Free A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene Page A

hands. ‘You are the only people,’ she said, ‘who seem to have met M. Querry. The mayor would have liked him to sign the Golden Book, but he seems to spend all his time in that sad place out there. Now you perhaps could pry him out for all our sakes.’
    ‘We don’t really know him,’ Marie Rycker said. ‘He spent the night with us when the river was in flood, that’s all. He wouldn’t have stayed otherwise. I don’t think he wants to see people. My husband promised not to tell . . .’
    ‘Your husband was quite right to tell us . We should have looked such fools, having the Querry in our own territory without being aware of it. How did he strike you, dear?’
    ‘I hardly spoke to him.’
    ‘His reputation in certain ways is very bad they tell me. Have you read the article in Time ? Oh yes, of course, your husband showed it to us. Not of course that they write of that . It’s only what they say in Europe. One has to remember though that some of the great saints of the Church passed through a certain period of – how shall I put it?’
    ‘Do I hear you talking of saints, Mme Guelle?’ Rycker asked. ‘What excellent whisky you always have.’
    ‘Not exactly saints. We were discussing M. Querry.’
    ‘In my opinion,’ Rycker said, raising his voice a little like a monitor in a noisy classroom, ‘he may well be the greatest thing to happen in Africa since Schweitzer, and Schweitzer after all is a Protestant. I found him a most interesting companion when he stayed with us. And have you heard the latest story?’ Rycker asked the room at large, shaking the ice in his glass like a hand-bell. ‘He went out into the bush two weeks ago, they say, to find a leper who had run away. He spent the whole night with him in the forest, arguing and praying, and he persuaded the man to return and complete his treatment. It rained in the night and the man was sick with fever, so he covered him with his body.’
    ‘What an unconventional thing to do,’ Mme Guelle said. ‘He’s not, is he . . . ?’
    The Governor was a very small man with a short-sight which gave him an appearance of moral intensity; physically he had the air of looking to his wife for protection, but like a small nation, proud of its culture, he was an unwilling satellite. He said, ‘There are more saints in the world than the Church recognizes.’ This remark stamped with official approval what might otherwise have been regarded as an eccentric or even an ambiguous action.
    ‘Who is this man Querry?’ the Director of Public Works asked the Manager of Otraco.
    ‘They say he’s a world-famous architect. You should know. He comes into your province.’
    ‘He’s not here officially, is he?’
    ‘He’s helping with the new hospital at the leproserie.’
    ‘But I passed those plans months ago. They don’t need an architect. It’s a simple building job.’
    ‘The hospital,’ Rycker said, interrupting them and drawing them within his circle, ‘you can take it from me, is only a first step. He is designing a modern African church. He hinted at that to me himself. He’s a man of great vision. What he builds lasts. A prayer in stone. There’s Monseigneur coming in. Now we shall learn what the Church thinks of Querry.’
    The Bishop was a tall rakish figure with a neatly trimmed beard and the roving eye of an old-fashioned cavalier of the boulevards. He generously avoided putting out his hand to the men so that they might escape a genuflection. Women however liked to kiss his ring (it was a form of innocent flirtation), and he readily allowed it.
    ‘So we have a saint among us, Monseigneur,’ Mme Guelle said.
    ‘You honour me too much. And how is the Governor? I don’t see him here.’
    ‘He’s gone to unlock some more whisky. To tell the truth, Monseigneur, I was not referring to you. I’d be sorry to see you become a saint – for the time being, that is.’
    ‘An Augustinian thought,’ the Bishop said obscurely.
    ‘We were