Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(10)

Maybe that
was what she’d meant by saying I’d always come
back. It was so easy to remember the last time.
The funeral was Wednesday afternoon, and they
still hadn’t found Sutton. I couldn’t seem to sleep at
all now. I’d doze off for a few minutes and then wake
up sweating and scared. I wondered how much
longer I could take it.
Hell Hath No Fury — 188
Gloria and Gulick and I ordered a big floral piece
for the funeral, and we all went, of course.
Everybody in the county seemed to be there. Gloria
cried along at the end of it, and I had to blow my
nose several times myself. He was a good man, a
better man than I was, even if I’d been a long time in
finding it out. Gloria and I drove around afterwards,
not going anywhere, and that awkward silence was
still there between us. When I took her home we sat
in the car a few minutes in front of the house.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(9)

The bed, I thought—it’s just inside the door, on the
right. All I have to do is step inside and turn and
reach down, and before he gets his hand on that gun
I’ll have mine on his throat and turn the
blackmailing bastard off like a leaky faucet. I moved
the other foot, easing it down like a cat. I was in the
doorway, and then inside, and turning.
Everything fell apart at once and the night erupted
into wildness. There was a sudden, brilliant flash of
lightning which lit “up the inside of the shack like a
flash-bulb going off, and then it was gone and the
thunder crashed at the same time. It shook the
house, and through the roar and rattle of it I heard
the sharp report of the gun as he fired. I was
turning, and diving towards the floor, and as the
blackness rolled back over us I saw the orange spurt
of flame as he shot again, and then I was conscious
that woven into all this madness of sound there was
one more and that it was a woman screaming
without beginning or end or drawing breath or
changing pitch, going on and on through the dying
roll of thunder and the crashing echo of the gun and
the meaty impact as we slammed into each other
and fell to the floor together and then the sound of
the gun again. He was under me and I was trying to
locate the flailing hand which had the gun and get

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(8)

When I thought he could hear me, I squatted down
beside him. “Now get this,” I said. “You can’t make
trouble for her. But even if you could, there’s
nothing you can do to me. I’ll still be here. And hell
won’t be big enough to hold you. So if you want to
go around the rest of your life singing to yourself
and slobbering down the front of your shirt, go
ahead and try it.”
I went out and got in the car and drove back to
town. Maybe I’d sold him, and maybe I hadn’t. The
only thing I knew for sure was that next time I’d
never get a chance to unload the shotgun.
Hell Hath No Fury — 147
16
That next week was wonderful. We didn’t see
anything of Sutton, and we were together nearly all
the time. We had lunch together every day, and I
spent a lot of time in the loan office under the
pretext of familiarizing myself with the setup.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(7)

“Well, there are actually several things. One is that
I wouldn’t marry you on a bet. I’ve already been
married to one big-hearted girl who couldn’t
remember where she lived, and once around the
course is enough for any man. But the big thing I
had in mind is that you’ve already got a husband.
Remember? Or do you, very often?”
“Probably as often as you do. But never mind
about him. He got everything he paid for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know why we came back from Galveston
today?”
I’d forgotten about that. “No. How could I?”
“He had a heart attack.”
“What!”
“It was the second one.”
“Where is he now?”

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(6)

I was third in line, after the two prisoners. I
watched the expressionless black face and the
sightless eyes behind the glasses. What was he
doing? Listening? Smelling? Or could he actually
see? I remembered the way he had tracked me there
in the bank. And then I began to get it. It was the
silence which tipped me off. He was listening to the
breathing of each man when the Sheriff stopped
him.
He stopped in front of me. We were facing each
other in exactly the same way we had in the bank,
and from the same arm’s-length distance. It was
insane. It would make you scream if you didn’t have
good nerves. They were trying to prove I had held up
the bank, and I was standing right there in the midst
of them facing the very man who’d watched me do it
—except that he couldn’t see. But was there
something characteristic about my breathing that
would identify me? My nose was broken; was that it?
I waited, sweating. He moved on to Buck.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(5)

“I had no idea it was so late,” she said. “We’ll have
to go. I promised I’d stay with Gloria Two while they
went to Bible Class.”
We gathered up the painting equipment and the
lunch box and stowed them in the car, and it wasn’t
until we were almost ready to get in ourselves that
we realized Spunky was missing. Neither of us could
recall seeing him since he’d gone past chasing the
rabbit.
We began calling him, but he didn’t come. I
walked up-river a few hundred yards, and then
down, calling and whistling, but there was no sign of
him. When I got back to the car it was growing dark,
and I could see she was worried and a little
frightened. I could have kicked myself for what I’d
said about the wild hogs.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(4)

I hit the door with my elbow and slammed it shut
at the same time I threw the blanket over him. He
straightened, tried to turn, and screamed. There was
Hell Hath No Fury — 63
no chance he had seen me. He fought the blanket
wildly, trying to get his arms up. I pulled them down,
took two turns around him with the line, and tied it
off, then pulled his feet from under him and set him
on the floor and threw two half-hitches around his
ankles. He was still yelling, the sound muffled inside
the blanket.I had the knife out. I pulled the blanket away from
his lower face and quickly cut a hole in it around his
mouth. Grabbing a paper towel out of the container
on the wall, I rolled it into a tight ball and the next
time he opened his mouth to scream I shoved it
inside, hard, and plastered a strip of adhesive tape
across it. I straightened, and wiped the sweat off my
face. It had taken a month.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(3)

The smart thing was to get out of here and let her
happen to somebody else.
But I had to wait, unless I wanted to give up the
idea which was going around in my mind. It would
take at least a month. No, it would take longer,
because you couldn’t just come in here, pull off
something like that, and then run. It would put the
finger on you. I looked at the building again. It was
perfect for what I wanted—unoccupied, and not too
near any of the few inhabited shacks along the
street. The only hitch was that I had to get into it
and out again without being seen, when the time
came, and now the moon was working against me. I
couldn’t take a chance on it until it started to wane,
unless we happened to get an overcast or a rainy
night. There were two or three shacks on the
opposite side of the cross street which had a view of
the side of the building, and you could never tell
when somebody might be awake and looking out
from one of them.

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(2)

“What is it?” I asked. “A junk drive?”
“Uh-uh. It’s our club project. We store the stuff in
Mr. Taylor’s old building and every two or three
months a junk man comes and buys the paper. We
sort out the clothes and send bundles.”
That’s nice, I thought. They send bundles. Well,
maybe it keeps them off the streets. We went down a
block beyond the bank and turned right into a cross
street which was only a couple of blocks long. There
wasn’t much here after you got off the main drag. A
small chain grocery stood on the corner, and beyond
that there was a Negro juke joint covered with Coca-

Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams 1953(1)

1
The first morning when I showed up on the lot he
called me into the office and wanted me to go out in
the country somewhere and repossess a car.
“I’m tired of fooling with that bird,” he said. “So
don’t take any argument. Bring the car in. Miss
Harper’ll go with you and drive the other one back.”
I was working on commission, and there wasn’t
any percentage in that kind of stuff. I’d just started
to tell him to get somebody else to run his errands
when I saw the girl come in and changed my mind.
He introduced us. “Miss Harper,” he grunted,
shuffling through the papers on his desk. “Madox is
the new salesman.”
“How do you do?” I said. She was cool in summer
cotton and had very round arms, just slightly tanned,
and somehow she made you think of a long-stemmed
yellow rose.

Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(2)

I waited, feeling the hot tension in the room. It was going to
be rough if he started asking her some more. I wasn’t any
hero, and didn’t want to be one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing
you could watch for very long without losing your head, and
with Tweed Jacket you probably never lost it more than once.
Tweed Jacket’s amused gaze flicked from me to the girl and
he shook his head again. “Waste of time,” he said. “He’d
scarcely be here, under the circumstances, unless the rules
have changed. Might go through the rooms, though, and have
a dekko at the ash trays. You know his brand of cigarettes.”
The pug went out, managing to bump against me and push
me off balance with a hard shoulder as he went past. I said
nothing. He turned his face a little and we looked at each
other. I remembered the obscene brutality of the way he was
holding and hitting her, and the yearning in the stare was
mutual.