Dolly and the Starry Bird-Dorothy Dunnett-Johnson Johnson 05 Read Online Free

private relief, and swore, in a decidedly undamaged way.
    “And a new torch,” I added. Very soon the uproar was going to rouse somebody.
    “Come on,” he said abruptly. “The wall by the restaurant is the lowest.”
    I didn’t argue. I had other plans for the evening, besides explaining to a group of large shirty keepers why we were running about in the darkness plastered with mud and Accostarsing Agli Animali. And since Charles doesn’t enjoy giving up any more than anyone does, I walked beside him back up the dark slope to the restaurant with my mouth firmly shut.
    It was, I suppose, pure coincidence that the man with the blue balloon thought of the same low wall out of the Gardens. And that he believed us sufficiently out of commission to risk doing something before he went over it. We had just caught the first spicy wind of the condors when Charles stopped me dead with his arm and said, “See it?”
    I saw it. Down the path, flickering dimly, was a small wistful light in the Gents. “I pass,” I said, whispering.
    “Right,” said Charles, and picking himself off the next pile of rubble he felt about and lifted a billet. “If I come out of this I shall buy you a new shirt and a torch and a wall-to-wall bed, and by that I am defining your future environment.”
    “Well, watch it,” I said, without much ingenuity. What I think about Charles doesn’t fit into words very readily. And then he walked away into the darkness.
    He had gone three paces when the loo windows went white and then red and there was the crash of a violent explosion. I saw Charles, silhouetted, stop moving. Then, as the echoes rolled cracking away, he began to sprint fast to the building.
    There was a moment’s stunned quiet in the Gardens, followed by a howl of protest from the denizens. I began to run after Charles.
    Before I got there, he backed out of the toilet. He had switched on the lamp by its doorway. In the light his face was green with shock. He said, “Don’t go in. I’m going to be sick,” and was. I dragged out two paper handkerchiefs and gave them to him. My hand, I found, was shaking. There was a sack of dead leaves onto which Charles, recovering, had subsided. He said, around the handkerchief, “He had blown his head off.”
    I said, “
Shot
himself?” It was unbelievable because it was so unlikely. He had stolen a camera. He had escaped from the owners. He didn’t know Charles was on his way there. I added, “He might have shot you,” and then, “Is your camera there?”
    “I didn’t look,” said Charles. He looked a little better.
    “Then we’d better get it,” I said, and walked in fast before I could change my mind or Charles could stop me.
    It was all true. The camera was there, blotched with blood, and I had no more paper hankies. Charles snatched it from me and swore all the time I, too, was being sick. Presently I was able to collect my senses. “Charles. He didn’t knock himself off. There wasn’t a gun in the cubicle.”
    “To hell with it,” he said with abrupt violence. Somewhere in the distance whistles were blowing and you could hear men’s voices here and there above the bickering animals. He pulled me up and helped me run up the pathway. “It might have been a grenade,” he said as he ran.
    “No,” I said. I drew some punctuated breaths and added, “The film had been pulled from the camera.”
    I could see his face as he looked around at me, startled. “Right out? Exposed?”
    “No. Gone,” I said. “There was no film in the camera and none in his pockets. I patted them. And the camera had been loaded. I noticed. Half the reel had been shot off already.”
    We ran in silence up to the restaurant plateau. The streetlights over the wall showed my basket, standing dim on the table. I said, “Charles. He was stealing the fashion shots?”
    “My God. I suppose so,” said Charles. He paused, a little distractedly, by the white marble fountain which decorated the wall we were