by Peter Straub
I lowered my eyes to measure the effect of this thrust to the vitals on the traitor in question. She was looking back at me with a flawless imitation of wifely concern. For a moment I doubted her unfaithfulness. Then the memory of the photographs in my bottom drawer once again brought crawling into view the slugs and maggots. “I am sickened unto rage,” I said, “and my rage demands vengeance. Can you understand this?”
Mr. Moncrieff carried into the dining room the tureens or serving dishes containing whatever it was we were to eat that night, and my wife and I honored the silence which had become conventional during the presentation of our evening meal. When we were alone again, she nodded in affirmation.
I said, “I am grateful, for I value your opinions. I should like you to help me reach a difficult decision.”
She thanked me in the simplest of terms.
“Consider this puzzle,” I said. “Famously, vengeance is the Lord’s, and therefore it is often imagined that vengeance exacted by anyone other is immoral. Yet if vengeance is the Lord’s, then a mortal being who seeks it on his own behalf has engaged in a form of worship, even an alternate version of prayer. Many good Christians regularly pray for the establishment of justice, and what lies behind an act of vengeance but a desire for justice? God tells us that eternal torment awaits the wicked. He also demonstrates a pronounced affection for those who prove unwilling to let Him do all the work.”
Marguerite expressed the opinion that justice was a fine thing indeed, and that a man such as myself would always labor in its behalf. She fell silent and regarded me with what on any night previous I would have seen as tender concern. Though I had not yet so informed her, she declared, the Benedict Arnold must have been one of my juniors, for no other employee could injure me so greatly. Which was the traitor?
“As yet I do not know,” I said. “But once again I must be grateful for your grasp of my concerns. Soon I will put into position the bear-traps which will result in the fiend’s exposure. Unfortunately, my dear, this task will demand all of my energy over at least the next several days. Until the task is accomplished, it will be necessary for me to camp out in the ------- Hotel.” I named the site of her assignations with Graham Leeson.
A subtle, momentary darkening of the eyes, her first genuine response of the evening, froze my heart as I set the bear-trap into place. “I know, the -------’s vulgarity deepens with every passing week, but Gilligan’s apartment is but a few doors north, the Captain’s one block south. Once my investigators have installed their electronic devices, I shall be privy to every secret they possess. Might you not enjoy spending several days at Green Chimneys? The servants have the month off, but you might enjoy the solitude there more than you would being alone in town.”
Green Chimneys, our country estate on a bluff above the Hudson River, lay two hours away. Marguerite’s delight in the house had inspired me to construct on the grounds a fully-equipped recording studio, where she typically spent days on end, trying out new “songs.”
Charmingly, she thanked me for my consideration and said that she would enjoy a few days in seclusion at Green Chimneys. After I had exposed the traitor, I was to telephone her with the summons home. Accommodating on the surface, vile beneath, these words brought an anticipatory tinge of pleasure to her face, a delicate heightening of her beauty I would have, very likely had, misconstrued on earlier occasions. Any appetite I might have had disappeared before a visitation of nausea, and I announced myself exhausted. Marguerite intensified my discomfort by calling me her poor darling. I staggered to my bedroom, locked the door, threw off my clothes, and dropped into bed to endure a sleepless night. I would never see my wife again.
MAGIC TERROR
by Peter Straub
Published by Ballantine Books.
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Mr. X is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright ©1999 by Seafront Corporation
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-190731
eISBN: 978-0-307-75763-0
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