Read THE WHITE WOLF for Free Online Page B

felt.
     
    “This must stop,” she said.
     
    The effluvium of decaying foods, emanating from an uncovered garbage pail at the curb, assailed her nostrils. The sudden realization that the odor was not unpleasant gave additional vehemence to her declaration.
     
    “No,” she said. “No, no!”
     
    The negative sounded false.
     
    She felt that from the windows behind her the man’s scorching eyes were staring at her.
     
    She moved on. aimlessly, the fashionably dressed object of all the truck drivers and loungers and drunks with which the neighborhood abounded.
     
    But even as she moved away, she felt the magnetism of the house behind her. She was empowered to swim against the stream for the moment only, she knew, because it was the will of that man with the ice-cold hands and the mincing walk.
     
    She moved heavily, unmindful of her direction. And what did direction matter when, with a velocity she was unable to brake, she was being propelled toward some target she had not chosen for herself; indeed, when horrifying outlines were but dimly suggested by those lightning flashes of knowledge.
     
    A red neon sign attracted her. She walked through the door. She sat down at a little table in a dirty barroom. The oilcloth on the table was crumbly with broken pretzels glued to the cloth with sticky beer. Near her chair on the floor stood a china cuspidor, tobacco juice dripping down its sides.
     
    Sara ordered a drink. . . .
     
     
    WHEN you walked into the Salon de W Camp-d’Avesnes, in the smart shopping district of Chestnut Street, you found yourself not in one of those modernistically mirrored, chromiumed and ebony-enameled palaces of trade, but rather in a museum. You were not buttonholed by one of those chic wenches with the' trick French accent who, while catering, looks down her pretty nose at you. You were left to roam at perfect ease.
     
    If, by chance, you had a mind to perfume, there was a glass case discreetly out of the way at the rear and discreetly attended by a serene, well turned-out woman in middle life. It was Pierre's way of explaining to the world that not only was he proud of his museum but that he could get along quite well without trade.
     
    The room itself was elegant in the gold and white and satin of royal and eighteenth- century France. But you appreciated at once that the chamber was only a setting for the many exquisite objects.
     
    Here, on this slender Louis XV stand, stood an Egyptian jar, disinterred from the tomb of a Pharoah when it still held the fragrance of the perfume it had once contained.
     
    Here, in a case, were samples of the first vials brought to France from the Holy Land by crusading knights.
     
    There were sachets from the court of Queen Elizabeth. There were matching necklaces and rings, whose centers held perforated boxes for perfume.
     
    There were gold and silver and ivory castlettes and printaniers which appeared in the courts of England and France a century after Elizabeth. There were perfume lamps and perfume pans and perfume bellows, forerunners of the atomizer.
     
    There were thirteenth-century finger bowls, which once held rose water.
     
    There were papier-mache rouge boxes hoary with age. There was a mother-of-pearl coffret in which Catherine the Great stowed her perfume flagons, her pomade jars and ivory manicure tools. And from all ages and all countries there were rare and costly vases.
     
    Yet, it was not this room Pierre called his “crossroads of the world.”
     
    This was the large vault at the rear in which he stood this Saturday morning, staring vacantly at a row of glass jars.
     
    There were products here worth more than their weight in gold. There was soft fatty civet from Abyssinia. There was castor from Russia. There was Tonquin musk from Tibet, benzoin from Siam, storax from Asia Minor. The oils of ylang-ylang and jasmin, of rose and palmerosa were here—oils measured by the precious drop. There were balsams and gums. And there were