The Dark Crusader by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online

being watched, I'd incautiously taken her hand: she'd taken my right wrist in her right hand, slowly-far too slowly- withdrawn her left hand, at the same time giving me the kind of look that stays with you for a long time to come: if I could have hidden under the seat I'd have done just that and with the size I'd felt it would have been no trick at all. I didn't make the same mistake again, I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake again, so now, sitting beside her in the dank and chilly hold of that gently rolling schooner, I reached down and took her hand in mine.
    Her hand was ice-cold and stiffened immediately at my touch: next second it was clamped round mine and doing its best to give an imitation of a small but powerful vise. I hadn't taken all that of a chance, she wasn't scared, she was terrified, and that was all out of character with Marie Hope-man: I could feel her shiver from time to time and it wasn't all that cold down in the hold.
    "Why did you bawl me out back in the hotel room?" she said reproachfully. "It wasn't nice."
    "I seldom am," I agreed. "But that was different. You were about to start apologising to me for falling asleep."
    "It was the least I could do. I-I'm sorry."
    "Didn't it strike you that our friend Fleck might have found it rather curious?" I asked. "Innocent people with nothing to hide don't strive to keep awake all night along. My one thought at the moment was that the less reason Fleck had to suspect us of being anything other than we claimed the greater would be our later freedom of movement.
    "I'm sorry," she repeated.
    "It doesn't matter. No harm done." A pause. "Did you ever read George Orwell's '1984'?"
    " '1984'?" Her voice was surprised and wary at the same time. "Yes, I have?"
    "Remember how the authorities finally broke the resistance of the central character?"
    "Don't!" She jerked her hand from mine and covered her face with her hands. "It's-it's too horrible."
    "All sorts of different people have all sorts of different phobias," I said gently. I took one of her hands away from her face. "Yours just happens to be rats."
    "It-it's not a phobia," she said defensively. "Not liking things is not a phobia. All sorts of people, especially women, hate rats."
    "And mice," I agreed. "They yell and they scream and they dance about and they make for the highest piece of furniture they can reach. But they don't have the pink fits, not even if bitten. They're not still shaking like a broken bed-spring half an hour after it happens. What started all this off?"
    She was silent for half a minute, then abruptly pushed up the tousled blonde hair at the side of her neck. Even in the dim half-light I had no difficulty in seeing the scar behind the right ear.
    "It must have been a mess at the time," I nodded. "Rat, I take it. How?"
    "After my parents were drowned on the way to England I was brought up by my uncle and aunt. On a farm." Her voice was not that of a person discussing the faraway green fields of treasured memories. "There was a daughter three or four years older than I was. She was nice. So was her mother, my aunt."
    "And he was the wicked uncle?"
    "Don't laugh. It's not funny. He was all right at first, until my aunt died about eight years after I came to them. Then he started drinking, lost the farm and had to move to a smaller place where the only room for me was an attic above the barn." ,
    "Okay, that's enough," I interrupted. "I can guess the rest."
    "I used to lie awake at night with a torch in my hand," she whispered. "A ring of eyes round the room, red and pink and white. Watching me, just watching me. Then I'd light a candle before going to sleep. One night the candle went out and when I woke up this-this-it was caught in my hah" and biting and it was dark and I screamed and screamed-"
    "I told you, that's enough," I said harshly. "Do you like hurting yourself?" Not nice, but necessary.
    "I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "That's all. I was three weeks in