Free The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie Page B

the close-cropped dark head, the lean jaw, the scar on the brown cheek, the curious light grey eyes that looked into mine with a sort of reckless mockery hard to describe. There was something dangerous about him.
    “You haven't thanked me yet for saving your life!” I said with false sweetness.
    I hit him there. I saw him flinch distinctly. Intuitively I knew that he hated above all to be reminded that he owed his life to me. I didn't care. I wanted to hurt him. I had never wanted to hurt anyone so much.
    “I wish to God you hadn't!” he said explosively. “I'd be better dead and out of it.”
    “I'm glad you acknowledge the debt. You can't get out of it. I saved your life and I'm waiting for you to say 'Thank you'.”
    If looks could have killed, I think he would have liked to kill me then. He pushed roughly past me. At the door he turned back, and spoke over his shoulder.
    “I shall not thank you - now or at any other time. But I acknowledge the debt. Some day I will pay it.”
    He was gone, leaving me with clenched hands, and my heart beating like a mill race.

The Man in the Brown Suit

Chapter 11
    There were no further excitements that night. I had breakfast in bed and got up late the next morning. Mrs. Blair hailed me as I came on deck.
    “Good morning, gipsy girl. Sit down here by me. You look as though you hadn't slept well.”
    “Why do you call me that?” I asked, as I sat down obediently.
    “Do you mind? It suits you somehow. I've called you that in my own mind from the beginning. It's the gipsy element in you that makes you so different from anyone else. I decided in my own mind that you and Colonel Race were the only two people on board who wouldn't bore me to death to talk to.”
    “That's funny,” I said. “I thought the same about you - only it's more understandable in your case. You're - you're such an exquisitely finished product.”
    “Not badly put,” said Mrs. Blair, nodding her head. “Tell me all about yourself, gipsy girl. Why are you going to South Africa?”
    I told her something about Papa's lifework.
    “So you're Charles Beddingfield's daughter? I thought you weren't a mere provincial miss! Are you going to Broken Hill to grub up more skulls?”
    “I may,” I said cautiously. “I've got other plans as well.”
    “What a mysterious minx you are. But you do look tired this morning. Didn't you sleep well? I can't keep awake on board a boat. Ten hours' sleep for a fool, they say! I could do with twenty!”
    She yawned, looking like a sleepy kitten. “An idiot of a steward woke me up in the middle of the night to return me that roll of films I dropped yesterday. He did it in the most melodramatic manner, stuck his arm through the ventilator and dropped them neatly in the middle of my tummy. I thought it was a bomb for a moment!”
    “Here's your Colonel,” I said, as the tall soldierly figure of Colonel Race appeared on the deck.
    “He's not my Colonel particularly. In fact he admires you very much, gipsy girl. So don't run away.”
    “I want to tie something round my head. It will be more comfortable than a hat.”
    I slipped quickly away. For some reason or other I was uncomfortable with Colonel Race. He was one of the few people who were capable of making me feel shy.
    I went down to my cabin and began looking for something with which I could restrain my rebellious locks. Now I am a tidy person, I like my things always arranged in a certain way and I keep them so. I had no sooner opened my drawer than I realized that somebody had been disarranging my things. Everything had been turned over and scattered. I looked in the other drawers and the small hanging cupboard. They told the same tale. It was as though someone had been making a hurried and ineffectual search for something.
    I sat down on the edge of the bunk with a grave face. Who had been searching my cabin and what had they been looking for? Was it the half-sheet of paper with scribbled figures and words? I shook my