The Yellow Glass by Claire Ingrams Read Free Book Online Page A

my
business.   I tried another tack.
    “What do you know of her other friends, Magnus?   Are there any others living round here that
you know of?”
    He stopped maundering on for a minute and gave it some
thought.
    “I don’t know.   I mean, she’s got friends, man, but I’m not sure where they live.   Rosa kind of dips in and out of her friend’s
lives.”
    I could imagine; she sounded just like a spy.   How close were they, I wondered - my unusual
niece and this clumsy northerner?   How
well did he really know her?  
    “She’s always been something of an escape-artist,” I
let drop.   “Were you aware of that,
Magnus?”
    He looked surprised and then, thoughtful.   I daresay his heart had known, even if his
brain hadn’t.
    “You’ll remember the Cambridge fiasco, of course, but
that was only the latest in a long line of bunks.   She was particularly active during the war
years, apparently; never stopped running away from kindly people she was
evacuated to, or boarding-schools, or what have you.   She once stowed away on a ship and nearly
drowned when it got wrecked!   She’s an
interesting girl, in many ways.   I’ve
only known her for the last ten years - since I married her aunt, Kathleen -
but she’s been a source of considerable interest to me.”   I grinned, “A source of considerable anguish to her poor parents, of course,
but there you go . . aren’t we all?”
    I couldn’t think why I was talking so much; unless it
was to conceal how rattled I actually was.   Thank God Kathleen arrived promptly, or who knew what sad and sorry
tales the beer - and the kickback one gets from a botched operation - might
have encouraged me to dredge up from my own childhood.  
    “Ah,” she’d tooted the horn, “that sounds like my
lift.”  
    I stood up and removed his coat.  
    “Please, take this back.   Many thanks.   Just give me your telephone number will you?   There’s no need to write it down, I’ve a head
for them.”
    I could tell he was reluctant to abandon the chase and
- if he was any kind of journalist - he’d be even more reluctant when he cast eyes upon my rather well-known wife, so
I tried to make a clean exit.   Even so, I
thought I’d better give him my number, too, in the remote chance that Rosa made
contact with him first.
    “You can reach me at FLAxman 4390.   Now get back to work.   A Paler
Shade of Red needs you, Magnus.”   I
stopped at the pub door.   “Do you have a
surname, by the way?”  
    “Arkonnen,” he said.   “With a k.   It’s Finnish, man.”

 
      I’m not often surprised these days, but that did the trick.   HQ hadn’t mentioned any relations living in
London and I was prepared to swear that they would have done, had they known of
any.   I’d been handed a file a yard wide
on Arko Arkonnen’s background and nothing of the kind had cropped up.  
    More to the point, had Rosa known that her friend was
an Arkonnen?   The issue was
problematic.   I’d observed that Rosa
didn’t always know what she
knew.   I mean, I’m no psychologist, but
I’d often noticed that she seemed to have two sections to her brain and the
conscious section seemed to lag behind the other, hidden, part, so that, in a
queer way, the girl was capable of knowing everything and nothing at all.    This being the case, Rosa might well have connected Arkonnen with
Arkonnen and yet have known damn all about it.   That remarkable brain of hers simply contrived to deliver us straight
from the frying-pan into the fire.  
    As you will have guessed by now, my niece is a
savant.   They’d identified her at
Cambridge, despite her flying visit.   The
grapevine had twitched.   I hope I don’t
sound too self-justifying when I say that I sincerely believed that they might
run her, with, or without, me.   So,
wouldn’t it be better to use her in one of my operations - in a strictly
clerical position - where I could keep an eye out for her?   Well, that was