Walk with Care Read Free Page A

scandal was only a few months old. Beginning with a whisper, it had suddenly assumed a force which had sent Masterson crashing into disgrace.
    Garrett tore his list across, flung it on the fire, and stamped it down.
    â€œMannister says there’s a plot to drive him out of public life,” he said.
    There was a pause, a silence. The paper with the five scrawled names flared in thin yellow flame an fell away to a quivering grey ash.
    * See Danger Calling .

CHAPTER III
    A BELL RANG IN house, a long faint peal just heard in the book-lined room. Ananias stopped muttering and clapped his wings.
    â€œOh Lord!” said Garrett—“that’s him!” He flung round a wrist and looked at his watch. “Quarter of an hour before his time. What did I tell you? Man’s in a blue funk. His usual form is ten minutes late and think yourself damn lucky it’s not twenty.”
    The door was opening as he spoke, but it was not in Garrett to drop his voice. Miller announced, “Mr Mannister,” and Bernard Mannister advanced a few steps and then paused.
    Anyone who had ever heard him speak in public would have found the gesture a familiar one. Just so did he come upon a platform, his tall figure finely held, his leonine head thrown back, his deep-set eyes scanning the audience, one hand thrust in a pocket, the other a little advanced as if in welcome. But whereas upon the platform his well formed features bore a look of smiling complacency, they now expressed something that approached uneasiness. Had it not been Mannister, one would have said that he was nervous.
    Garrett’s jerky introduction was like a stone pitched into water; it set up ripples in the quiet room. As Mr Smith, vaguely courteous, shook hands and indicated a chair, the ripples spread. One of them must have reached Ananias, for his contented murmur changed to an angry sibilant whisper. It crossed Mr Smith’s mind to hope that Mannister had no Spanish. In a far away past Ananias had been the property of a Spanish sailor. The vocabulary lingered.
    Mannister took the chair on the left of the fire. Mr Smith let himself down into one on the opposite side. Garrett remained standing, his back to the fire, his strong square hands plunged deep amongst the odds and ends in his shapeless pockets.
    Mannister, now completely the guest, leaned a little forward and addressed his host with as much ease as if he had been a public meeting.
    â€œIn one sense, Colonel Garrett has introduced me, but in another and a wider sense—” He made a rhetorical pause, and upon the pause there fell the shadow of a question.
    Mr Smith was silent, courteously and attentively silent. Colonel Garrett jingled whatever there was to jingle in those crowded pockets of his. Ananias offered an observation, still in Spanish, which was doubtless as untrue as it was impolite.
    Bernard Mannister did not allow the pause to become oppressive.
    â€œI feel,” he said, “that unless Colonel Garrett has given you an explanation of my visit—” And there he paused again.
    Garrett stopped jingling. He said briskly,
    â€œI have told Mr Smith that you came to us, and that I suggested your meeting me here. On what you have told us so far, there’s nothing which we can take any official notice of. There are some odd points of course, and, as I told you, it struck me that you might care to have an outside opinion. Departments get into grooves—think in them, move in them, work in them. Mr Smith’s outside all that. If you care to put your case to him, you’ll get away from the official mind.”
    This was another and a more civilized Garrett. Mr Smith wondered whether he had learnt the speech by heart; he thought it possible. He gazed at Mannister very much as he would have gazed at a mountain or any other fine natural object. He saw a change of expression. Doubt? Embarrassment? One could not associate embarrassment with Bernard Mannister.