The Walking Stick by Winston Graham Read Free Book Online

and you could tell that what he was saying had nothing whatever to do with what he was thinking. What he was wondering was what
I would be like in bed. I seemed to be striking it rich all of a sudden.
    ‘Yes, well, maybe,’ said Leigh impatiently. ‘I’m hungry; so thank Jack will you, if you see him before I do. I wasn’t in all that hurry for the paints. So long
now.’
    ‘Bye bye,’ said Ted Sandymount, twitching. ‘Bye bye for now, Miss Dainton. See you again sometime. Bye, Leigh. You’ll be in tomorrow?’
    ‘Sure, sure: I’m always in.’
    I found my stick. ‘We can all go at the same time,’ I said.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘Miss Dainton,’ said the girl at the desk, ‘there’s a lady here with a couple of little bottles that look as if they would interest you. A Mrs
Stevenson. She hasn’t been in before.’
    ‘All right. I’ll come up.’
    I left the office and made my way through the dusty cellar where the pictures were stacked before cataloguing, skirted the accounts department, climbed the steps, along the corridor by the
auction rooms and reached the counter where Janet Browne was talking to an old woman in a torn raincoat.
    He’d torn the lining of his coat last night on the brake lever as he got out of the car at the little café where we ate. It had been a silent sort of meal that I would have been
glad to escape from, but I didn’t want him to think I was a Victorian heroine shrinking from a first kiss. A little pub-cum-café off Jamaica Road, where there was an odd assortment of
seamen, tarts, shopgirls, lorry drivers; interesting if in the mood. I thought once of borrowing a needle and cotton from the waitress to stitch the tear, but thought it might give him the idea I
was feeling domestic. ‘Ted Sandymount’s an electrician,’ he said after a long silence. ‘Does work for ships and river men. Small way of business but I reckon he does quite
nicely. Any form of trade is in his line really. Good chap, you know, under his smoothie looks. Would do anything for me. Generous to a fault.’
    Mrs Stevenson said: ‘I brought these little things in. I really couldn’t say if they’re of any value, but I think they must be, as my dear mother kept them in her cabinet.
Trinkets really. Pretty trinkets.’ She had a voice like an old 78 gramophone record of Caruso played too often and nearly worn out. I unwrapped the rough brown paper expecting the usual junk:
Toby jug or sham Rockingham. I found a shepherdess guarding a lamb, not bigger than four inches; an even smaller group of three birds.
    ‘My husband,’ said Mrs Stevenson, ‘my husband often urged me to give them away to his favourite niece, Emma, but somehow . . .’ The needle stuck, and for a moment there
was nothing but hissing and grating. Then she coughed it into its groove again. ‘Sentimental value. My dear mother prized them, and now – ’
    The head of the shepherdess came off, beautifully fashioned, with a little cork inside. All three birds had detachable heads. ‘Why,’ he had said last night, ‘did you not
let me kiss your mouth? It looks nice. Isn’t it for use? Or have you taken a vow?’ This suddenly in the car on the way home. ‘You don’t realize,’ I said.
‘Realize what?’ he asked.
    ‘These are scent bottles,’ I said to Mrs Stevenson. ‘About 1750. Oh, yes, they’re valuable. You want us to dispose of them for you? We haven’t a porcelain sale
until June the twentieth. But we could include them in that if you wanted. The catalogue is just going to press.’
    ‘Yes . . . Well, yes.’ Old eyes wrinkled like leaves, suddenly speculative, cautious. ‘Valuable? How valuable?’
    ‘I could only give an estimate. But they’re Chelsea and the best period. They’ll probably realize between £300 and £400 each.’
    ‘Realize what?’ Leigh had asked again.
    ‘Realize,’ I said in livid anger, ‘that I don’t want to get involved with anyone ! Apart – absolutely apart – from whether I