Tightrope Walker Read Online Free Page B

oil paintings, framed sketches, maps, and books. It was a bright, cheerful room, just disorderly enough to prevent pangs of inadequacy in me.
    “Okay, show me what you’ve got,” he said, carrying his plate of scrambled egg to the desk and sitting down.
    I brought out my envelope, shook the pieces of cut paper out of it, and arranged them in front of him. He looked at them over his egg and then he turned and looked at me. “Photostats!” he said scornfully. “Bits and pieces … what kind of job do you think I can do with that?”
    “It’s handwriting,” I protested.
    “If you want your money’s worth—I charge fifteen dollars—I’ll need the original.”
    I said coldly, “I’d rather not show the original.”
    The telephone on the desk rang. He gave me a curious look as he reached for it and answered. He listened a minute, his face thoughtful. “No, I’d disagree with that, I think the child needs professional help. Right. Juvenile Court at 2 P . M ., I’ll be there.”
    He hung up and, seeing the look on my face, he smiled. “I hope you don’t assume handwriting analysis is fortunetelling,” he said. “I have a degree in psychology and I work with the courts and with the schools, Miss—Miss—”
    “Jones. Amelia Jones. If I thought it was fortunetelling I wouldn’t be here.”
    “Good.” He turned in his chair and gave me his full attention, his egg only half-eaten. “I don’t know why you don’t want me to see the original, Amelia, but I have to have more lines for evaluating, I really do.” He must have seen the stubbornness in my face because he added patiently, “I need a look at connective forms to see whether they’re garlands or arcade, angled or filiforms. I have to look for the constellations or clusters of traits, and laterals. The dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s is terribly important, and so are the marginal patterns, and then there are the zones—bizonal, trizonal, unizonal. There’s the slant of the writing, and fluctuations that might suggest ambivalence, the pressure of the pen on paper, the strokes—ascending, descending or lateral, and whether they’re broken or interrupted or fractured. Then there are counterstrokes and endstrokes—protective or directive—and interspaces …”
    “Oh,” I said, blinking.
    “… and with what you’ve given me—only two lines, I see—I can’t do a decent job.”
    I sighed and reluctantly groped in my shoulder bag, brought out the original letter and gave it to him.
    “Thanks,” he said and bent over it. “Written undersome pressure,” he murmured, pointing vaguely at the middle of the paper. “Interesting handwriting.”
    “Man or woman?” I asked.
    But he had begun to read the letter now, I could see that. I dropped my eyes and stared intently at his egg, which lay on his plate cooling and congealing. After a moment he said in an astonished voice, “Where on earth did you get this? Who wrote it?”
    “I found it,” I said, my eyes remaining fixed on his egg. “I don’t know who wrote it.”
    “But shouldn’t you take this to the police?”
    I hated explaining. When you’re not too strong a person, people can take things away from you so easily. I said, “I happen to own the Ebbtide Shop at 688 Fleet Street, and when I bought the shop there was an old hurdy-gurdy included. Last night I was playing the hurdy-gurdy and it got stuck, and I found the note inside. That’s two months it’s been there. At eight this morning I visited the former owner and he looked up his records and found that he’d bought the hurdy-gurdy six months ago. That’s a long time. I don’t see what the police could do, do you?”
    “No,” he said, sounding stunned. “But then what do you have in mind?”
    I wrested my gaze from his egg and found him looking baffled but kind. I said, “From Mr. Georgerakis I have the name of the man who sold it to him. If I go and see him he may know who Hannah is. Or was. Or he may give