Fear to Tread Read Online Free Page A

fell on his face.
    “I’m sorry. I seem to be disturbing your breakfast.”
    “That’s all right, Mr. Wetherall. Pleased to see you. Sit down.”
    The voice was hard. The red-headed boy and the big, well-made, pleasant young man had both gone. In their place was this heavy, and somehow rather dangerous-looking person.
    “Some time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Wetherall.”
    “I expect we’ve both been busy.”
    Mr. Wetherall was playing for time. He was wondering whether the new Sergeant Donovan could help him. Might it be better to temporise – something about Sammy or Peggy – anything would do. He was aware that the sergeant was looking at him steadily over his tea-cup.
    In the end he said: “I came across something last night that I didn’t much like. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, but I felt it might help if I passed it on. It was at Luigi’s—”
    He told the whole story.
    It was difficult to say if Sergeant Donovan was interested or not. He sat very still whilst Mr. Wetherall was talking and at the end he said:
    “Your idea about this, is it that someone’s been starting a whisper about Luigi’s food?”
    “That’s what he says.”
    “To run him out of business?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Anyone whose restaurant does bad, Mr. Wetherall, could think up a story like that. It’d be a sort of excuse, wouldn’t it?”
    “But he said they actually came and pretended to find insects and dirt in his food. They made a fuss in public. That sort of thing—”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “He said that he used to get food from these people – black market stuff, I suppose. Then they put their prices up, and he couldn’t pay. So they said, if he didn’t pay they would drive him out of business.”
    “Well now,” said Sergeant Donovan. “Who are ‘they’? Who are these people he’s talking about?”
    “He didn’t say.”
    “Any suggestions?”
    “No. He just said ‘they’ and ‘them’. You could see he was nervous about them. In fact, if he hadn’t been so angry about it I don’t think he would have said anything.”
    “I can believe that bit all right,” said Donovan, with rather a tight smile. “Did he actually say that it was black market food he’d been buying.”
    “Not in so many words – I mean, I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”
    “You won’t be asked to do that,” said the sergeant, reading Mr. Wetherall’s thoughts accurately. “It’s not Mister Luigi What’s-is-name you’ve got to worry about. He’s just the meat in the trap. He’s the worm on the hook. Once people like him start fooling round with funny stuff they always end up in trouble, one side or the other. It’s the people who supply the Luigis that I’d like to have a quiet word with. Or the people who supply them. Just a quiet word.”
    As he spoke he moved across to the window, so that the light fell on a white line of scar which ran down, stretched and taut, from cheekbone to chin, so that for a moment, the jaw seemed to hang from it, like a puppet’s jaw on a thread. When the sergeant turned back into the room he spoke more mildly.
    “So far as doing anything about this goes,” he said, “I’m ‘L’ Division. Luigi’s place in Deptford Broadway, that’s ‘R’.”
    “Is it?” said Mr. Wetherall. The geography he had been taught had not included the frontiers of the London Police Authorities.
    “However, I’ll see if anything can be done. I might put a word in the right quarter. But my best advice to you, Mr. Wetherall, is to leave it alone. They’re not a nice crowd the people behind this. Not a nice crowd at all.”
    “Thank you,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’m sure if anything can be done you’ll do it.”
     
    As soon as he got back to the school he sent for Peggy.
    “What’s it all about?” he said.
    “All what, Mr. Wetherall?”
    “Your brother – living at home. What’s happened to his wife? And what’s happened to him.