Free The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep by Lawrence Block Page B

could. Some of my prospective hosts lived in countries where international mail was opened as a matter of course, and others in more open nations lived the sort of lives that made their governments inclined to deny them the customary rights of privacy. The usual form of my letters ran rather like this:
    Dear Cousin Peder,
    It is my task to tell you that my niece Kristin is celebrating the birth of her first child, a boy. While I must travel many miles to the christening, I have the courage to hope for a warm welcome and shelter for the night.
    Faithfully,
    Anton
    The names and phrasing were changed, of course, to fit the nationality of the recipient and the language of each letter was the language of the person to whom it was sent. I finished the last one, sealed them all and addressed as many envelopes as I could. I couldn't remember all the addresses but knew I could learn most of the ones I was missing in London. Almost all my groups have contacts in London.
    I couldn't mail the letters from Croom, of course, and wasn't sure whether or not it would be safe to mail them all from the same city, anyway. But at least they were written.
    When Nora came back to the cottage she kept blushing and turning from me. "I'm to have nothing to do with you," she said.
    "All right, then."
    "Must you accept it so readily?"
    I laughed and reached for her. She danced away, blue eyes flashing merrily, and I lunged again and fell over my own feet. She hurried over to see if I was all right, and I caught her and drew her down and kissed her. She said I was a rascal and threw her arms around me. We broke apart suddenly when there was a noise outside, and the door flew suddenly open. It was Tom. His cycle—or mine, or Mr. Mulready's—was in a heap at the doorstep.
    "Mr. Tanner fell down," Nora began, "and I was seeing whether he'd broken any bones, and—"
    Tom only had time for one quick doubting look at her. He was out of breath, and his face was streaked with perspiration. "The old woman at the pub found your suit," he said. "Went to the gardai. They traced you to Mulready, and the fool said you were bound for Croom, and there's a car of them on the road from Limerick. I passed them coming back."
    "You passed them?"
    "I did. They had a flat tire and called for me to help them change it. Help them! Two of them there were, and having trouble changing a tire. I asked where they were headed for, and they said Croom, and I said I'd be right back and give them a hand, and I came straight here. They'll be here soon, Evan. They'll ask at the tavern and find out you went there for directions to our house. You'd best go to your room."
    "I'll leave the house."
    "And go where? In Limerick City they say that more are coming over from Dublin, and detectives from Cork as well. Go to your room and stay quiet. They'll be on us in five minutes, but if you're in your room they'll never find you."
    I grabbed up my letters and snatched up the sweater I had been wearing. I opened the panel, scurried up the rope ladder, and drew it up after me. Tom raised the panel and locked it from below.
    Perhaps it was only five minutes that I crouched in the darkness by the side of the trapdoor. It seemed far longer. I heard the car drive up and then the knocking at the door. I caught snatches of conversation as the two policemen searched the little cottage. Then they were on the stairs, and I could hear the conversation more clearly. Nora was insisting that they were hiding no one, no one at all.
    "You bloody I.R.A.," one of the police said. "Don't you know the war's over?"
    "It's not yet begun," Tom said recklessly.
    The other garda was tapping at the ceiling. "I stayed in a house just like this one," he was saying. "Oh, it was years ago, when I was on the run myself. Stayed in half the houses in County Limerick and a third in County Clare. What's the name here? Dolan?"
    "It is."
    "Why, this is one I stayed in," the garda said. "A hiding place in the ceiling, if I remember