Read Online Mr. Zero by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page A

barrister, talked nearly as much as she did, and could be witty. They had a great many friends, and spared none of them.
    Algy, coming into the room, was aware of a sudden silence which seemed so abnormal in any room of Linda’s as to make him positive that they had been talking about him. If he flinched he contrived not to show it, and in a moment Linda was hanging on his arm and chattering at him.
    â€œAlgy darling, we were talking about you. Didn’t you hear us all stop dead?” (Clever to take the bull by the horns like that.) “Would you like to know what we were saying?”
    Algy said, “Very much.” But he thought he knew already, and he thought that he wouldn’t be very likely to hear the truth, or to like it if he did.
    There were four people there besides the Westgates. Two of them laughed, and two made rather a lamentable failure of an attempt to appear quite easy and comfortable. Algy looked round, said how do you do to the friend of Linda’s who had been asked to balance a friend of Giles’—pretty girl with red hair; dark young man with a superiority complex—and to James and Mary Craster, whom he liked. It was James and Mary who had been embarrassed, and the other two who had laughed.
    â€œAnd what were you saying about me?” he said, and saw Mary blush and Linda twinkle maliciously.
    â€œDarling Algy, you are the scandal of the moment. Did you know? Half everybody is saying you’ve sold all Monty’s secrets to the Bolshevists, and that you’re going to be shot at dawn in the Tower—and, darling, if you are, you will see about my having a front seat, won’t you? Because what’s the good of being a relation if it doesn’t give you a pull?”
    Algy laughed.
    â€œI’ll make a point of it. What are the other half saying?”
    â€œThat you’re as pure as the driven snow,” said Linda. “Algy, darling , do, do please tell us all about it. And if you did sell them, do tell me how, and where, and what you got for them, because I might try and collect something myself—I’m most awfully hard up. If I got Monty in the melting mood, I might get something out of him.”
    â€œNot you,” said Giles—“he hates you like sin.”
    â€œDoes he hate sin?” said the dark young man.
    Algy said, “Apparently.” He owed Linda something, and was always ready to pay.
    â€œYes, isn’t it a shame?” she said. “And all because someone told him I said that it gave me the jitters to think of ever having another horse’s neck—after meeting Maud, you know. And I adored them before, and someone told Monty, and he’s been dead cuts with me ever since. Not my fault that Maud is the dead spit and image of a mare in the knacker’s yard—now is it? But, Algy my angel, you haven’t confided in us. Did you sell Monty, or didn’t you? And what did you get for it? And are they going to shoot you at dawn?”
    â€œThe sentence has been commuted to an evening with you, my dear. Death by tongue-pricks—a nasty lingering affair. Be kind and get it over. Perhaps Giles will tell me what I am supposed to have done.”
    Fatal for Giles to hesitate, but he did—almost but not quite imperceptibly. Then he came in with a gay,
    â€œYou would be the last to hear about it. It’s the most marvellous tale—all the Cabinet secrets gone down the drain, and your’s the hand that loosed the plug.”
    There was no hesitation about Algy’s laughter. If you didn’t laugh at a thing like this, if you couldn’t laugh at it, then you would go down under it and be dead, and damned, and done for. But Algy had no intention of being done for. He threw back his head and laughed, and it took him all he knew, but quite suddenly in the middle of it there came a strange rushing conviction that he was going to come out on top. He linked his arm with Mary