldn’t have …”
    His voice trailed off. John looked from one of them to the other. They weren’t accusing him of lying. They just couldn’t believe it had happened. And suddenly he could see the Linda he didn’t know, the Linda who moved through a room when he wasn’t there, coming to the Careys’ after the bad reviews, acting the outraged champion of misunderstood genius, and then, in another role, the woman in love. “John—he’s my whole life.” Of course they’d react this way. What he was telling them was just as improbable to them as if he’d said he’d seen old Mr. Carey dancing the mambo naked on the church steps with Betty Ritter.
    The