Read Online Night Journey by Winston Graham - Free Book Online

“ I can’t instruct you; I can only warn you. But naturally you should carry on.”
    â€œIf I have been followed it’s likely to have implicated Andrews already. And you—I walked as far as the Quay with you.”
    â€œGiorgio says you have only been followed since this morning—since you went out this morning.”
    Silence fell. In a sense we were both legderless, groping. The shock, the first shock, was moving out of me but leaving behind an utter certainty of failure, of the rain of all our rash and sanguine plans. I looked at her. She was staring down at her sandals, face hidden. She should have been a temporary distraction from imminence of disaster. In a sense she was. But perhaps there was not enough of the sanguine Englishman in me to struggle with the older, more realistic Austrian.
    â€œHow did you come to be connected with this work?”
    â€œWell …”
    â€œBut no doubt that is the wrong question to put in this service.”
    She smiled. “I’m an Australian; Andrews told you that, didn’t he? I came over in July, thirty-seven, to see my father’s grave; he was killed is the last war. That fall I met Paul Howard in Paris. He was in a bank there. We got married. After a while things didn’t go so well between us, and after he was transferred to Italy, I stayed on in Paris. I was in Paris when war was declared.”
    She lit another cigarette from the butt of the old one. Mine was only half through.
    â€œI thought first of going back home to Sydney; three brothers run my father’s farm; but then I heard two of them had joined the R.A.A.F., so I thought I’d stay on in Europe to see if I could help in some way—a hospital maybe, or driving as ambulance. Then someone learned that Paul was living in Venice and it was suggested that I should join him and help in another way.”
    â€œDoes be know what you are doing and approve of it?”
    â€œOh, yes. Oh, yes. He’s quite a nice guy. Even though we don’t hit it off much as husband and wife.”
    â€œSo he does not care what risks you run?”
    â€œIt’s my own life. But I wouldn’t say the risks are all that great. My American citizenship is some protection, and really I only do small things. And sometimes I carry messages to and from Milan.”
    That hint of drawl in her voice. She called it ’Stralia, and J’ly, and Paras. And speaking of Monday and other days of the week, the accent was equal on both syllables instead of on the first.
    She was highly strung and she smoked too much.
    How old—twenty-five?—Australian women were very self-reliant. Did her husband know of her affair with Vernon Andrews? Clearly he didn’t care anyway. Why should I? So this feeling was something else. Something very irrelevant to a man in my position, a spy spied upon, liable at any time to be arrested and shot.
    She said: “ Sorry, I’ve not offered you a drink.” It was as if some perception in her had become aware of what I was thinking. Certainly nothing was said, nothing scarcely looked, but somehow she knew, and I knew she knew.
    â€œStrega, or cognac? Or we have a little Scotch.”
    â€œCognac. Thank you. Does your husband know I was coming?”
    â€œHe’s out. He spends two or three evenings a week at the Casino.”
    â€œPerhaps I should leave before he comes home.”
    â€œNot unless you want to.”
    â€œI don’t want to.”
    â€œThen I’ll fix you a drink.”
    While she was doing it I began to examine the sculptured head of a woman with face upturned, on the bookcase beside me. This was modem, directly moulded in terra-cotta, slightly stained.
    â€œAnd you, Dr Mencken. Why did you volunteer for this work?”
    â€œI did not. The initiative came from the government. I’m not an adventurous man.”
    â€œYour father was an anti-Nazi?”
    â€œWell, he died in a