Read Online A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene - Free Book Online Page B

first song that came into her head, humming it because it reminded her of Mather; the long ride home, the ‘see you tomorrow’.
    ‘It’s only Kew
    To you,
    But to me
    It’s Paradise.’
    He said, ‘I’ve heard that tune.’ He couldn’t remember where: he remembered a dark night and a cold wind and hunger and the scratch of a needle. It was as if something sharp and cold were breaking in his heart with great pain. He sat there under the sink with the automatic in his hand and began to cry. He made no sound, the tears seemed to run like flies of their own will from the corners of his eyes. Anne didn’t notice for a while, humming the song. ‘
They say that’s a snowflower a man brought from Greenland
.’ Then she saw. She said, ‘What’s the matter?’
    Raven said, ‘Keep back against that wall or I’ll shoot.’
    ‘You’re all in.’
    ‘That doesn’t matter to you.’
    ‘Well, I suppose I’m human,’ Anne said. ‘You haven’t done me any harm yet.’
    He said, ‘This doesn’t mean anything. I’m just tired.’ He looked along the bare dusty boards of the unfinished kitchen. He tried to swagger. ‘I’m tired of living in hotels. I’d like to fix up this kitchen. I learned to be an electrician once. I’m educated.’ He said: ‘“Sleepy Nuik”. It’s a good name when you are tired. But they’ve gone and spelt “Nook” wrong.’
    ‘Let me go,’ Anne said. ‘You can trust me. I’ll not say a thing. I don’t even know who you are.’
    He laughed miserably. ‘Trust you. I’d say I can. When you get into the town you’ll see my name in the papers and my description, what I’m wearing, how old I am. I never stole the notes, but
I
can’t put a description in of the man I want: name of Chol-mon-deley, profession double-crosser, fat, wears an emerald ring …’
    ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I believe I travelled down with a man like that. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the nerve …’
    ‘Oh, he’s only the agent,’ Raven said, ‘but if I could find him I’d squeeze the names …’
    ‘Why don’t you give yourself up? Tell the police what happened?’
    ‘That’s a great idea, that is. Tell them it was Cholmondeley’s friends got the old Czech killed. You’re a bright girl.’
    ‘The old Czech?’ she exclaimed. A little more light came into the kitchen as the fog lifted over the housing estate, the wounded fields. She said, ‘You don’t mean what the papers are so full of?’
    ‘That’s it,’ he said with gloomy pride.
    ‘You know the man who shot him?’
    ‘As well as myself.’
    ‘And Cholmondeley’s mixed up in it … Doesn’t that mean – that everyone’s all wrong?’
    ‘They don’t know a thing about it, these papers. They can’t give credit where credit’s due.’
    ‘And you know and Cholmondeley. Then there won’t be a war at all if you find Cholmondeley.’
    ‘I don’t care a damn whether there’s a war or not. I only want to know who it is who double-crossed me. I want to get even,’ he explained, looking up at her across the floor, with his hand over his mouth, hiding his lip, noticing that she was young and flushed and lovely with no more personal interest than a mangy wolf will show from the cage in the groomed well-fed bitch beyond the bars. ‘A war won’t do people any harm,’ he said. ‘It’ll show them what’s what, it’ll give them a taste of their own medicine. I know. There’s always been a war for me.’ He touched the automatic. ‘All that worries me is what to do with you to keep you quiet for twenty-four hours.’
    She said under her breath, ‘You wouldn’t kill me, would you?’
    ‘If it’s the only way,’ he said. ‘Let me think a bit.’
    ‘But I’d be on your side,’ she implored him, looking this way and that for anything to throw, for a chance of safety.
    ‘Nobody’s on my side,’ Raven said. ‘I’ve learned that. Even a crook doctor … You see – I’m ugly. I don’t pretend to be one of your