The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online

stepped into the lift carrying a file marked ‘Most Immediate’ and they moved on smoothly upwards. A door on the seventh floor was marked ‘Comforts for Mothers of the Free Nations. Inquiries.’
    He began to believe that after all Mr Rennit was right. The stark efficient middle-class woman who sat at a typewriter was so obviously incorruptible and unpaid. She wore a little button to show she was honorary. ‘Yes?’ she asked sharply and all his anger and pride drained away. He tried to remember what the stranger had said – about the cake not being intended for him. There was really nothing sinister in the phrase so far as he could now remember it, and as for the taste, hadn’t he often woken at night with that upon his tongue?
    â€˜Yes?’ the woman repeated briskly.
    â€˜I came,’ Rowe said, ‘to try and find out the address of a Mrs Bellairs.’
    â€˜No lady of that name works here.’
    â€˜It was in connection with the fête.’
    â€˜Oh, they were all voluntary helpers. We can’t possibly disclose addresses of voluntary helpers.’
    â€˜Apparently,’ Rowe said, ‘a mistake was made. I was given a cake which didn’t belong to me . . .’
    â€˜I’ll inquire,’ the stark lady said and went into an inner room. He had just long enough to wonder whether after all he had been wise. He should have brought A.2 up with him. But then the normality of everything came back; he was the only abnormal thing there. The honorary helper stood in the doorway and said, ‘Will you come through, please?’ He took a quick glance at her typewriter as he went by; he could read ‘The Dowager Lady Cradbrooke thanks Mrs J. A. Smythe-Philipps for her kind gift of tea and flour . . .’ Then he went in.
    He had never become accustomed to chance stabs: only when the loved person is out of reach does love become complete. The colour of the hair and the size of the body – something very small and neat and incapable, you would say, of inflicting pain – this was enough to make him hesitate just inside the room. There were no other resemblances, but when the girl spoke – in the slightest of foreign accents – he felt the kind of astonishment one feels at a party hearing the woman one loves talking in a stranger’s tone to a stranger. It was not an uncommon occurrence; he would follow people into shops, he would wait at street corners because of a small resemblance, just as though the woman he loved was only lost and might be discovered any day in a crowd.
    She said, ‘You came about a cake?’
    He watched her closely: they had so little in common compared with the great difference, that one was alive and the other dead. He said, ‘A man came to see me last night – I suppose from this office.’
    He fumbled for words because it was just as absurd to think that this girl might be mixed up in a crime as to think of Alice – except as a victim. ‘I had won a cake in a raffle at your fête – but there seemed to be some mistake.’
    â€˜I don’t understand.’
    â€˜A bomb fell before I could make out what it was he wanted to tell me.’
    â€˜But no one could have come from here,’ she said. ‘What did he look like?’
    â€˜Very small and dark with twisted shoulders – practically a cripple.’
    â€˜There is no one like that here.’
    â€˜I thought perhaps that if I found Mrs Bellairs . . .’ The name seemed to convey nothing. ‘One of the helpers at the fête.’
    â€˜They were all volunteers,’ the girl explained. ‘I dare say we could find the address for you through the organizers, but is it so – important?’
    A screen divided the room in two; he had imagined they were alone, but as the girl spoke a young man came round the screen. He had the same fine features as the girl; she introduced