The Curse Read Online Free
Author: Harold Robbins
through the peephole, I didnât see any sign of the crazy woman.
I guess telling her the cops were coming scared her off, but I wasnât about to open the door to find out if she was still there ready to pounce on me.
Screaming fire and yelling hadnât helped, of course.
No one came to my rescue, but that was no surprise. Sometimes living in New York made me feel like I was on a deserted island even though I rubbed elbows with people every time I left my apartment.
Finally, a 911 operator came on that sounded like she learned her English in Bangladeshâor maybe she was in Bangladesh for that matterâand took my report.
The first thing she wanted to know was whether it was a âdomestic dispute.â I assured her that I had no relatives who wanted to poke holes in me with a letter opener.
Knowing my blood hadnât been spilled and the assailant wasnât in sight meant she wasnât going to waste officers on someone who survived, so I told her that the crazy woman was still somewhere in building looking for victims.
I took some deep breaths to get my nerves under control while I waited for the police.
The whole thing was bizarre.
My computer ends up trashed, a complete stranger tries to poke holes in me ⦠what else could happen today?
Morty jumped on the bed and went back to his usual spot. He had dove under the bed when I started yelling for help.
I grabbed the white envelope.
My name had been written in pencil on it.
The printed writing was neat and legible. Probably written by any older person because it wasnât the way people usually wrote today. They mostly scribbled when they had to actually write something since they spent most of their time using a computer keyboard or texting.
Also, there was no return address. And who used pencils anymore? People still wrote with pens, but addressing an envelope in pencil? I wasnât sure I even owned a pencil.
It occurred to me that a bill collector might have come up with a clever way to get my attention.
Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping with a phone number at the top, written in pencil again, with the same neat and legible writing, and what appeared to be a poor photocopy of an article from a pseudoscientific magazine.
I didnât recognize the phone number.
My first suspicion of the natty handwriting was a bastard named Henri Lipton. I thought I had gotten rid of him two years ago when his London antique gallery had gone up in flames with him in it.
No such luck.
Like the devil that comes to call to make a deal with you when you are at your weakest level, Lipton had returned from the grave a few months ago and offered me a job.
My mistake was accepting it. I soon realized that I shouldnât have let my need for money get in the way of survival. But how can you refuse a chance to make a buck when you desperately need it?
The clipping was one of those society page photos of people in evening dress chatting at what I assumed was a society or charity affair.
The photo had been trimmed down to just show several women standing together. I could make out some hieroglyphics on the wall behind the women. I couldnât see much of the glyphs, but was sure they were a modern reproduction.
The written description that ordinarily would have appeared beneath a newspaper photo wasnât there, but I recognized the woman in the center, a dowager of London society, Lady Candace Berkshire Vanderbilt.
Anyone involved in Mediterranean region antiquities would recognize her name.
As a museum curator with a particular interest in Egyptian antiquities, I knew quite a bit about her because her grandfather, Gordon Nelson Vanderbilt, had been one of the wealthy backers of Howard Carter.
Grandfather Vanderbilt, along with Lord Carnarvon and others, had financed Carterâs search for a pharaohâs tomb back in the 1920s. Carter had found King Tutankhamen ⦠and the rest was history.
Of course, part of
I guess telling her the cops were coming scared her off, but I wasnât about to open the door to find out if she was still there ready to pounce on me.
Screaming fire and yelling hadnât helped, of course.
No one came to my rescue, but that was no surprise. Sometimes living in New York made me feel like I was on a deserted island even though I rubbed elbows with people every time I left my apartment.
Finally, a 911 operator came on that sounded like she learned her English in Bangladeshâor maybe she was in Bangladesh for that matterâand took my report.
The first thing she wanted to know was whether it was a âdomestic dispute.â I assured her that I had no relatives who wanted to poke holes in me with a letter opener.
Knowing my blood hadnât been spilled and the assailant wasnât in sight meant she wasnât going to waste officers on someone who survived, so I told her that the crazy woman was still somewhere in building looking for victims.
I took some deep breaths to get my nerves under control while I waited for the police.
The whole thing was bizarre.
My computer ends up trashed, a complete stranger tries to poke holes in me ⦠what else could happen today?
Morty jumped on the bed and went back to his usual spot. He had dove under the bed when I started yelling for help.
I grabbed the white envelope.
My name had been written in pencil on it.
The printed writing was neat and legible. Probably written by any older person because it wasnât the way people usually wrote today. They mostly scribbled when they had to actually write something since they spent most of their time using a computer keyboard or texting.
Also, there was no return address. And who used pencils anymore? People still wrote with pens, but addressing an envelope in pencil? I wasnât sure I even owned a pencil.
It occurred to me that a bill collector might have come up with a clever way to get my attention.
Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping with a phone number at the top, written in pencil again, with the same neat and legible writing, and what appeared to be a poor photocopy of an article from a pseudoscientific magazine.
I didnât recognize the phone number.
My first suspicion of the natty handwriting was a bastard named Henri Lipton. I thought I had gotten rid of him two years ago when his London antique gallery had gone up in flames with him in it.
No such luck.
Like the devil that comes to call to make a deal with you when you are at your weakest level, Lipton had returned from the grave a few months ago and offered me a job.
My mistake was accepting it. I soon realized that I shouldnât have let my need for money get in the way of survival. But how can you refuse a chance to make a buck when you desperately need it?
The clipping was one of those society page photos of people in evening dress chatting at what I assumed was a society or charity affair.
The photo had been trimmed down to just show several women standing together. I could make out some hieroglyphics on the wall behind the women. I couldnât see much of the glyphs, but was sure they were a modern reproduction.
The written description that ordinarily would have appeared beneath a newspaper photo wasnât there, but I recognized the woman in the center, a dowager of London society, Lady Candace Berkshire Vanderbilt.
Anyone involved in Mediterranean region antiquities would recognize her name.
As a museum curator with a particular interest in Egyptian antiquities, I knew quite a bit about her because her grandfather, Gordon Nelson Vanderbilt, had been one of the wealthy backers of Howard Carter.
Grandfather Vanderbilt, along with Lord Carnarvon and others, had financed Carterâs search for a pharaohâs tomb back in the 1920s. Carter had found King Tutankhamen ⦠and the rest was history.
Of course, part of
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