Traitor's Purse Read Online Free Page B

and unsteady, into a neat old-fashioned stableyard with cobbles under his feet and the low graceful lines of Georgian outbuildings just visible in the faint light. By the time he emerged she had already opened the luggage hatch and was tugging at a suitcase within.
    He took it from her and would have put his free arm round her shoulders, but she did not notice his gesture and it occurred to him that he did hot usually exhibit such open affection. He was wondering a little at himself when she called him from the house.
    ‘Come on, Albert. It’s awfully late.’
    He found her waiting for him in a dark arched doorway.
    ‘Two steps up,’ she said. ‘Come on. It’s got a blackout gadget which turns out the light when you open the door.’
    As the wood closed softly behind him the small passage in which they stood lit up and in a soft yellow glow the comfortable flagged and panelled interior of a perfect Georgian house emerged. A baize door opposite him clearly cut off the reception half of the establishment and a narrow flight of oak stairs on their left led to a similar door on the first floor. The girl made for this upper door and as she ran up the staircase he suddenly saw her and recognized her, the first real and familiar thing to emerge in the terrifying darkness of his mind. Her thin young back under the perfectly cut brown tweed of her suit, her red curls, and her small brown hand on the bannister were all suddenly well known and inexpressibly dear to him.
    ‘Amanda!’ he said.
    ‘Yes?’ She swung round on the top of the stairs and stood looking down at him, a picture of arrested movement, her light brown eyes questioning and every line of her heart-shaped face alive and young.
    He laughed and came hurrying up the stairs after her.
    ‘I only wanted to hear you answer to your name.’
    The smile faded from her face and he thought she looked a trifle embarrassed.
    ‘I’m not really rattled,’ she murmured unexpectedly and as if he had reproached her. ‘It’s only that it’s all so horribly important and imminent. You’ve come back all carefree. Did something good happen?’
    ‘No, I’m rather afraid it didn’t. This is light-headedness,’ he said, and followed her through the second baize door into a small world of past elegance.
    Amanda crossed the upper hall, where stripped pine panelling, Chinese carpet, and sage-green drapery made a Georgian setting without either the stuffiness or the full-blooded ostentation of that great period of nouveaux-riches, and opened a door under an archway.
    ‘Yes, they’ve put your things out, thank God,’ she said, peering across another expanse of carpet. ‘Lee has got the servant problem taped, hasn’t he? It’s the combination of love
and
money, you know. They not only adore him but he pays them the earth. You get dressed and so will I. I’ll give you ten minutes. We can’t wash much: that’s all there is to it. Then I’ll come back. I must see you before we go down. Bless you.’
    She was gone before he could stop her, whisking into a room on the other side of the hall while her vivid friendly personality still warmed and comforted him like the glow of a coal fire.
    Albert Campion went into the room that presumably was his own and looked at the dinner-jacket laid out neatly on his bed. The tailor’s tab inside the breast pocket assured him that it was his and that he had bought it in the preceding spring. Now that he had been on his feet for some little time his weakness had become more apparent and, with the departure of Amanda, his earlier lost feeling returned. He began to dress carefully, moving slowly and with a certain amount of difficulty. After a minute or so he gave up trying to fathom any further deeper mysteries than those concerning the whereabouts of his underclothes and washing tackle. He had to hurry. Amanda was coming back in ten minutes and that was time enough to get all the serious questions settled. He clung to the thought of Amanda.