Blindfold Read Free

next morning he could start looking up Gilmore at his office and all would be well. Meanwhile he had eleven hours to put in, and a penny in hand.
    He walked out of the station into the fog.

CHAPTER III
    A church clock some-where in the fog struck three. The strokes sounded dead and far away. Miles Clayton wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to have kept on moving. If it hadn’t been for the fog, he would rather have enjoyed seeing what London looked like at night. But where were you to go when you couldn’t see a yard before your face? He had found himself on the Embankment, felt his way to a bench, and stayed there until a policeman came and moved the whole benchful on. He was now in some sort of niche or embrasure behind a group of statuary. He knew this because he had barked his shin on the stone plinth and, groping, had encountered a horrid mass of monumental drapery. He was cold and stiff, and most unutterably bored.
    A small whispering voice said in the dark beside him,
    â€œThey might leave you be!”
    The voice didn’t seem to be addressing anyone; it just complained out loud because it had been moved on, and the night was long, and the fog was cold, and the stone of the seat was so hard. It was rather a pretty little voice, a girl’s voice. It sounded young. Miles found himself speaking to it.
    â€œIt’s not so long to morning now.”
    â€œThey keep moving you on so!” said the voice. “A shame, I call it!”
    â€œWell, it stretches one’s legs.”
    Someone on the other side of him, a man, gave a ghastly hollow groan.
    The girl’s voice said, “Ooh!” and came a little nearer. Miles could feel its owner pressing up against him with a shiver. After a moment she said, “D’you know why they move them on? Bound to do it they are, every two hours regular. I’ve got a friend that’s got a cousin in the p’lice, and he says it’s in case anyone goes and dies afore morning—that’s what he says. He says he’d get into awful trouble if anyone was found dead on his beat and they’d been dead more than two hours, so they just keep moving them along. But I call it a shame all the same.” She gave another shiver. “I’ve never been out all night before. Have you?”
    â€œNo, I haven’t.”
    Flossie Palmer hesitated. His voice sounded nice—quite like a gentleman’s voice. Oh well, there were all sorts out of work nowadays. Aunt ’ud have a fit—but then Aunt would have a fit anyway if she knew that her own sister’s daughter was spending the night on the Embankment along with a lot of tramps. She gave her head its little characteristic toss and said with a sort of whispering eagerness,
    â€œMy name’s Flossie. What’s yours?”
    â€œMiles.”
    â€œThat’s funny. D’you mean that’s your Christian name?”
    â€œYes. It means a soldier.”
    â€œAre you a soldier?” Aunt had always warned her specially about soldiers.
    â€œNo, I’m a secretary,” said Miles Clayton.
    â€œOut of a job, I s’pose?”
    He laughed a little.
    â€œNo—I’ve got quite a good job. It sounds awfully silly, but I’ve just come over from America, and someone pinched my pocket-book, so I haven’t any money, and they won’t let me take my luggage away, and I can’t get hold of anyone I know until to-morrow.”
    â€œOoh!” said Flossie on a soft breath of sympathy. “What’s it like in America?”
    He laughed with real amusement.
    â€œOh, I like it.”
    â€œThen why’ve you come back here?”
    â€œTo look for a needle in a bundle of hay.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWell, that’s what I call it. I’ve got to look for a girl no one’s heard about since she was ten days old. I don’t know her name and I don’t know where to look for her.