She blushed hotly. Dropped her handbag, started to pick it up, then decided to answer the question which had been shot at her.
“Well—yes, you see—I—I—”
His next words stopped her.
“Do you know what’s happened?”
“Happened?”
The man thrust the newspaper before her, pointing at the page with a thick finger.
“Read,” he said quietly.
The letters leapt up at her in a great black headline:
HENRI TALLIER FOUND DEAD
REVOLVER BY HIS SIDE
SUICIDE?
Then the words started to go away from her horribly quickly. They suddenly formed into a circle and spun round faster, faster. She heard a voice as if from far away cry out something.
Someone caught her as the whole world turned turtle and went black.
CHAPTER 2
She opened her eyes to meet someone else’s looking down at her. They’re a funny slate-grey, she thought drowsily, closing hers again.
“That’s it, take it easy,” a voice said.
There was something vaguely familiar about it. She felt too tired to remember, though, and lay quiet and still.
“Drink this.”
Gratefully, she sipped a glass of water held to her lips. It was very cold. It cleared the mists away from her brain. But the hammer beating at the back of her head still went on mercilessly.
She gave a little moan. Tried to lift her head. An arm slipped very gently under her, helped her sit upright.
“How’s that, now?”
She remembered now. The carefully pronounced French, with an obviously English accent. She opened her eyes, smiled wanly at the Englishman who had spoken to her in the airliner. He grinned at her, while she answered in English, slowly and distinctly:
“Thank you, that is much better.”
“Oho, speak English, eh?”
“My father was an Englishman—I like to speak his language!”
He noticed her voice had a curious huskiness in it.
“I see. And was your father’s French as bad as mine?”
“I am sorry, I did not mean to make you think that. But I knew you were English all right.”
“Well, we won’t bother about that now. And we’ll speak your father’s language. Still feeling a bit shaky?”
“It is only my head. It bangs a little.”
“Keep quiet, and the bang will soon go.”
He handed her the glass again and she drank. “That’ll help the headache on its way.”
She looked about her.
They were in a small waiting-room, and she had been placed on a long padded seat, with a rolled-up overcoat supporting her head. There was nobody else in the room. It was very peaceful after the noise before… Before…
Suddenly she remembered.
He took the glass from her. Comforted her with quiet strength. Calmed the turmoil of her brain, jangled thoughts from out of which the black headlines that had shrieked at her stood and danced their tragic dance.
She bowed her head in her hands and cried silently. Her anguish seemed to tear at the very roots of her heart. It shocked him with its intensity. Surprised him, too. He had not expected such grief from this slim, childishly young-looking girl. There was a hauntingly queer maturity about her grief which touched him deeply.
“This won’t do, you know. Listen. Listen to me.”
He sat and faced her. Watched the tears trickle through her fingers, and spoke to her very gently.
In a moment or two she ceased to weep and looked up at him. He pushed a lock of her mouse-coloured hair from off her face while she sat, her hands clasped tightly together, like a little child.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together,” he said. “I don’t know what poor Tallier meant to you—but you can’t alter things by tears. You must be brave. He’d want you to be that—wouldn’t he?”
She shook her head slowly.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. You see…” And she began to tell her story.
Right from the beginning. Hunched up there in that room whose silence only the faint hum of the arriving and departing airliners penetrated. Interrupted only by the appearance of a doctor, who saw she was recovered, and hurried off, she talked. Skilfully her listener prompted her.
Her name was Mitsi Linden, she said.
She told him how her father married her French mother after a whirlwind wooing. How he had deserted his wife soon after she was born. How this broken marriage had ultimately resulted in a wonderful bond of friendship and love between her and her mother. How, though they had to pinch and scrape to live, they were deeply content. They made no friends, for they were both shy and frightened of the world. But living for each other they had been terribly happy. They had drifted round France, then Italy, living in cheap pensions on the little money her mother had, then finally Switzerland and Zurich, a shabby, peaceful little villa outside the town.
Soon after her twentieth birthday that happiness ended with tragic suddenness. A short illness, and then…her mother’s dying wish she should get into touch with Tallier. He had been a loving, devoted admirer of hers, long ago, when her mother was a student in Paris.
That was all, the rest he knew.
“So there’s no one who can help you, now?”
“Nobody in the world…”
“Hmmm. It’s bad.”
He smiled at her, and stood up.
She watched him push his hands deep into his pockets and walk the length of the room and back. A wave of gratitude swept over her. She wanted to tell him how grateful she was to him for his kindness to her.
Somehow, she found it difficult to find words which would not sound trite and unreal. He is not an easy person to thank, she decided. He gave the impression he had done what he had as a matter of course. There was no fuss, no unnecessary words, or actions. Just a quiet method of dealing with everything.
No situation, she felt, would ever find him at a loss. There was a breadth about his entire personality, as well as the width of his shoulders. A roughness and a hardness which his present quietness seemed to emphasize.
Instinctively she was appraising him, his strength and his gentleness. He is rarely gentle, she told herself. Nor does he go out of his way to be charming, or nice. The set of his large, well-shaped head on his strong neck suggested a keen brain, but that of a man who disdained any subtleties.
She realized even the culminating tragedy of the last hour had not completely blotted out her inquisitive-ness. She plucked up courage and voice to ask his name.
“Sorry!” he apologized at once. “Here I’ve been cross-examining you from every angle, and you don’t know the first thing about me! I’m Larry Curtis—I write for the Courier—a London newspaper—”
Her eyes darkened.
“I hate newspapers,” she shuddered, remembering those dreadful headlines again.
“I know—well, forget all about ’em, or that I’m anything to do with them.”
He stood looking down at her.
“You’ve got to be sensible.