Read Online Sparrow Falling by Gaie Sebold - Free Book Online

You know I been looking for something, well, all right, respectable to do?”
    “This involved sneaking out in the middle of the night? It does not sound respectable.”
    “You want to hear this or not?”
    He grinned and waved her to go on.
    “Well, I found out this fella Stug’s been asking around about making his offices more secure, see. Seems like he’s everso worried about someone breaking in and making off with his rent. He’s a landlord, right?”
    “So far I am able to follow.”
    “So I went and told him we could do what he wanted, get the place all tightened up. Didn’t tell him how, mind. But I gotta put the girls to use, haven’t I? And this uses what they got and makes it all respectable, poachers turned gamekeepers, see? You know what a poacher is?”
    “Someone who cooks eggs?”
    “ Liu... ”
    “A poacher is someone who takes without permission animals that someone else believes belong to them simply because they have taken title to the land. I am a poacher, by nature. Land is not owned, and nor are the wild beasts. They are simply claimed.”
    “Right. So a gamekeeper’s the bloke what’s supposed to make sure all the animals are nice and fat and ready when his Lordship wants to go hunting, and ain’t no-one making off with a few rabbits stuck in their pocket. All right?”
    “I see.”
    “So if a poacher turns gamekeeper...”
    “I believe I follow the metaphor. You plan to be a thief turned policeman, in effect.”
    “They say it takes one to catch one. Only I don’t plan to catch none, just show folk how to keep ’em out. ”
    “I see.”
    “Liu? Something up?”
    “Not at all. Please go on.”
    “Right. So I goes and tells this Stug fella, only he isn’t having any due to me being a mere female and probably no more brains than a hen. So I decide I’ll show him I know what’s what, and go back and nick something from his offices, so tomorrow – today I mean – I’ll turn up and say, ‘Guess what, look what I got, now, d’you want me to make sure it don’t happen again or what?’”
    Liu stared at her for a few moments.
    “You intend to go to this person and confess to stealing?”
    “Not at all. I’ll confess to having ‘operatives’ – good word, innit, ‘operatives’ – that can get in his offices. And it in’t stealing if you give it back, is it? And then he’ll know it’s easy for someone to get in, and that if my ‘operatives’ know how to get in we’ll know how to stop anyone else getting in.”
    “Are you feeling quite well? What is to stop him from summoning a policeman?”
    “Oh, don’t you worry about that, I can talk me way out of that.”
    “I should be intrigued to hear how. ”
    “A girl gotta have some secrets,” Evvie said, grinning, though it was more than a little bravado. Usually she was a good planner, but now, sitting here with Liu, she realised that maybe she should have thought a bit harder about what exactly she planned to say to Mr Stug when she presented him with evidence of her own breaking, entering, and theft. Would he believe in her ‘operatives,’ who were, as it stood, a bunch of eager, half-wild girls?
    But no. Improvisation was her other strong point. One of them. And she was good. She hadn’t lost her touch, she hadn’t been caught, and she’d be right as rain.
    “I hope this object you absconded with was worth the trouble,” Liu said. “If you are to be arrested it should at least be for something of value.”
    “Don’t be daft – I wasn’t going to nick something valuable, was I? What if I’d been caught?”
    “I see that you have indeed been most careful,” Liu said.
    “Are you being ironical?”
    “Actually, I believe I was being sarcastical.” She made to hit him, and he ducked away, grinning. “Show me?”
    Evvie took the case out of her bag and opened it. “S’a whistle,” she said, helpfully, when Liu only stared in silence.
    “May I see it more closely?” Liu’s voice was odd,