Read Ice in the Bedroom for Free Online

of this beauty spot was enhanced by the presence of a superbly upholstered man of middle age who looked as if he might be an American senator or something of that sort. He had a frank, open face, fine candid eyes and a lofty brow rather resembling Shakespeare's. His name was Thomas G. Molloy, and he was waiting for his wife, who was due that morning to leave Holloway gaol, where she had been serving a short sentence for shoplifting.
    He looked at his wrist watch, a little thing his mate had picked up at a Bond Street jeweller's while doing her Christmas shopping. The hands pointed to one-fifteen, and he began to feel worried, for though he knew that she would be having a shampoo and a facial and possibly a perm after leaving her recent abode, he had expected her long before this. He was consulting the timepiece again some uneasy minutes later, when a voice behind him said: 'Hi, Soapy!' and he spun round. She was standing there, looking, it seemed to him, as if instead of in the deepest dungeon beneath Holloway gaol, she had been spending the last few weeks at some bracing seashore resort like Skegness.
    Dolly Molloy unquestionably took the eye. She was a spectacular blonde of the type that is always getting murdered in its step-ins in mystery stories. Her hair was golden, her eyes hazel, her lips and cheeks aflame with colour, and she carried herself with a challenging jauntiness. Wolf-whistling is of course prohibited in the lobby of Barribault's Hotel, so none of those present attempted this form of homage, but quite a few of the visiting maharajahs looked as if they would have liked to, and it was plain that it was only by the exercise of the most iron self-restraint that the Texas millionaires were holding themselves in. You could see their lips puckering.
    Soapy Molloy was devouring her with adoring eyes. Few more loving husbands than he had ever cracked rocks in Sing Sing.
    'Honey! I didn't see you come in.'
    'I was back there, hiding behind a pillar. There was a guy having a cocktail I didn't want to see me. Nobody you know. Fellow of the name of Prosser.'
    'Not the one they call Oofy?'
    'I don't know what his first name is.'
    'Guy with pimples?'
    'That's right. Why, do you know him?'
    'Must be the same. Young Widgeon next door to Castle-wood introduced me to him. I've something to tell you about Prosser.'
    'Me, too, you, but it can wait. Let's eat, Soapy, I'm starving.'
    'I'll bet you are.'
    'They don't over-feed you in the coop.'
    'That's what I found last time I was up the river, and I guess it's much the same over on this side. Too bad they got you, baby. What happened?'
    'I didn't let my fingers flicker quick enough. And I didn't know the store dick was standing right behind me. Oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. You can't win 'em all.'
    'No, you can't win 'em all. That's what I told Chimp.’
    Dolly started.
    'Chimp?'
    'I ran into him the other day.'
    'And told him about me?'
    'He'd already heard. These things get around.'
    'What did he say?'
    'He laughed.'
    'Laughed?'
    'Laughed his head off.'
    Dolly bit her lip.
    'He did, did he?' she said, and an ingrained dislike of their old associate Chimp Twist became accentuated. Circumstances had made it necessary for them to take this dubious character into partnership from time to time, but her relations with him had never been anything but strained, and it comforted her a good deal to remember that at their last meeting she had hit him on the head with the butt end of a pistol. She would willingly have done the same at this moment.
    'The little potato bug!' she said, her fine eyes clouding as that unsympathetic laughter at her expense seemed to ring in her ears. 'Is he still running that private-eye racket of his?'
    The question surprised Mr. Molloy.
    'Why, of course he is, sweetie. Why wouldn't he be? It's only a month since you've been away.'
    'Well, a month seems a long time for Chimp Twist to stay out of the coop. How's he doing?'
    'He didn't say, but I