Trusted Like The Fox Read Online Free Page A

aware of her desperate poverty.
    He hesitated as he looked at the directory sign on the wall.
    The Deaf and Dumb Friendship League appeared to have offices round the bend of the corridor if you could believe the painted hand pointing in that direction. He walked on, rounded the bend as the girl disappeared through a doorway, half-way down the passage.
    When Ellis reached this door, he found lettered on it in flaked black paint on pebbled glass: The Deaf and Dumb Friendship League ; and in smaller letters the legend: Manager: H. Whitcombe. He turned the knob and went into a small narrow room with two windows, a shabby little typewriter desk, closed, a number of dusty filing cabinets, no curtains to the windows and a carpet so threadbare that you wouldn’t notice the rips in it unless you tripped over one.
    A counter divided the room into two, and in its turn the counter was divided by four wooden screens. They reminded Ellis of the partitions in the pledging office of a pawnbroker’s shop.
    The girl in the grey skirt was standing at one of the partitions, her back to Ellis. He stared at her, wishing to see her face, but as she did not look round, he had to be content to eye her square, narrow shoulders, her straight back and her legs which had already attracted his attention. Rather to his surprise he found himself trying to see beyond the shabby clothes at what he was sure was a beautifully proportioned body. Her legs vaguely excited him in spite of the darned lisle stockings and the down-at-the-heel shoes.
    Except for the girl and Ellis the room was empty. He took up a position at the partition next to the one at which she was standing and waited. The partition hid the girl but he could see her hands resting on the ink-stained counter.
    They were small, strong hands; brown and smooth; the fingers long, the thumbs waisted, the nails almond-shaped. He looked at his own hands, short-fingered, ugly, the nails bitten to the quicks, knuckles grimed, and he grimaced.
    A door of the inner office across the far side of the room opened, and an elderly man came out. He wore a black suit with high lapels and too many buttons down the front. He had been fat at one time, but now he had wasted, and loose skin hung from his jowls giving him a look of a depressed bloodhound. His sharp, black eyes, under heavy eyebrows, darted to the right and left; shifty, suspicious eyes. He nodded first to the girl, then to Ellis. There was nothing friendly about the nod.
    He went immediately to the girl.
    “There’s nothing for you,” he said, obviously anxious to get rid of her. “Perhaps next week. It’s no use coming like this day after day. Jobs don’t grow on trees.”
    “I can’t wait until next week,” the girl said. Her voice was flat, expressionless, soft. “I haven’t any money.”
    The elderly man, who Ellis guessed rightly to be Mr Whitcombe, the manager, shrugged. It seemed he had heard that tale so often it had come to mean nothing to him. “I can’t help that,” he said, impatiently. “There’s nothing for you. I have a note of your name and address. If I hear of anything I’ll drop you a card.”
    “You keep saying that,” the girl said in her toneless voice. “It’s three weeks now since I gave you the forty shillings. You must do something for me. You said when you took the money you were certain to fix me up in a few days.”
    Mr Whitcombe’s face changed colour. He looked furtively at Ellis, then back to the girl. “You be careful what you’re saying,” he returned, lowering his voice. “Forty shillings? I don’t know what you mean. What forty shillings?”
    “You said you’d find me a job that didn’t need a reference if I gave you forty shillings,” the girl said, her voice tight with emotion. “It was a loan, you said, because you wanted to get straightened out. I gave it to you because I didn’t have any references.”
    “You’re day-dreaming,” Mr Whitcombe said, embarrassed. Wait a minute. Let