The Painted Tent by Victor Canning Read Free Book Online Page B

none of his business, what Jimmy was doing up here when only that morning he had supposedly driven off in his shabby old car on a dealing trip for two or three days. One thing was clear: neither of the men were poaching for there was nothing in the house to poach.
    When he thought the coast was clear Smiler climbed down and went into the house. He picked his way across the broken rubble and stones of the floor to the window. Lying on the ground to one side of it was the object Jimmy had dropped.
    Smiler picked it up. He stared at it puzzled. It was a very small broom or besom made of bunched hazel twigs bound together with a couple of twists of binder twine. Although it had no long wooden hazel pole for a handle it was a miniature of the hazel besoms that he used sometimes to sweep the floor of the barns.
    Smiler studied it, shook his head in bafflement, and then told himself, ‘Samuel M., Jimmy’s business is Jimmy’s business and he’s your friend.’
    He put the besom back where he had found it. But all the way home – although he knew it was none of his business – he just kept wondering what on earth anyone should want a besom for in a ruined old mansion that it would have taken an army of men and builders to bring back to its former glory.

3. All Kinds of Monkey Business
    It was three days before Jimmy Jago showed up at the farm again. He returned after supper and while Smiler was studying in his room he could hear him and the Duchess talking in the kitchen. It was not possible to hear what they said, but he had the impression that now and again some sort of argument was going on between them. However, Smiler, who knew what it was to be in trouble of his own, wisely decided that other people’s affairs were nothing to do with him unless he were invited to share them. He sagely decided to say nothing and keep his own counsel – but this could not keep him from the use of his eyes.
    Three times before Christmas arrived he sat on his parapet ledge at Highford House and saw the two men leave, always around the same time. Now, when he went up there – which was less often as winter gripped the valley – he always looked to see if the hazel besom lay by the window. If it did he was content to stay. But if the besom was not in its place, then he quietly made off.
    He wrote to Laura regularly now and took a great deal of trouble over his letters so that they should be grammatically correct. It annoyed him sometimes that Laura did not write as often as he did, but when he taxed her with it she wrote back and told him ‘… not to be a daft loon. Do you think I’ve got nothing else to do all day but sit and write letters? And anyway you only write to me so much because you want to show off your grammatics.’
    Smiler also wrote to Albert a couple of times without giving his address. He got Jimmy Jago to post the letters well away from Devon while he was on his travels.
    Through all this, Smiler went twice a week to Mr Samkin who lived in the village at the head of the brook valley. But, although Smiler studied hard, he was not as happy at Mr Samkin’s as he had been. Mr Samkin had taken on another student for extra coaching. This was a sixteen-year-old girl from the village called Sandra Parsons whose father was the local postman. Sandra had fair hair, blue eyes, a nice but slightly hooky nose, and a funny sort of giggle of a laugh which Smiler found irritating. But the chief thing that annoyed him was that Sandra was too friendly towards him. She so often found excuses to cycle down to Bullaybrook Farm and talk to him, when he should have been working, that he took to hiding when he saw her coming. On a Sunday, with two or three other girls, she would walk down and they would hang about the small stone bridge over the brook and, when he went off for a walk, follow him, giggling and laughing. But he had to admit that while they were at Mr Samkin’s Sandra was