Night My Friend Read Online Free

boy? Scotch and water.”
    “What have you been doing with yourself all these years, Harvey?”
    The leer he remembered so well. “Little of this, little of that. You know. Selling, mostly. Always on the road.”
    “Oh?”
    “Gave it up, though. Decided—this is good Scotch, damn good—decided to settle down. Right here in Riverview, maybe.”
    The chill was back. What did he want? What twisted thoughts were going around that dark mind of his? “Why here, Harvey?”
    “Well, my old buddy Fielding is here, for one thing. Thought you might help me get started, with a little money to set up a business.”
    Dale glanced down the bar to make certain the bartender wasn’t listening. “Listen, Harvey, I’ll say this once and make it clear. I don’t intend to be blackmailed by you!”
    “Blackmail! Fielding, I’m your buddy, remember? Don’t you think back occasionally to those Pacific days when the three of us were…”
    “Travello’s dead.” He’d stepped on a Japanese land mine two days after the murder of Captain Mason.
    “Sure, he’s dead. Does that mean you’ve forgotten him, boy? Have you forgotten me too, or what the three of us did out there?”
    Dale sighed into his drink. “I never told you this, Harvey, but I didn’t fire my rifle that day. It was just you and Travello.”
    Harvey looked at Dale with eyes both deep and curious. It seemed for a moment that he was trying to comprehend something, some great mystery of life. Then the eyes cleared, and Dale saw what he’d known all along—that this admission of his didn’t change anything.
    “I’m not trying to blackmail you, boy. Get that foolish idea out of your head. What happened to Mason was a long time ago. It’s only worth remembering because it made us buddies, and we’re just as close buddies whether you helped do it or just watched. Understand?”
    “I understand.” He felt the other’s breath on him like something unclean, sucking the air from his lungs, smothering him. “But I can’t help you. I have a family.”
    “You insurance men got a racket! You’re rolling in dough.”
    Now the bitterness was showing, the battle was joined. “Look, Harvey. If you want a handout I can give you five bucks. Anything more than that you’ve come to the wrong boy.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. That’s the way it is. I’m sorry.” He slid off the bar stool and casually tossed down a five dollar bill for their two drinks, turning purposely away before he could see what became of it.
    “You’ll be hearing from me, Fielding.”
    He kept walking without looking back.
    Dale Fielding lived in a quiet house on a quiet street where trouble never visited. Even the laughter of children at play had always seemed muted to him, though it never occurred to his preoccupied mind that his very presence might have a quieting effect. At his own home, the last one on a street of nearly identical post-war houses, Marge and his two children would be waiting this evening, as they always were. The boys, eight and ten years old, could be seen from the street, playing at boyish pastimes in the back yard. That was good, because he wanted to speak to Marge alone.
    “Home so soon, dear?”
    “Yeah. Things were a little slow today, and besides, I have to make a call tonight.” He tossed his topcoat over a chair, not feeling just then like hanging it up. “Marge?”
    “Yes, dear?” She called him that always, but with the automatic inflection that comes perhaps after too many years of it.
    “A man called me at the office today. A man I was in the service with during the war.”
    “That’s nice, dear.”
    He knew what he wanted to tell her, and yet somehow the words didn’t come. Then, before the opportunity came again, the boys were in from their play, clustering about him.
    After supper the phone rang; and Marge came back to say it was for him. Somehow he knew it would be Harvey Stout, and he wasn’t surprised. “Hello, Fielding. I was wondering if you’d