While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

talking as she passed through the hall, had looked out with an interest which now seemed rather strange and undeserved. There she was, imagining things again. Sheila turned impatiently away from the living-room. The curtains moved in the cross-current of air as she held its door open. A sheet of paper fastened by a paper clip to the incongruous pink lampshade (probably a Christmas present from Madame Aleksander: there was a definite “woman’s touch” about it) flapped, too.
    Sheila smiled at Uncle Edward’s idea of a prominent place to leave a message, and her smile broadened as she read it. In large scrawling letters he had printed, “Coffee and sugarin the small cupboard to your left in the kitchen. Bread in the tin box. Butter, milk, ham in the box of wire netting near the window. Matches at side of gas oven. Will be back before six. Important!—Stevens ’phoned. Suitcases at his apartment at Frascati Gardens. Telephone 6-5488. A Mr. Hofmeyer ’phoned twice. No message.” Then followed two drawings in the James Thurber technique: one shapeless figure was stuck by an angry-looking telephone, while an equally shapeless figure (“Do I look like that to him?” Sheila wondered) was stretched out on a table-like bed, with snoring signs above its head. (“And I don’t snore, either,” Sheila added.)
    She decided to have something to eat outside: that would save both time and Professor Korytowski’s food supply. But she would ’phone Mr. Stevens first of all. There was no reply. And then, after some hesitation, she decided to ’phone Mr. Hofmeyer. It was only polite, for one thing. For another, she might be in time to stop any alarmed telegram to Uncle Matthews. She had left the business leaflet somewhere in the bedroom. She opened the ’phone directory instead, H... HOFMEYER Adolf, HOFMEYER Bruno, HOFMEYER Helmut, HOFMEYER Sigurd... There was no HOFMEYER Johann. She couldn’t remember the name of the firm which he owned. She had to go back into the bedroom and search for the leaflet.
    Yes, his first name was Johann, all right. And his telephone number was 5-7177.
    She was surprised to be answered not by a secretary or a clerk, but by Mr. Hofmeyer, himself.
    “Sheila Matthews,” she said.
    “I’m sorry to hear your voice,” Mr. Hofmeyer replied in English. His voice sounded more British over the ’phone thanit had sounded yesterday at Korytów. “You should have left Warsaw last night.”
    “The plane—”
    “I know. But there was a train.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Please leave as quickly as you can. How are you for money?”
    “I have a little.”
    “That won’t be enough. Call here, and you will find an envelope with money waiting for you. Come at once. Before four o’clock. There’s a last train around seven. Good luck.”
    Sheila had begun to thank him, but there was no reply, only a dead silence which told her he hadn’t waited for formalities. She replaced the receiver on its hook, thoughtfully. “Call here.” Surely that meant the business address. She looked at the crumpled leaflet, and on impulse searched for the name Kotowitz in the telephone book. It existed all right. The Old Square, 31. But its telephone number was not the one she had just used to find Mr. Hofmeyer. His must have been a private number, no doubt. Probably he hated the telephone as her Uncle Matthews did, and tried to discourage being ’phoned. She tried to visualise him as she had seen him yesterday evening. All she could remember was white hair, a squarish face, and the quick light footsteps. She realised suddenly that there had been a vague quality about him, an expressionless quality, so that it was hard to remember him. It was strange, for he hadn’t impressed her as being without determination or character. The least she could have done, she thought angrily, was to have paid more attention to someone who had taken so much trouble for her. She jammed the business leaflet into her handbag, grabbedher hat and