Free While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes Page A

department at Hofmeyer’s shop in suspicious circumstances. That the said young woman, having failed to satisfy your department that she had no connection with Koch, was transferred to the care of my department because of our special interest in that case. Now, I think I’ll take Miss Matthews or Koch along with me. I think I can find a quick method of verifying certain necessary points in her statement. I shall let you know at once, of course, so that your records on this case may be completed.”
    Sheila, her arm grasped by a thin, surprisingly strong hand, found herself being led determinedly from the room. In his other hand, Mr. Olszak had an equally determined grip of her handbag.

6
    MR. OLSZAK
    “Well, young lady,” Mr. Olszak said at last, when they had reached a small room of indescribable confusion, “you do make life very complicated for yourself.” He pushed aside two wire trays filled with papers, and perched himself on the corner of his desk to face Sheila, seated in his only chair. Now her back was to the light and it was Mr. Olszak who faced it. Sheila felt as if he had reversed the positions deliberately. She suddenly relaxed for the first time in the last two hours. Her hands trembled slightly as she smoothed her linen skirt over her knees. But she managed to smile.
    “That’s better,” Mr. Olszak said in his crisp way. “Much better.” He removed his rimless glasses, and fingered the thin bridge of his nose where they had pinched it into a red groove. His greying hair had receded so deeply from the temples that what was left of it formed an exaggerated widow’s peak, making the high brow still higher. His face had the white lookof a man who worked too much, slept too little, and cared about neither regular meals nor exercise. His clothes and his manner of wearing them were quiet and neat, but nondescript. He was completely undistinguished to look at, except for his eyes and his hands. Both of these, Sheila thought, were unexpectedly powerful, once he let you look at them. It wasn’t the colour of the eyes so much—a strange mixture of grey and green—as the expression they held. Behind his glasses, they had been quick and intelligent. Now, as he looked past Sheila to the tree branches which brushed the window, there was a brooding quality which combined thoughtfulness with decision. This man, Sheila realised, did not know fear. He believed in something so far apart from himself that he had left no place in his mind for selfish emotions. Nothing that happened to him personally would seem important enough to be terrifying. She envied him at this moment.
    “And what do you think of our policemen?” he asked, still watching the tree, still smiling in that sardonic way of his.
    “I’d think you were wonderful,” quoted Sheila with some bitterness, “if I weren’t in my position. For a moment or two, they had me almost convinced that I didn’t exist.”
    Mr. Olszak didn’t bother to answer. He was looking through the contents of her handbag now. “Where did you find this?” With a movement as sudden as his question he had extracted Hofmeyer’s leaflet. He watched her closely as she explained it all, beginning with Hofmeyer’s visit to Korytów yesterday evening.
    “You believe me, don’t you? You know I am Sheila Matthews,” she ended desperately, as Mr. Olszak remained silent.
    “Why else should I have rescued you from the efficient logic of Colonel Bolt?” He smiled without any sarcasm this time,and added, “But my belief didn’t come from anything you contributed to the discussion in Bolt’s office, Miss Matthews.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I met you through Professor Korytowski. He met you, like Barbara and her mother, through Andrew. Andrew met you in London through some letter or other from his aunt. But if he or she cannot be found to substantiate your story—if, for instance, a German bomb or bullet took care of them within the next few days—well, then! What’s