the Spanish Gambit (Aka Tapestry Of Spies) (1985) by Hunter Stephen

Author:Hunter, Stephen [Stephen, Hunter,]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-01-13T03:02:55.750000+00:00

Shouldn't you concentrate on-"

"Stop it. Don't say that. It's all I think about. You're with him now, is that right?"

"Oh, Robert, you're such an idiot. He's a charming man. He's no more interested in me than in the man in the moon. Julian's quality. I'm just a daughter of the bourgeoisie with a bit of inherited money for a year's adventuring. He likes you better than he likes me. He loves you, in fact."

"But you'd be with him instead of me if that's what he wanted?"

"Please, Robert. Don't put yourself through this.

There's no point to it."

"Thinks have become complicated."

"Not if you don't permit them to, Robert."

Flony could no longer look at her. Her beauty was hurting him more than his throbbing neck would. He could feel her very close and very still.

He could smell her. He could not get the night at the Falcon out of his mind: he remembered how good it felt, how it seemed to straighten the world all out for him.

"I suppose you'd best wheel me back now, Sylvia," he said. "I find I'm quite weary."

"Of course, darling. May we visit you tomorrow?"

We!

Flon-y wished he could say simply no, damn you, and be done with it. But he heard himself saying yes, yes, of course, it would be great fun, and as she wheeled him around, he saw Sampson across the street, watching.

It took a day or so, but at last Sampson managed it. He applied for permission with the Republican Propaganda apartment to do a profile of wounded Englishmen fighting valiantly on the side of Justice, and the office itself suggested a series of possibilities. Florry was the third of them, and he lay in the bay and watched as Sampson came in with his official escort and plopped down beside one of the other boys and proceeded to interview him at grindingly boring length. Even the lad himself, an ex-miner from Wales who'd been hurt fighting with the International Brigade near Brunete, soon grew uninterested in his own answers. By halfway through the second interview, the Republican press officer had given up in disgust, muttering darkly about English pedantry, and thus when, late in the afternoon, Sampson finally approached Florry it was alone and in privacy; most of the other patients in the bay had been wheeled out to watch the sunset, their one pleasure, and those that remained were beyond caring.

"Ah, Florry," said Sampson with a smug yet prim grin, "and how's the wound?"

"It's all right," said Florry bleakly. "They're going to let me out in a bit. No bones broken, no arteries smashed.

There's very little they can do now they've drained it except let it heal. A scratch, really."

"I shouldn't imagine it felt like a scratch at the time."

"No, it did not."

"Look, I brought you a present. A copy of Tristram Shandy, by your friend Mr. Steme. God, I despise literature. Full of nonsense, if you ask me, but I thought you'd like it."

He handed the book over and Florry took it gruffly.

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