Air Ticket Read Online Free

darted across the road at a time of day when you might very easily have been killed.”
    “I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that I don’t see awfully well without my glasses, and I was a little confused by the sun. It was in my eyes.”
    “Yes, I noticed that,” he said. “But why weren’t you wearing glasses if it’s really essential that you should wear them?”
    She explained that she had left them behind in her London flat. She hastened to add that she was an artist, and her eyes had been a bit strained lately. And her name was Caro Yorke.
    “Short for Caroline?” he inquired with a faint smile in his eyes.
    “No. My mother was Caroline, but she declined to pass the name on and called me Caro.”
    “And you, too, have a daughter?”
    “Yes. She was married very recently.”
    “You don’t look as if you could possibly be old enough to have a married daughter,” he told her.
    “All the same, I have. But I was married when I was very young—I was barely eighteen.”
    “And you were running away from something when I met you on the plane,” he reminded her .
    “ Oh ... yes!”
    “I hope it wasn’t your husband,” he said quietly.
    For an instant she looked both surprised and shocked. Then, in a flat and rather colorless voice, she informed him, “My husband is dead. He died sixteen years ago, in a submarine at sea.”
    “I ... see,” he answered, as if she had taken him aback. “I’m very sorry,” he added with a warm note of apology in his voice.
    She smiled rather wanly. “That’s all right. You couldn’t know.”
    He rose and walked over to the window, and when he turned his voice was cool and professional.
    “Mrs. Yorke, I’d like you to stay here for a night. A room is being prepared for you, and I think you’d feel happier if you went to bed. That leg is bound to be somewhat painful, and then you’ve had a bit of a sho c k, as well. Are you staying in Oberlaken?”
    “Yes.” She felt herself coloring in a manner that annoyed her as his eyes rested once more on her face. “ I ... I thought I’d like to see it after you mentioned it, and a fellow guest in the hotel at Zurich gave me the name of a hotel that she recommended. I’ve been here only a couple of days.”
    His expression remained quite grave as he suggested, “If you like to give me the name of the hotel I’ll slip along and get a chambermaid to put a few things for the night into a suitcase for you. You must have a few things of your own.”
    “But won’t that be troubling you?”
    “Not at all.”
    “And is it really necessary for me to—to remain here?”
    “Not absolutely necessary, but I’d like you to do so if you will.”
    “Very well.”
    “Good girl,” he said softly, and as no one had said that to her for years it sent a tiny warm glow to her heart. “I won’t be long.”
    When he returned with the suitcase, and she was comfortably in bed, and he had found time to look in on little Maria Ferenza, he remembered with a shock that he was to dine with Olga Spiro.
    He put a call through to her flat, and he could tell from her voice that she was hurt.
    “I couldn’t think what had happened,” she said.
    “I’m sorry, Olga, but I’ll be round as soon as I’ve had a chance to change.”

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    The following morning Caro was allowed to depart from the clinic. Dr. Andreas called at her hotel in the afternoon, when she was sitting rather forlornly on the balcony outside her room and wondering why a letter from Beverley, forwarded by Mrs. Moses, had done so little to cheer her. The letter, postmarked Naples, was full of enthusiasm and exuded a completely self-centered happiness that shut Caro out like a newly erected and very high stone wall.
    “Don’t work too hard, mummy,” her daughter advised her, “and keep cheerful! I’m blissfully happy, so don’t worry about me!”
    As Caro returned the letter to its envelope she wondered what Beverley would think if she could see her now. It