Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

What you want is a good hard bout of honest work.
    E. Standing.
    “It’s a rude letter—isn’t it?” said Egbert sleepily. “I remember I nearly tore it up.”
    “You would have been tearing up about three million pounds if you had,” said Mr. Hale in his most impressive voice.
    CHAPTER IX
    Charles Moray walked twenty yards up Sloane Street, and then walked twenty yards down again. He continued to do this. Across the street was a lighted window with one hat on a stand and a piece of gold brocade lying carelessly at the foot of a bright green bowl full of golden fir-cones. Charles was aware that these things were there, because he had stood in front of the window and peered in; all that he could actually see from across the road was a blur of light in the fog. He hoped he would be able to see Margaret when she came out.
    He went up close to a street lamp and looked at his watch. It was past six o’clock and the fog was getting thicker every minute. He crossed the street and again began to walk up and down.
    It was a quarter past six before Margaret came out. He was only a couple of yards away, and even so, he nearly missed her. There was a shadow that slipped past him in the fog and was gone.
    Charles ran after the shadow. He could not have said how he knew that it was Margaret who had passed him; he did not stop to think about it at all. He ran after her, came in sight of the shadow, and kept pace with it, a little behind.
    He was in a strange mood. There came first the quick certainty that this was Margaret. And then, like a flood, this sense of her and of her nearness swept over him. She walked before him; but if she had been in his arms, as she once had been, he could not have felt her more near. If he looked, he would see her very thoughts. He told himself that all he had ever seen was a mirage—the real Margaret had never shared a single thought with him.
    He had been quite sure that it was going to be immensely interesting to meet her again; it had not entered his head that he would be angry. Yet he had not walked half a dozen yards behind her before he was as angry as he had ever been in his life. He was angry in a new way—angry with Margaret for earning her living, angrier because she had mixed herself up in who knew what ridiculous and criminal conspiracy, and angriest of all because she had made him angry. Mixed with his anger—curiosity. What was at the bottom of it? What did it all mean? The explorer in him was most keenly on the alert. He meant to get to the bottom of the business.
    Perhaps his step quickened a little; he was nearer her than he had meant to be when they passed under a street lamp. The light hung above it like a faint white cloud. _ He said, “How d’you do, Margaret?” and said it lightly and pleasantly. To Margaret Langton the voice came out of the fog and out of the past. There was a step that kept pace with her own. And then Charles Moray said her name— Charles. She turned, a ghost in a nimbus. The quick movement was Margaret, the rest a blur.
    “Charles!”
    Her voice was unbelievably familiar; it might have been some voice of his own speaking to him. It shook him, and a hotter anger than before leapt in him.
    “Charles! How dare you frighten me like that!”
    “Did I frighten you!” He spoke smoothly and easily.
    Margaret caught her breath.
    “I thought someone was following me. It’s horrible to be followed in a fog.”
    “I was waiting for you, and I nearly missed you. That ass Archie had forgotten your address, so I had to try and catch you here.”
    They walked on; the lamp receded. Margaret said,
    “Why did you want to—catch me?”
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    “I’ve been away. Perhaps you haven’t noticed. One comes back, one sees one’s friend—”
    “Friends—are we friends? I shouldn’t have thought you would ever want to see me again.”
    This was the old Margaret, fiercely untactful. Charles leapt at the opening. He wanted to hit hard, to hurt