Free The Sinful Ones by Fritz Leiber

at short notice. Midge tried to persuade her to come anyway, but I guess she was afraid of spoiling our twosome.”
    “I’m sorry,” said Carr. “If it hadn’t been for my date with Marcia…and of course, you did ask me at the last minute.”
    “Sure,” said Tom, tearing off bits of French bread and dropping them in his cup of minestrone. “Still, I’d like you to meet her some day. I think you and she have a lot in common.”
    “What way?” Carr asked.
    Tom fished up a spoonful of sopping bits of bread. “Oh, your more submerged qualities,” he said.
    Carr looked at him for a moment, decided not to follow that one up. Might as well begin working up enthusiasm about his new future, it occurred to him. “Say, you know, Marcia’s got on to something very interesting,” he began, and while they were finishing their soup, he outlined Keaton Fisher’s plan for an editorial counseling service. The cutlets came and they were both busy for a while. Then, when Tom was wiping up the last of the tomato sauce with a fragment of break on his fork, Carr asked, “Well, what did you think of it?”
    Tom chewed his bread before replying. Then he countered uninspiredly, “Are you sure it’s the sort of job you’d like?”
    “Oh, hell,” Carr said, “you know that we probably wouldn’t be employment men if we were certain of the job we wanted.”
    Tom grinned. “I grant you that. Just as the psychiatrist is apt to be a little crazy. But I’ve got an angle about you. I don’t think you like people.”
    “Really?”
    “No. Now me, I may be no great shakes at personnel work, but still I like people. I like to speculate about them. I even like to relax with them. I’m uneasy if they’re not around. But you—I think people get on your nerves. You conceal it pretty well, but I’ve caught you looking at people as if they irritated the hell out of you. It’s almost as if you felt they were queer little machines that were bothering you.”
    “Oh, hell,” Carr said.
    “Maybe, but all the same there’s something eating you.”
    “And all of us.”
    Tom sipped his coffee. “Well, in that case Keaton’s idea certainly sounds like it might be a gold mine,” he admitted, as if honestly impressed.
    But there was a certain uncomfortableness between them and it lingered as they returned to the office. Damn it, Carr thought, Tom’s all wet about my not liking people. What I don’t like is the conditions under which we meet most people today—the superficiality of the contact, the triteness of ideas exchanged, and the synthetic, movie-and-radio shaped nature of the feelings involved.
    He was tempted to tell Tom about Jane, to show him he could enter into the spirit of people. But he was afraid Tom might turn their argument against him by pointing out that he and Jane had behaved like two typically lonely, unsociable people.
    No, he wouldn’t ever discuss Jane with anyone. It was one of those things. Over and done with. Something that would have no consequences whatever.
    He and Tom climbed the one flight to General Employment. Carr stopped at the men’s room. A minute later, entering the applicants’ waiting room, he looked through the glass panel and saw the big blonde who had slapped Jane sitting in his swivel chair, rummaging through the drawers on his desk.

Chapter Five
Trail of Desire
    CARR DIDN’T MOVE. His first impulse was to confront the woman, but right on its heels came the realization that she’d hardly be acting this way without some sort of authorization—and hardly obtain an authorization without good cause.
    His mind jumped back to his fleeting suspicion that Jane was mixed up in some sort of crime. This woman might be a detective.
    On the other hand, she might have walked into the office without anyone’s permission, trusting to bluff—her very brassiness and self-assurance—to get away with it.
    Carr studied her from behind the glass panel. She was undeniably beautiful. With that lush