The Withdrawing Room by Charlotte MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page A

eh?”
    “Here, let me help you.” Sarah managed to extricate Miss Smith from the top layers and led her into the library, where Charles had already lit the fire and laid out biscuits and sherry for the evening gathering.
    “What a lovely room!” Miss Smith arranged her dilapidations in a thoroughly feminine manner and took the glass of sherry Sarah poured out for her. “Thank you, Mrs. Kelling. I certainly didn’t expect such royal treatment after the brushoff I’ve been getting from everybody else. Of course I ought to have known better than to rush up to that policeman the way I did, dressed like a tramp with two big bags of garbage in my hands, but that’s me all over. I never think how I look till it’s one step too late.”
    “My whole family are the same way,” Sarah agreed, “and they never give a hoot, so why should you? But do please tell me—”
    “Why I barged in on you like this?” The sherry was giving Miss Smith more self-assurance. “It’s going to sound foolish, but just a little while ago, I picked a paper out of a litter basket. There was your name and picture staring right out at me, and it said where you lived and everything. It struck me all of a heap, like an omen or whatever you want to call it. So being, as I said, the kind who leaps before she looks, I picked up my junk and waltzed myself on over here. I’m sure that man of yours didn’t want to let me in and I must say I can’t blame him. But I do think a citizen has to take some responsibility, don’t you?”
    “Of course,” said Sarah, still nonplused.
    “Well, there you are, then. I wasn’t about to let anybody get away with a horrible thing like that, but the policeman just brushed me off and the reporters thought I was looking for an easy buck and told me to go home and sleep it off as if I were some old drunk, which I wouldn’t be even if I could afford to which I certainly can’t. Though this sherry is a real treat,” she added politely.
    “Anyway, being a senior citizen, I get to ride the T on the cheap fare, so I was down there on the platform waiting for my train. It’s good pickings around Haymarket, you know, on account of the tourists and all. Some of them slip me a quarter now and then, and if you think I’m too proud to take it, you can think again. I can’t afford that sort of nonsense anymore.
    “But as I started to say, I was standing beside the track and this stout elderly man in a dark blue overcoat was standing next to me. He gave me a nasty look and edged back as if he was afraid I had lice or something, which I don’t in case you’re wondering. Of course I couldn’t help noticing. I may have had to shed my pride since I started trying to live on Social Security but I’ve still got my feelings. Then the train came along and everybody started shuffling forward, you know how they do. The station was mobbed, as you’d naturally expect at that hour. So anyway I was still turned toward this fat man in the overcoat, giving him a look as much as to say I’m as good as you are, you old goat, because I don’t care to be treated like dirt under somebody’s feet. And I distinctly saw a pair of hands come out of the crowd and shove that man down on the track, right in front of the train.”
    “Oh no!” cried Sarah. “You couldn’t.”
    “There,” said Miss Smith. “I didn’t expect you’d believe me any more than the rest. But I’m telling you, Mrs. Kelling, I had my eye right on this Mr. Quiffen and I know he was the one because they had pictures of him in both the Globe and the Herald and I tore them out and I’ve got them right here in my coat pocket. I never carry a purse because it’s an invitation to be mugged, even an old derelict like me. And I have very good eyesight for my age and that’s not the sort of thing a person could forget. And I tried to tell the starter and I tried to tell the conductor and I—but I’ve been through all that, so now I’ve said my piece I’ll go