The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (romantic story to read .TXT) đ
- Author: Agatha Christie
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âTheyâre goingâhad enough of it. Theyâre a good mark out there on the water, and they canât see how many of us there are. Theyâre routed for the momentâbut theyâll come back. Weâll have to get ready for them.â He flung down the rifle and turned to me.
âAnne! You beauty! You wonder! You little queen! As brave as a lion. Black-haired witch!â
He caught me in his arms. He kissed my hair, my eyes, my mouth.
âAnd now to business,â he said, suddenly releasing me. âGet out those tins of paraffin.â
I did as I was told. He was busy inside the hut. Presently I saw him on the roof of the hut, crawling along with something in his arms. He rejoined me in a minute or two.
âGo down to the boat. Weâll have to carry it across the island to the other side.â
He picked up the paraffin as I disappeared.
âTheyâre coming back,â I called softly. I had seen the blur moving out from the opposite shore.
He ran down to me.
âJust in time. Whyâwhere the hellâs the boat?â Both had been cut adrift. Harry whistled softly. âWeâre in a tight place, honey. Mind?â
âNot with you.â
âAh, but dying togetherâs not much fun. Weâll do better than that. Seeâtheyâve got two boat-loads this time. Going to land at two different points. Now for my little scenic effect.â
Almost as he spoke a long flame shot up from the hut. Its light illuminated two crouching figures huddled together on the roof.
âMy old clothesâstuffed with ragsâbut they wonât tumble to it for some time. Come, Anne, weâve got to try desperate means.â
Hand in hand, we raced across the island. Only a narrow channel of water divided it from the shore on that side.
âWeâve got to swim for it. Can you swim at all, Anne? Not that it matters. I can get you across. Itâs the wrong side for a boatââtoo many rocks, but the right side for swimming, and the right side for Livingstone.â
âI can swim a littleâfarther than that. Whatâs the danger, Harry?â For I had seen the grim look on his face. âSharks?â
âNo, you little goose. Sharks live in the sea. But youâre sharp, Anne. Crocs, thatâs the trouble.â
âCrocodiles?â
âYes, donât think of themâor say your prayers, whichever you feel inclined.â
We plunged in. My prayers must have been efficacious, for we reached the shore without adventure, and drew ourselves up wet and dripping on the bank.
âNow for Livingstone. Itâs rough going, Iâm afraid, and wet clothes wonât make it any better. But itâs got to be done.â
That walk was a nightmare. My wet skirts flapped round my legs, and my stockings were soon torn off by the thorns. Finally I stopped, utterly exhausted. Harry came back to me.
âHold up, honey. Iâll carry you for a bit.â
That was the way I came into Livingstone, slung across his shoulder like a sack of coals. How he did it for all that way, I donât know. The first faint light of dawn was just breaking. Harryâs friend was a young man of twenty odd who kept a store of native curios. His name was Nedâperhaps he had another, but I never heard it. He didnât seem in the least surprised to see Harry walk in, dripping wet, holding an equally dripping female by the hand. Men are very wonderful.
He gave us food to eat, and hot coffee, and got our clothes dried for us whilst we rolled ourselves in Manchester blankets of gaudy hue. In the tiny back room of the hut we were safe from observation whilst he departed to make judicious inquiries as to what had become of Sir Eustaceâs party, and whether any of them were still at the hotel.
It was then that I informed Harry that nothing would induce me to go to Beira. I never meant to, anyway, but now all reason for such proceedings had vanished. The point of the plan had been that my enemies believed me dead. Now that they knew I wasnât dead, my going to Beira would do no good whatever. They could easily follow me there and murder me quietly. I should have no one to protect me. It was finally arranged that I should join Suzanne, wherever she was, and devote all my energies to taking care of myself. On no account was I to seek adventures or endeavour to checkmate the âColonel.â
I was to remain quietly with her and await instructions from Harry. The diamonds were to be deposited in the Bank at Kimberley under the name of Parker.
âThereâs one thing,â I said thoughtfully, âwe ought to have a code of some kind. We donât want to be hoodwinked again by messages purporting to come from one to the other.â
âThatâs easy enough. Any message that comes genuinely from me will have the word âandâ crossed out in it.â
âWithout trade-mark, none genuine,â I murmured. âWhat about wires?â
âAny wires from me will be signed âAndy.ââ
âTrain will be in before long, Harry,â said Ned, putting his head in and withdrawing it immediately.
I stood up.
âAnd shall I marry a nice steady man if I find one?â I asked demurely.
Harry came close to me.
âMy God! Anne, if you ever marry any one else but me, Iâll wring his neck. And as for youâââ
âYes,â I said, pleasurably excited.
âI shall carry you away and beat you black and blue!â
âWhat a delightful husband I have chosen,â I said satirically. âAnd doesnât he change his mind overnight!â
As I remarked once before, I am essentially a man of peace. I yearn for a quiet lifeâand thatâs just the one thing I donât seem able to have. I am always in the middle of storms and alarms. The relief of getting away from Pagett with his incessant nosing out of intrigues was enormous, and Miss Pettigrew is certainly a useful creature. Although there is nothing of the houri about her, one or two of her accomplishments are invaluable. It is true that I had a touch of liver at Bulawayo and behaved like a bear in consequence, but I had had a disturbed night in the train. At 3 a.m. an exquisitely dressed young man looking like a musical-comedy hero of the Wild West entered my compartment and asked where I was going. Disregarding my first murmur of âTeaâand for Godâs sake donât put sugar in it,â he repeated his question, laying stress on the fact that he was not a waiter but an Immigration officer. I finally succeeded in satisfying him that I was suffering from no infectious disease, that I was visiting Rhodesia from the purest of motives, and further gratified him with my full Christian names and my place of birth. I then endeavoured to snatch a little sleep, but some officious ass aroused me at 5.30 with a cup of liquid sugar which he called tea. I donât think I threw it at him, but I know that that was what I wanted to do. He brought me unsugared tea, stone cold, at 6, and I then fell asleep utterly exhausted, to awaken just outside Bulawayo and be landed with a beastly wooden giraffe, all legs and neck!
But for these small contretemps, all had been going smoothly. And then fresh calamity befell.
It was the night of our arrival at the Falls. I was dictating to Miss Pettigrew in my sitting-room, when suddenly Mrs. Blair burst in without a word of excuse and wearing most compromising attire.
âWhereâs Anne?â she cried.
A nice question to ask. As though I were responsible for the girl. What did she expect Miss Pettigrew to think? That I was in the habit of producing Anne Beddingfeld from my pocket at midnight or thereabouts? Very compromising for a man in my position.
âI presume,â I said coldly, âthat she is in her bed.â
I cleared my throat and glanced at Miss Pettigrew, to show that I was ready to resume dictating. I hoped Mrs. Blair would take the hint. She did nothing of the kind. Instead she sank into a chair and waved a slippered foot in an agitated manner.
âSheâs not in her room. Iâve been there. I had a dreamâa terrible dreamâthat she was in some awful danger, and I got up and went to her room, just to reassure myself, you know. She wasnât there and her bed hadnât been slept in.â
She looked at me appealingly.
âWhat shall I do, Sir Eustace?â
Repressing the desire to reply, âGo to bed, and donât worry over nothing. An able-bodied young woman like Anne Beddingfeld is perfectly well able to take care of herself,â I frowned judicially.
âWhat does Race say about it?â
Why should Race have it all his own way? Let him have some of the disadvantages as well as the advantages of female society.
âI canât find him anywhere.â
She was evidently making a night of it. I sighed and sat down in a chair.
âI donât quite see the reason for your agitation,â I said patiently.
âMy dreamâââ
âThat curry we had for dinner!â
âOh, Sir Eustace!â
The woman was quite indignant. And yet everybody knows that nightmares are a direct result of injudicious eating.
âAfter all,â I continued persuasively, âwhy shouldnât Anne Beddingfeld and Race go out for a little stroll without having the whole hotel aroused about it?â
âYou think theyâve just gone out for a stroll together? But itâs after midnight!â
âOne does these foolish things when one is young,â I murmured, âthough Race is certainly old enough to know better.â
âDo you really think so?â
âI dare say theyâve run away to make a match of it,â I continued soothingly, though fully aware that I was making an idiotic suggestion. For, after all, at a place like this, where is there to run away to?
I donât know how much longer I should have gone on making feeble remarks, but at that moment Race himself walked in upon us. At any rate, I had been partly rightâhe had been out for a stroll, but he hadnât taken Anne with him. However, I had been quite wrong in my way of dealing with the situation. I was soon shown that. Race had the whole hotel turned upside-down in three minutes. Iâve never seen a man more upset.
The thing is very extraordinary. Where did the girl go? She walked out of the hotel, fully dressed, about ten minutes past eleven, and she was never seen again. The idea of suicide seems impossible. She was one of those energetic young women who are in love with life, and have not the faintest intention of quitting it. There was no train either way until midday on the morrow, so she canât have left the place. Then where the devil is she?
Race is almost beside himself, poor fellow. He has left no stone unturned. All the D.C.âs, or whatever they call themselves, for hundreds of miles round have been pressed into the service. The native trackers have run about on all fours. Everything that can be done is being doneâbut no sign of Anne Beddingfeld. The accepted theory is that she walked in her sleep. There are signs on the path near the bridge which seem to show that the girl walked deliberately off the edge. If so, of course, she must have been dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Unfortunately, most of the footprints were obliterated by a party of tourists who chose to walk that way early on the Monday morning.
I donât know that itâs a very satisfactory theory. In my young days, I always was told that sleep-walkers couldnât hurt themselvesâthat their own sixth sense took care of them. I donât think the theory satisfies Mrs. Blair either.
I canât make that woman out. Her whole attitude towards Race has changed. She watches him now like a cat a mouse, and she makes obvious efforts to bring herself to be civil to him. And they used to be such friends. Altogether she is unlike herself, nervous, hysterical, starting and jumping at the least sound. I am beginning to think that it is high time I went to Joâburg.
A rumour came along yesterday of a mysterious island somewhere up the river, with a man and a girl on it. Race got very excited. It turned out to be all a mareâs-nest, however. The man had been there for years, and is well known to the manager of the hotel. He totes parties up and down the river in the season and points out crocodiles and a stray hippopotamus or so to them. I believe that he keeps a tame one which is trained to bite pieces out of the boat on occasions. Then he fends it off with a boat-hook, and the party feel they have really got to the back of beyond at last. How long the girl has been there is not definitely known, but it seems pretty clear that she canât be Anne, and there
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