The Eyes of a King by Catherine Banner Read Free Book Online Page A

country, in a very different field. I did not think references would be worth anything.”
    “Where were you working?” said Raymond.
    “In Australia,” said the man. He cast his eyes about the room. “Actually, I was in the army.”
    “The army!” said Raymond, leaning forward eagerly. “So when I asked you if you were interested in weaponry …”
    The man laughed, showing all his teeth, like a skull. “Indeed.”
    “You were in the Australian forces, then?” Raymond went on.
    “No,” said the man. “I am not Australian.”
    “What were you doing there? Training?”
    The man nodded. “In the desert … the Australian desert.”
    “What were you doing before that? Forgive me for asking; I’m rather interested in the army.”
    “Before that? We were carrying out … you know … operations …”
    “Other than war?” said Raymond.
    “Yes. How fast one forgets these things! Yes, we were working in various countries—I am afraid I cannot be too specific. It was highly secret.”
    “Of course.” Raymond regarded the man with a new respect. “Anyway, about this job … Mr. Field, I would have liked to employ you—you’re a decent sort of man, I can see—but if you’ve had no training whatsoever, I cannot pay you what I would pay an experienced butler.”
    “I think,” said the man, “that we misunderstand each other. I did not expect payment.”
    Raymond looked up, startled. “I ask for nothing,” Arthur Field went on. “I aim only to gain experience. I assume that whoever is employed will be lodged here?”
    “Of course.”
    “That is all I ask for. I did not think you would assume that I wanted money while I was still training.”
    “I can’t have you working here for nothing,” Raymond began.
    “You just said that you could not pay someone who had no experience.”
    “I meant that I could not employ someone who had no experience.”
    But he knew he was going to. He was under the strange man’s power; the sinister gray eyes and the skull-like smile and the mind beneath the mask of casual indifference had drawn him in, and he was going to employ Arthur Field against his better judgment.
    Later the new butler regarded himself in the mirror and smiled grimly. He did not like uniforms or groveling, or being called a decent sort of man by people who had half his intelligence.
    Arrogance never did anyone any good, he told himself, rearranging the new black jacket impatiently. He was being arrogant. Here he had safety, a job, food, and shelter, and he was hidden. Here he was alive. Assuming an expression of subservience, he turned and marched out and down the stairs.

    A fter I closed the book, I sat in the darkness for a long time, thinking—and when I woke the next morning, the story was still in my mind. I wondered what the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries were, and the First World War. Were they English phrases? And if so, did that mean this story was connected to the other, the one about our exiled prince and that girl with theblue eyes? I was coughing all the rest of that week, and I could not shake it off, but I did not think about it so much as I would have done before. I was thinking about the book instead.
    On Friday the cold weather ended suddenly. The rain streaked down the windows of the classroom, and I sat and watched it and thought again about that story. How did it concern me? If it was nothing to do with me at all, I did not know why I had dreamed about the old man and the stranger even before the writing appeared. It was very strange. I had tried to put it out of my mind, but I could not.
    Something thudded on the desk in front of me then. It was a rifle. I stared at it for a moment, then blinked and looked up. Sergeant Bane was looking down at me, amusement in his face. “North, we are going out for drill,” he said. “You were a hundred miles away.” I saw that the rest of my platoon were already jogging out into the yard, the collars of their coats raised against