Free I Would Rather Stay Poor by James Hadley Chase Page B

she was st i ll seeing h er boy-friend. Since he now seldom joined the old couple to watch television, they believed he and Kit were together upstair s, double romance pleased them.
    Four nights before the date set for the bank robbery, Calvin was sitting in his room, smoking and turning the pages of a golf ing magazine. The communicating door abruptly opened and Kit came in. She looked distracted and ill . She closed the door and l eaned against it, her breasts he aving with her heavy breathing.
    Calvin waited.
    ‘I’m not going through with it!’ Kit said, her voice shri ll . ‘I was crazy to have agreed to do it in the first place! I’m not doing it! Do you hear me? I’m not doing it!’
    ‘Well, all right,’ Calvin said in a deceptively m i ld voice. ‘Don’t get so worked up about it. What’s the trouble?’
    She stared at him, her eyes glittering.
    ‘Trouble? D o you call murdering that girl j ust trouble? I won’t let you kill her! Do you hear me?’
    ‘Yes … I hear you. If you don’t keep your voice down, she’ll hear you, too.’
    ‘You are a devil! You have no feeling. I’m not going to do it!’
    ‘Don’t get so excited,’ Calvin said. ‘Sit down … let’s talk about it. I thought you wanted the money.’
    ‘Not if it means killing her,’ Kit said, not moving. ‘I won’t have her death on my conscience!’
    ‘There is no other way,’ Calvin said. He stretched his long, massive legs and yawned. ‘I told you: you haven’t to do anything, I’ll do it.’
    ‘No! You’re going to leave her alone. Her life isn’t much, but she’s entitled to it! I won’t let you touch her!’
    Calvin sucked at his cigarette, then released a stream of smoke down his nostrils.
    ‘I can’t do without your help,’ he said ‘Think a moment … three hundred thousand dollars! Think what it will mean to you. A poor thing like her! Who cares what happens to her?’
    ‘You can’t talk me into this!’ Kit said hysterically. ‘I’m not going to do it! I can’t sleep! I keep thinking of her studying her stupid books night after night while you are p la nning to murder her! I won’t do it! I’d rather stay poor!’
    Calvin pointed to a bottle of whisky standing on the chest of drawers.
    ‘Have a drink. You sound as if you need one.’
    Kit looked at the whisky, hesitated, then poured a large shot into the glass. She drank greedily in two long gulps and set down the glass with a little shudder.
    ‘I can’t do without your help,’ Calvin said. ‘Well, all right, if that’s the way you feel, then we’d better forget it. We’ll have to go on living out our miserable, drab little lives: you running a half-baked rooming -house and I the manager of a half-baked bank.’
    ‘I’d rather live as I’m living now than have her death on my conscience.’ She looked at the whisky bot tl e, hesitated, then poured another drink. ‘You’ve got to leave this house. You are evil. I can’t have you here.’
    ‘We’re suppose to be getting married,’ he said and smiled at her. ‘Remember?’
    ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man left on earth! You are to go! I mean that! I won’t have you in my house!’
    He thought for a moment, watching her, then he shrugged .
    ‘All right. I’ll leave at the end of the week . What are you going to tell Iris, the old people and Alice? Or would you rather I tell them that I have discovered you are an al coholic and I now don’t fancy m arrying you?’
    She turned white and put down the glass of whisky.
    ‘You’re not to tell them that! It isn’t true!’ she said in a rasp ing voice.
    ‘Of course it is! You’re half drunk now. I t’ll be interesting to see Alice’s face. She admires you. It’ll be interesting too to hear what the major and Miss Pearson have to say when they learn you are an uncontrolled boozer. But what should be amusing is to hear what Iris has to say.’ He leaned forward and suddenly snarled at her. ‘Get out of my