"Mary Stewart - Madam Will You Talk [txt]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"In time for the bus. You're making me late."
He whirled round, his eyes on the square. There was no sign of David.
"The Montpellier bus," I said sulkily.
His eyes showed his satisfaction.
"That's the Montpellier bus standing there now," he said. "When does it go?"
I peered towards it, screwing up my eyes. "Is it? Yes, it is." I saw the drivers standing about in the sun, as if they had all the time in the world, and once again I took a chance. "It goes in about ten minutes." Then I looked up at him, and my eyes really did swim with tears. "And now, please may I go? I-- I'm sorry if I annoyed you, but you scared me so."
He hesitated, and I tried not to hold my breath. Then he dropped my arm abruptly, and said: "Very well. I'm sorry I scared you, but I thought--well, you shouldn't have told me those lies. I'm a little anxious about David, you see, and I thought you were stalling me off. I'll see him at the bus."
He started quickly up the street towards the parked car. I walked as casually as I could to the corner, then, once out of sight, I broke and ran for the church as if hounds were out and I was the hare.
Luckily there was no one about in the porch to see me tear into the building as if I were bent on sacrilege. If David weren't there--I couldn't think beyond that possibility. But he was, curled up in a big pew in a side aisle with Rommel asleep at his feet. He straightened up with a jerk when he saw me.
"David," I said breathlessly. "Don't ask questions. He's looking for you. Come to the car--quick!"
He threw me one scared and wondering look, and came. As we reached the porch I hesitated for a moment and scanned the square, but could not see the big grey car. We turned right and tore across the open space, and as we ran I saw out of the tail of my eye the bus for Montpellier slide out of the rank and turn on to the Montpellier road.
Then we had found our side street and the car, and were threading a maze of narrow streets away from the square.
"Our luck's in ..." I breathed. "The Montpellier bus . . . it left early . . . he'll follow it until he finds out, and by that time -"
Two minutes later the Riley slipped out of Nimes and took the Avignon road.

CHAPTER VII


Never

(browning)

We were some way out of Nimes before either of us spoke. Then I said carefully: "You saw your father at the Arena, didn't you, David?"
"Yes." His voice was low and expressionless, and I didn't look at him; my eyes hardly ever left the driving mirror, where I was watching for a big grey car with a GB plate. "I heard him speak first, then I looked over and saw him. I didn't think he'd seen me."
"He hadn't. I gave you away by mistake. I met him up at the Temple of Diana. Up in the gardens."
"What happened?"
"Oh, he tried to make me tell him where you were. I told a few lies and got caught out in them--I never did have much luck that way. Then I managed to make him think we were getting the Montpellier bus."
"I suppose he'll follow it?"
"Yes, I'm hoping so," I said cheerfully. "And it's in quite the opposite direction from Avignon."
"Yes, I know."
Something in his tone made me glance quickly at him. He was sitting, hugging Rommel between his knees, and staring in front of him with an expression I found it hard to read. He was still very white, and there was a look of strain over his cheek-bones, as if the skin were stretched too tight. His eyes looked enormous, and as he turned to answer my look I could see in them misery and a kind of exaltation, through the tears that were slipping soundlessly down his cheeks. My heart twisted uncomfortably, and I forgot to be casual any more. I put out my left hand and touched him on the knee.
"Never mind, David. Is it very bad?"
He did not answer for a bit, and when he did his voice was coming under control again.
"How did you find out about my father?"
"I'm afraid there was some gossip at the hotel. Someone who'd followed the---the case recognized your stepmother. Did you know he might be in Nimes?"
"No. I thought he might be following us down here, but I didn't know ... I thought it couldn't do any harm to have one day out. You--you didn't tell him we were staying in Avignon?" The terror was back in his voice as he half turned to me.
"Of course not. It's very important that he shouldn't find you, isn't it?"
He nodded hard over Rommel's head.
"Terribly important. I can't tell you how important. It--it's a. matter of life and death." And somehow the hackneyed over dramatic words, spoken in that child's voice with a quiver in it, were not in the least ludicrous, and were uncommonly convincing.
"David."
"Yes."
"Would it help you to talk about it?"
"I don't know. What did they tell you at the hotel?"
"Not very much. Just what was in the papers at the time. You see, if you'd told me about your father when you saw him first in Nimes, this needn't have happened. From what I had heard at the hotel, I gathered that it might be--undesirable-- for your father to find you again, and then when I met him in Nimes and realized that it was his voice that had frightened you in the Arena, I knew that whatever happened you didn't want him to catch you. That's all."
The driving mirror was still blank of anything but a narrow white road snaking away from the wheels.
"That's all there is," said David at length. "Except for one thing. Mrs. Selborne, there's one thing that's terribly important too."
"What's that, David?"
He spoke with a rush: "Don't tell anyone--anyone, what's happened today!"
"But, David--how can I help it? Your step-mother ought surely -"
I saw his hands move convulsively in the dog's fur, and Rommel whined a protest. "No! Oh, please, Mrs. Selborne, please do as I say. It would only worry her terribly, and it couldn't do any good. It won't happen again, because I won't go out, and anyway, we leave in a few days for the coast. So please keep it a secret! I wouldn't ask if it didn't matter."