Read Eye in the Sky (1957) for Free Online

Ham ilton reached around for the Silex. “The soft-cover edi tion of Toynbee’s History is
stuffed in the magazine rack, there by the couch.”
    “Darling,” Marsha’s voice came from the bedroom, sharp and urgent “Could you come
here?”
    He did so, the Silex in his hand, sloshing water as he hurried. Marsha stood at the bedroom
window, about to pull
down the shade. She was gazing out at the night, a taut, worried frown wrinkling her forehead.
“What’s the matter?” Hamilton demanded.
    “Look out there.”
    He looked, but all he saw was a vague blur of gloom, and the indistinct outline of houses.
A few lights glowed weakly
here and there. The sky was overcast, a low ceil ing of fog that drifted silently around the roof tops. Nothing moved. There was no life, no activity. No
pres ence of people.
    “It’s like the Middle Ages,” Marsha said quietly.
    Why did it look that way? He could see it, too; but objectively the scene was prosaic, the
usual sight from his
bedroom window at nine-thirty on a cold October night.
    “And
we’ve been talking that way,” Marsha said, shivering. “You said something about Ninny’s soul. You didn’t talk like that before.”
    “Before what?”
    “Before we came here.” Turning from the window, she reached for her checkered shirt: it
hung over the back of a chair. “And—this is silly, of course. But did you really see the doctor’s car drive
off? Did you say good- by?
Did anything happen?”
    “Well, he’s gone,” Hamilton pointed out noncom mittally.
    Eyes large and serious, Marsha buttoned her shirt and stuffed the tails into her slacks. “I guess I’m
delirious, like they said. The shock, the drugs … but it’s all so quiet. As if we’re the only people alive. Living
in a gray bucket, no lights, no colors, just sort of a—primordial place.
Remember the old religions? Before the cosmos came chaos. Before the land was
separated from the water. Before the
darkness was separated from the light. And things didn’t have any
names.”
    “Ninny
has his name,” Hamilton pointed out gently. “So do you; so does Miss Reiss. And so does Paul Klee.”
    Together,
they returned to the kitchen. Marsha took over
the job of fixing coffee; in a few moments the Silex bubbled furiously.
Sitting stiffly upright at the kitchen table, Miss Reiss had a pinched,
strained look; her severe, colorless face was set in rigid concentration, as
if she were deep in turmoil. She was a plain determined- looking young woman, with a tight bun of mousy, sand- colored hair
pulled against her skull. Her nose was thin and
sharp; her lips were pressed into an uncompromising line. Miss Reiss looked like a woman with whom it
was better not to trifle.
    “What
were you saying in there?” she asked as she stirred her cup of coffee.
    Annoyed,
Hamilton answered, “We were discussing a
personal situation. Why?”
    “Now, darling,” Marsha reproved.
    Bluntly facing Miss Reiss, Hamilton demanded, “Are you always this way? Snooping around, prying into things?”
    There was no emotion visible on the woman’s pinched face. “I have to be careful,” she explained.
“This accident today has made me especially conscious of the jeopardy I’m
in.” Correcting herself, she added, “So- called accident, I mean.”
    “Why you especially?” Hamilton wanted to know.
    Miss Reiss
didn’t answer; she was watching Ninny Numbcat. The big battered torn had
finished his meal; now he was looking for a lap. “What’s the matter with
him?” Miss Reiss asked, in a thin, frightened voice; “Why’s he looking at me?”
    “You’re
sitting down,” Marsha said soothingly. “He wants to hop up and go to sleep.”
    Half-rising
to her feet, Miss Reiss upbraided the cat, “Don’t you come near me! Keep
your dirty body away from me!” To Hamilton she confided, “If they
didn’t have fleas, it wouldn’t be so
offensive. And this one has a mean look. I suppose he kills his share of
birds?”
    “Six
or seven a