Free Double Jeopardy by Martin M. Goldsmith Page A

warning me that should it find its way into unfriendly hands it might be used against me. Despite everything he says, I have decided to ignore this potential danger. It is far more important to me that I be understood. Blame this on the newspapers which labelled me an insane killer and deliberately misquoted and misconstrued everything I said to reporters.
    Perhaps my digressions confuse; if they do it is unintentional. Remember that I am only a druggist, temporarily borrowing the pen. If this work is ever completed, I am sure that the desire to write anything else will never infect me. As it is, I don't feel at all at home writing and, were it not for the fact that I wish to offer my side of the story, I would remain silent.
    I have said that Anita had to be coaxed; and while some of you will disdainfully make the observation that I am hardly a person to arouse in any woman the warm efflux of genuine passion, at least I can lay claim that if this is so, I have always been the same. If Anita had been in love with me once—;and she must have been to have married me—;there was no plausible reason why she should suddenly change.
    Be this as it may, when we returned to the hotel from the theatre that night, she manifested an obvious disinclination to retire to our room. She hung back in the lobby.
    “Let's not go up yet,” she begged. “I don't want to go to bed. We're in New York so seldom, you know.”
    “But we have a very long train ride tomorrow, Anita. We'll be all worn out....”
    “Let's not, Peter. We can doze on the train.”
    I looked at my watch. “But Anita darling! Don't you realize it's almost one o'clock! Where would you want to go at this hour of the morning?” '
    She hesitated and bit her lower lip. “You had a nap this afternoon so you shouldn't be tired. We might,” she suggested after a brief moment of thought, “try one of those funny little cabarets below Fourteenth.”
    Even with the nap I was feeling rather spent and I firmly objected to this whim, trying to laugh her out of the notion. Moreover, having been deprived of my wife for so long a time, I had eagerly anticipated the moment when I might once more have her to myself. I do not think that it was unreasonable of me to suppose that she shared this feeling. If she loved me, as I was sure she did, she, too was thirsting for me.
    “But I do want to see the Village, Peter!”
    “You will,” I promised. “We'll come down here soon again, you and I. And when we do,” I added with forced gaiety, “we'll do New York up brown.” I took her elbow and gently urged her away from the revolving door. “But not tonight, dear.”
    “Is that a promise?” she asked skeptically.
    “Cross my heart!”
    Anita seemed to come along reluctantly and she was pouting as we entered the elevator and shot up to our floor. I put the key into the lock and kicked the door open with a bang. Happy that we were at last by ourselves for the remainder of the night, I became jubilant as a schoolboy. I lifted her slim body, kicking, in my arms and staggered with her over the threshold. Still weak from my long convalescence in France, I am afraid that I was breathing heavily as I deposited her on the double bed. She sprang to her feet as though rebounding from the bed-springs.
    “Peter!” she protested testily. “What under the sun has gotten into you? You know better than to try that! You're certainly in no condition to...”
    But I stopped the rapid flow of her words by covering her mouth with kisses. With my mouth pressed hard against her's, I forced her back onto the bed. Our feet in dusty shoes soiled the pillows. So tightly were we together that I could feel her pelvis bones against me and her teeth behind her closed mouth and her full, hard breasts.... With one hand I felt for the snaps at the side of her dress.
    “I love you, Anita,” I groaned.
    “You're hurting me,” she answered.
    Some time later, as we lay on our backs and stared up at the dim