Hide My Eyes Read Online Free Page B

THE day on which Mr. Campion went to visit Superintendent Luke, Garden Green achieved a beauty which was not normally its outstanding characteristic.
    Sunlight, yellow and crystal in the mist, glowed through the wet black branches of the plane trees while the fallen cream-coloured leaves made a fine carpet hiding the bald patches, the cigarette cartons and the ’bus tickets which in the ordinary way disfigured the discouraged grass.
    A narrow concrete path ran round the green like a ribbon round a hat. At the furthest loop was a single wooden seat and upon it sat a girl.
    She was not very tall but curved as a kitten, and was clad in an elegant tweed coat with matching tan shoes and gloves. At her feet was a small canvas travelling bag.
    P.G. Bullard, heavyweight and elderly, who was on duty at the corner, had strolled down the path twice already to have a look at her, once in the way of duty and once for pure pleasure. Her sleekly brushed hair was honey coloured, her grey eyes flecked with gold were widely set, and her mouth might have been drawn with a copperplate pen, so fine and yet so bold were its lines.
    The man on duty was puzzled by her. He thought he had never seen anything so out of place. If she was waiting for someone who was very late she certainly did not mind, for she sat there contentedly in the cold morning, her fair skin glowing and the sunlight burnishing her uncovered head. He judged that she was something over seventeen trying to look twenty, and he was not far out except that it was twenty-four she was aiming at. Apart from her beauty, which was outstanding, the other thing which impressed him was her self-possession. The second time he passed her she caught him eyeing her and wished him a polite good morning as a matter of course.
    She was up from the country, he decided. That was about it.
    After forty minutes he began to feel downright anxious about her, although she showed no sign of being disturbed. If she was wearing a watch she did not consult it but remained relaxed, graceful, and apparently utterly content. Her slender feet were thrust out before her and her hands were folded in her lap.
    He might have guessed that it was her destiny that other people should do the worrying about Miss Annabelle Tassie, for it was with positive relief that he, a complete stranger, saw at last a young man turn sharply in from the street and go hurrying towards her.
    The newcomer, too, was an unusual type of visitor to the district. He was a small and dapper youngster with dark red hair and one of those bright little-boy faces which are so often the despair of their owners, whose tastes, more often than not, veer towards the romantic. He was twenty-two and looked no older, but there was pugnacity in the lower part of his face and his very clear blue eyes were vividly intelligent.
    His dark suit was impeccable and his white collar shining, and if he had no overcoat it was because, as the newest recruit to the ancient firm of Wysdom Bros. and Company, Tea Brokers, Bread Lane, City, he did not care to wear to business his last year’s garment which was Her Majesty’s khaki. And until the end of the month he would not have quite enough money to purchase the soberly elegant affair on which he had had his eye for some time.
    However, this temporary deficiency did not worry him. His most obvious characteristic, which was a natural grace and gaiety of movement, made him appear a joyous figure striding over the grass as if the world belonged to him. One of the compensations of youth is its ability to accept the shifts of life as the trivia they turn out to be, and Richard Waterfield had seen nothing outrageous in the demand in Annabelle’s letter that he should journey half across London at nine in the morning to meet her in some god-forsaken square of which he had never heard. It was the first letter he had received from her in eighteen months, but he accepted the call upon him without hesitation, arranging with Messrs.