Night My Friend Read Online Free Page A

changed your mind.”
    “I’m… very busy. I was just on my way out. Talk to me tomorrow. At the office, not at home.”
    “Sure, Fielding. I understand.”
    He hung up, and for a long time Dale just stood there by the phone, looking down at it as if it were a thing alive. Then, in answer to Marge’s absent-minded question, he said, “Nothing important. I’ll be going out on that call now, I guess. Try to be home early…”
    The next morning he was irritable at the office, raising his voice for the first time in months to the girl who typed the fire policies. He sat dully at his desk waiting for the phone to ring, feeling his heart skip a beat every time it did. He’d been foolish to tell Harvey Stout to call today, yet in the panic of the moment it had been the only way to get rid of him. What if he ever came to the house? Or what if he ever told his story to Marge or said something in front of the children?
    Dale Fielding, murderer.
    The phone rang.
    “It’s for you, Mr. Fielding.”
    “Hello. Fielding speaking.”
    “How are you today, boy?”
    “Fine. A little busy.”
    “What about it?”
    “About what?”
    “You know.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Money.”
    “Oh.”
    Silence, for the space of a heartbeat. Then, “I can’t fool around, boy. I need cash.”
    Dale cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”
    “You’ll be a damn lot sorrier.”
    “Listen—stop calling me. Stop threatening me or I’ll get the police after you. Understand?”
    “Hell, I’m not threatening you.” The old friendly tone was back. “But we were buddies, remember? You and me and Travello? And Captain Mason. Remember?”
    “I remember. I had nothing to do with that.”
    “Sure. But for old times’ sake…”
    Dale hung up.
    He tried to light a cigarette and found that his hand was shaking. “Jean, I’m out if anyone else calls.”
    “Yes, Mr. Fielding.”
    He leaned back in his chair and thought about it all, about those dark days of war, and its aftermath. He remembered his trip to Dallas and the week he’d spent looking into the past of Charles F. Mason…
    The city was still caught up in the excitement of peace, year one. He’d walked among cattle-rich ranchers and oil millionaires, smiling around their thick cigars and thicker fingers. He’d stood in a grassy square and watched workmen putting up a plaque to honor the city’s war dead. Captain Charles F. Mason, U.S.M.C.
    Killed in action.
    Dale wandered about the city, managing finally to catch a glimpse of Mrs. Mason, a slimly beautiful young woman who he thought deserved better. But the more he dug, the more he asked, the deeper the picture seemed to etch itself. Charles Mason hadn’t been a really bad man. In fact, there were those who remembered him as a rising young executive, who mourned his death as that of a hero. But surely men changed in the service, men hardened in the face of daily death and uncertain life. Perhaps Mason had been one to crack under the strain. Stout and Travello might even have been doing their duty in some obscure manner when they pumped a dozen bullets into his unexpecting body.
    But day by day he became more certain of the facts, more aware of the guilt. On the final evening of his stay in Dallas he sat in his hotel room and thought about the alternatives open to him. He spent three hours debating between confessing everything and killing himself. In the end, because he’d never had a really strong will, he did nothing.
    That, in a way, had always been the story of his life, even to the moment in the jungle of le Shima. While others acted, he did nothing.
    He’d come back east and married Marge and let the bitter, unfriendly memories drift into the further reaches of his mind. War is never won by men who do nothing, but Dale thought that perhaps peace was won that way at times…
    On his way back from lunch, Harvey Stout crossed the street and caught up with him as he walked. “I guess we got disconnected this