Free The Wells of Hell by Graham Masterton Page B

know there weren’t any
overheating plugs at the Bodines’ house,’ I said. ‘And I don’t suppose Austin’s
patient on the banks of the River Mahdnadi had an overheating plug, either. Not
unless a fuse was going in his hair rollers.’
    Rheta didn’t laugh. Instead, she
said: ‘I know it’s tempting to come to snap conclusions, but we mustn’t do it.
This is too serious a situation to make mistakes. We’re going to have to go
through dozens more tests before we have any clear idea of whit’s happening.’
    I said: ‘How about Austin’s drawing?
Did your old professor remember what any of those looked like?’
    ‘Not really. They were just sketches
of hands and joints. Very detailed and accurate, but not very
memorable.’
    ‘It’s a goddamned shame that
report’s lost,’ I repeated. ‘I know,’ said Rheta. ‘I even called the library
and had them look back over their records to see who
had taken it out. Their records don’t go back to 1925. They’ve just had to
write it off as pilfered.’
    I finished my drink. ‘I guess that’s
as far as we can go, then, until we get the coroner’s post-mortem report, and
until we see what’s down that well. Do you fancy some lunch?’
    ‘Aren’t you going to sleep?’
    ‘Unh-hunh. I keep having bad dreams. And, like
I told you, I hate to sleep by myself. How about the Iron Kettle at one o’
clock? I could use one of their steak brochettes.’
    ‘All right,’ agreed Rheta. ‘As long as you don’t let me drink too much wine.’
    ‘Of course I won’t,’ I told her. ‘I
don’t need to make a lady drunk to impress her.’
    ‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’
Rheta retorted. ‘It’s just that I find it difficult to perform accurate
scientific tests when I’m under the influence of alcohol.’
    ‘Trust me to go for a bluestocking,’
I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
    The Iron Kettle is a colonial-style
restaurant in an elegant white-painted house a few miles north of New Milford.
It’s the kind of place where you can sit at lunch for hours, surrounded by
elderly Connecticut matrons with elastic support stockings and fraying white
hair, while plates of tidily-arranged salads and neatly-prepared avocadoes are
carried to and fro in an atmosphere of quiet gentility. Rheta and I sat at a
table by the window drinking a plain white wine and looking out over the russet
slopes of a fall garden.
    Rheta was looking more attractive
than ever. In the grey light from the window, her hazel eyes took on a
translucent look, and her off-blonde hair shone with an appealing softness. I
said: ‘I can’t imagine you dating Pigskin Packer.’
    ‘Are you jealous?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well,’ she said, with a gentle
smile, ‘jealousy is the most destructive of all feelings. Jealousy destroys the
people who feel it, as well as those for whom it’s felt.’
    ‘I’m not consumingly jealous,’ I
told her, looking at her over the rim of my glass as I drank. ‘I’m just
ordinary jealous. And surprised, too. I don’t know
what a big lunk like that could possibly give you that I couldn’t. Apart from fifty pounds of extraneous muscle, of course.’
    She smiled again, and looked away.
‘Maybe I’m just responsive to extraneous muscle,’ she said.
    ‘After all, there are plenty of men
who are responsive to extraneous breast tissue.’
    ‘What’s extraneous about breast
tissue?’ I demanded, a little too loudly. An old woman in a purple hat turned
in her wheelback chair to stare at me through her half-glasses. I grinned at
her reassuringly, and then hissed at Rheta: ‘Packer is such a dumb-bell. He has
no class at all. His conversation comes right out of Raggedy Ann. An exclamation point after every sentence.’
    Rheta shrugged. ‘At least he’s
safe.’
    ‘Safe? What does that mean?’
    The waitress arrived with my
brochette of steak tips and with Rheta’s grilled fish. I couldn’t have eaten fish
right then, but I guess scientists are less squeamish