Read In the Middle of the Wood for Free Online

then to the floor with its tartan carpet. He saw Linda’s eyes noting the telephone, and said to himself, So that’s it. If I leave you alone in this room you will phone your friends and they will come to the anonymity of a Glasgow hotel and kill me. After all no one knew now where he was, and he had even given a false name. They would probably remove all means of identification from his clothing.
    As he watched Linda he was amazed to see how calm and cool she seemed. How could she possibly be so when she had been so deceitful, when she was determined to get rid of him, had in fact hired people to do so. She wanted him not to be able to prove that she was a traitor. But he would know. If these two men came in the middle of the night he would surely know. There would be one moment when he would know and that would be a satisfaction to him. It was like a story by John Dickson Carr or Ellery Queen, the solution would be revealed at the end, the villain would be unmasked, and all would at last be plain and radiant. He would at last understand what he had suspected but could not prove.
    â€œI’ll go to the bathroom,” said Linda in the same unnaturally calm voice and he listened to her moving about in it. Then very quickly he rose and tiptoed over to the bathroom and looked in. Linda was on her knees beside the toilet bowl.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” he asked in a loud voice.
    She rose quickly to her feet, looking flustered.
    â€œI … I dropped an earring,” she said. “I was searching for it.”
    â€œNo, you weren’t,” he said. “You were putting a bug in here. I know that’s what you were doing.” And he himself went down on his knees and tried to find the bug but he couldn’t locate it though he knew it was there. He didn’t know much about bugs but had an idea that it could be disguised as perhaps the head of a nail: but there were so many of these that there was no point in even beginning to look. She might even have put the bug behind the large blank mirror that took up most of one side of the bathroom. He was more than ever convinced that she was deceiving him and that she recorded everything he said, to bring it up later as evidence of his unreasonableness and his manic tendencies. “He was always looking for bugs,” she would say, “isn’t that in itself evidence of his madness?” The clarity of his own mind was intense. It was as if he could see and hear right across counties, countries, even Europe. He had never before had such piercing clarity and ease of understanding. But he had to be quick and intelligent, for he was fighting for his life.
    â€œPlease,” he said to Linda. “Why don’t you stop it? You know that I loved you in the past. I never meant you any harm.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about,” she said.
    â€œWhat I said. Why do you hate me so much?”
    â€œIt’s you who hate me,” she said. “I don’t hate you. You should go to sleep. Why don’t you take a pill?”
    â€œNo,” he said, “I won’t.”
    He was determined that he wouldn’t take a sleeping tablet for he was sure that in his stupor of sleep she would phone her two friends and let them in and then they would kill him. He tried to remember whether they had been given a choice of rooms and couldn’t. Had she for some reason of her own chosen this room?
    He went over to the window. Far below he could see cars like toys and people like dolls walking along the pavements. There was a huge glass building opposite the hotel but he didn’t know what it was. He shuddered and shut the window.
    â€œI still think you should sleep for a while,” said Linda, “and maybe later we can go down for dinner.”
    â€œYou sleep if you want,” he said, “but I’m staying awake.”
    â€œAll right then,” she said. “I’ll lie down for a while.” She removed