The Toff and the Stolen Tresses Read Free Page A

were any letters for him he would find them on the table in the window. There was none. He looked out. Across the road, walking briskly, was a little man whom he did not remember having seen before; the little man glanced up, almost as if he was aware of being watched, but quickly looked down again, and went straight on.
    Jim took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair, went into the bathroom, washed, and began to whistle to himself. He was feeling a little less glum, and the cake had whetted his appetite. Still whistling, he hurried down the stairs. He was surprised by his return to cheerfulness, and dryly inferred that his feeling for Evelyn could not go really deep. He took the meal out of the oven, an ample one obviously served at lunch-time. It was very hot, and he winced when his thumb caught the side of the dish. The gravy had dried to dark brown round the edge, but when he took the vegetable dish lid off, steam rose up in a cloud; yet it did not look dry.
    He put it on the wooden mat which Mrs. Blake had provided, and began to eat, cautiously at first. He propped up the newspaper against a pot of jam, and glanced through the headlines which he had already seen that morning; the international news was so-so, the home news was of further crises. Cheerful world!
    He was halfway through, and eating more quickly because the food had cooled, when there was a ring at the front door.
    â€˜Oh, damn,’ he said mildly, and pushed his chair back and went along, dabbing at his lips with his table-napkin, which he dropped on to the hall-stand. He could see the shadow of a girl behind the two glass panels set in the upper part of the door, and wondered if Mrs. Blake had left her key, and had come to see if he was in.
    He opened the door.
    A girl he had never seen before said: ‘Good evening.’
    She had a slightly Cockney voice and an ingratiating manner, and a smile he didn’t much like. She was made up more than most, which spoiled rather than improved a kind of everyday prettiness. She wore a red hat and a pink coat, a clash which even Jim didn’t fail to notice.
    â€˜Good evening,’ he said.
    â€˜Is Betty Driver in, please?’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you have the wrong house, no Betty Driver lives here.’
    â€˜Oh,’ she said, and her face dropped and she looked younger and woebegone. Then she backed away and looked up at the number painted on the fanlight, a clear, black 24 in letters six inches high. She looked back at him. ‘This is number 24, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, but I assure you—’
    â€˜But she must live here, she told me she did!’
    Jim would have laughed, but for that little look of dismay and distress. There was no one named Driver here, and he was quite sure that Mrs. Blake would not have taken another lodger without first telling him.
    â€˜I’m awfully sorry.’
    â€˜But—but it’s absurd, she told me .’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Jim repeated more briskly, ‘but Mr. and Mrs. Blake live here, and neither of them is in just now. I’m the only other occupant of 24 Middleton Street, and my name isn’t Driver, it’s Jones.’
    â€˜Jones?’ She seemed to breathe her disbelief into the name.
    â€˜James Matthison Jones,’ he repeated firmly. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you.’
    â€˜Oh, well,’ she said, as if she wasn’t really convinced. ‘Well—oh, well, all right, I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
    â€˜It’s no bother,’ Jim said, and waited until she had turned away and was on the pavement, before he closed the door. He gave a mirthless kind of laugh as he went back to the kitchen, sat down and discovered that he’d forgotten the table-napkin, and decided to make do without it. The food which had been so hot was now almost too cold, but he finished it, and pulled a dish of apples and