Through The Wall Read Online Free Page A

would have one round her head—or perhaps only a bit of strapping. It came to him with a feeling of shock that he wouldn’t find her commonplace if they were to meet emptying garbage cans—that being the least romantic occupation he could think of offhand. He called his last view of her to mind. If a feeling of romance can survive a battered hat sliding from dishevelled hair, garments suggestive of the dustbin which his fancy had just called up, a face rendered ghastly by blood and sweat and dirt, its roots must run down deep to the hidden springs of life. The picture came and stayed. Her eyes looked at him out of the reddened grime with which her face was smeared. The feeling of romance survived. He began to wonder what was happening to him.
    On the second day he rang up the house-agents and got her address. He remembered that she had said Mr. Morton when she was speaking of her employer. “Mr. Morton was kind—he gave me the day off.” The telephone directory did the rest. He persevered until he achieved Mr. Morton himself, and was informed that Miss Brand was not in the office— Miss Brand had been in a railway accident.
    Richard Cunningham said,
    “Yes, I know. I was in it too. I wanted to be sure that Miss Brand was all right.”
    Mr. Morton blew his nose and opined that it had been a providential escape. He didn’t sound like a live wire, but he did sound kind and concerned. Miss Brand was taking a few days off. The experience had naturally been a shock. He was sorry to say they would be losing her services shortly—a change in her circumstances. “Her address? Well—I really don’t know—”
    Richard Cunningham said,
    “Yes, she told me. We were fellow travellers. My name is Richard Cunningham. I’m in hospital with a couple of broken ribs. I thought I should just like to send Miss Brand some flowers. I don’t think she would consider it intrusive.”
    Mr. Morton read the papers. He knew all about Richard Cunningham. He had even read the exclusive interview. He made no further difficulty about giving the address.
    Chapter 4
    In spite of having been cleaned up by an ambulance party, Marian Brand was not able to avoid arousing a good deal of alarm at No. 52 Sandringham Road, where she and Ina and Cyril inhabited two bedrooms and a sitting-room. The house belonged to Mrs. Deane, who was the widow of a deceased partner in the firm of Morton and Fenwick. She was a nice woman but not characterized by any degree of optimism.
    By the time that Ina had begun to wonder what on earth was keeping Marian so late Mrs. Deane was able to supply a number of possible reasons, none of which were calculated to restore cheerfulness and calm. They ranged from an encounter with a lunatic in a railway carriage experienced by the friend of a sister-in-law’s aunt, to the really moving tale of a cousin’s mother-in-law who had been stuck in a lavatory on the Underground and unable to extricate herself until the inspector came round.
    “I won’t say she wasn’t a sharp-tongued woman, and I won’t say she wasn’t a good deal worked-up after six hours and wondering what her husband was going to say if she wasn’t there to cook his supper, and I daresay she said more than she ought. Anyhow he took a high tone with her. Said there wasn’t anything wrong with the lock that he could see, and if she’d done the right thing it would have opened easily enough. Well, you can just imagine what she said to that! And he came back with, ‘All right, I’ll show you.’ My dear Mrs. Felton, you won’t believe it, but she went back in with him, and when he went to show her—there was the door stuck like glue again and the pair of them trapped, and there they were till the morning!”
    Ina stared in horror.
    “Oh, Mrs. Deane, why did she go back?”
    Mrs. Deane shook a large and rather untidy head. She had a passion for trying new hair styles culled from a page in a weekly paper headed “Why be dowdy?”, and they were not always