Free Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith Page B

tickets for speeding.
           "Where're you off to?" he asked.
           "Oh, I—just made a lunch date with Evelyn. So I won't be home for lunch."
           Vic was not sure if she was lying or not. Her reply hadn't told him where she was going now. He stood up and stretched, and tugged his sweater down evenly over his trousers. "How about cocktails this afternoon? Can you make it to the Chesterfield by about six?"
           She lowered her brows, swung a leg around, pivoting on a toe, like an adolescent. "I don't think so, Vic. You don't really like it. Thanks, anyway."
           "Sorry." He smiled. "Well, I'll be going."
           They went into the garage together and got into their cars. Vic took a couple of minutes to warm his car up, but Melinda in her pale-green convertible was gone down the lane in a matter of seconds.
     
     
     

Chapter 7
     
     
    Two or three days after the denouement of the McRae case, Vic received a telephone call in his office from a Mr. Cassell. Mr. Cassell said he was an agent of the Binkley Real Estate Company of East Lyme and that Vic's name had been given as a reference in regard to Mr. Charles De Lisle, who wanted to rent one of their houses.
           "Charles De Lisle?" Vic asked puzzledly. He had never heard of the man.
           "I'm sorry to trouble you at your office, Mr. Van Allen, but we weren't able to reach your wife at home. It's actually 'Mrs.' Victor Van Allen on my record here, but I thought you might be able to vouch for Mr. De Lisle as well as she. Can you tell us what you know about him as to his reliability? You know—it's just so we can have something to quote to the landlord."
           Vic had suddenly recognized the name: it was the name of the pianist in the Lord Chesterfield bar. "I don't exactly—I suppose he's all right. I'll speak to my wife at noon and ask her to call you this afternoon."
           "Very well, Mr. Van Allen. We'd appreciate it if you would. Thanks very much. Good-bye."
           "Good-bye." Vic hung up.
           Stephen was waiting for him with some new paper samples. They began to examine them together, holding them in front of a naked two-hundred-watt lightbulb, scrutinizing their areas for consistency of thickness. The paper was for the next book of the Greenspur Press, a book of poems by a young instructor at Bard College named Brian Ryder. Stephen had better eyes than Vic for the delicate marbling that showed up under the bright light, but Vic trusted his own judgment more when it came to the general quality of paper and how it would take the ink. They looked at six grades of paper, eliminated four after a few minutes, and finally concurred about one of the two remaining grades.
           "Shall I send the order off now?" Stephen asked.
           "May as well. They took an age the last time." Vic returned to his desk, where he was writing letters of rejection to three poets and one novelist who had sent him manuscripts in the previous month. Vic always wrote his rejection letters himself, and by hand, because he hated writing them and would not have wished the task on Stephen and because he considered a courteous, handwritten letter from the publisher himself the only civilized way of communicating to the people whose work he had to reject. Most of the manuscripts he received were good. Some were very good, and he would have liked to publish those, but he could not publish everything he liked, and to the authors of manuscripts he considered very good he gave thoughtful advice as to where they might send them next. Most of his letters went something like: "... As you probably know, the Greenspur Press is a small one. We have only two handpresses, and because of our slow methods of operation it is impossible for us to print more than four books per year at most …" His tone was modest, in keeping with the spirit of the Greenspur Press, but Vic was exceedingly proud of his slow