Pray for a Brave Heart by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

already on the other side of the Atlantic.”
    “Soon he will be. Next week he sails from Genoa.”
    “Francesca,” Paula said excitedly, “you’ve simply got to tell Andy all about this.”
    “We’ll see.”
    They turned westward on the Kramgasse.
    “How many have you helped in this way?” Paula asked.
    But the street was more crowded, and Francesca only shook her head, smiling.
    Paula was contented with the smile. There must have been several men and women, all first-rate in their own highly specialised fields. She looked at Francesca with pride, and pressed her arm gratefully. “You just make me feel good. You make me feel very good. But how mad you must make some other people feel!”
    “We don’t entice anyone. All the men and women we have helped have come here by their own choice. They have the courage. We just give them hope, and some help.” Francesca laughed suddenly. It was the kind of happy laugh she used to have: it hasn’t gone, Paula thought, it has just been buried.
    “If we run,” said Paula, “if we run, do you think we’ll make that trolley car?”
    Bill Denning, coming out of the restaurant where he had eaten, not a sandwich, but at least an undisturbed meal, saw them climbing aboard. They were back to their schooldays, he thought with amazement. Women were fantastic. Paula was crazy, of course, you could expect anything from Paula. But that tragedy queen—he stared, unbelieving, at the blonde Italian—she not only could run, she could laugh.
    Then he turned away before they could see him. He would go and shut himself up in his hotel room. That was one way to avoid these two lunatics, one way to keep them clear of him. In a town like Bern, so closely centred—for visitors, at least—on the tight peninsula circled by the river Aare, he could meet Paula too easily again. Today he didn’t want to meet anyone, least of all a friend. For it was possible that he wasbeing followed, that his movements were being checked, that all his contacts were being noted. Better keep Paula and her blue-eyed friend out of all this. Danger was like cholera: it had an unguessable way of spreading.

4
THE WAITING HOURS
    That afternoon was quiet enough in Denning’s room. There were no more interruptions from the inquisitive chamber-maid. There were no more gardening operations. But Denning, in spite of stretching himself out on his bed, didn’t sleep. He couldn’t read, either: Malraux’s Les Voix du Silence lay beside him unopened. He couldn’t plan for tomorrow. He was a man caught by the moment and held there captive.
    An unpleasant afternoon.
    Waiting. Waiting while the sunshine slipped across the room, and then abandoned it to grey shadow.
    Six o’clock at last. Better start choosing a restaurant, some place with its quota of early tourists, some place with leisurely service and good food and decent wine, some place within casual walking distance of Henziplatz, No. 10.
    Or was six too early? Perhaps. But this room was getting on his nerves. He picked up the guide-book he had bought thatmorning and turned to its index of restaurants.
    “Looks very much like a shower of rain, sir,” the desk clerk told him cheerfully.
    Denning glanced at the downpour on the pavement, and then at the heavy grey clouds overhead. How long would the desk clerk’s shower last? Can’t risk it, he thought: this is a walking kind of night. He went back to his room.
    The inner door was closed, but unlocked. The chamber-maid looked round in surprise. Then she smiled. “Towels,” she said, pointing to the bathroom.
    “Towels, to be sure.”
    “I’ll turn down your bed, sir.” She moved away from his suitcase. Or perhaps she had just been standing there, admiring the pretty rain.
    “Don’t you ever stop working?” he asked, and reached into the wardrobe for his raincoat.
    “Please?” She was as plump as a pincushion, except for her thin muscular legs. Her hair was dully fair, straight, heavily braided over her