Free The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene

scarred. . . . He had given her half a dozen kind words: in her environment were they so rare that they evoked automatically – this? He said, ‘I want you to do something for me.’
    â€˜Anything,’ she said. She was devoted too, he thought, to Clara. What a life when a child had to fix her love on an old foreigner and a prostitute for want of anything better.
    He said, ‘Nobody at all must know. I have some papers people are looking for. I want you to keep them for me until to-morrow.’
    She asked, ‘Are you a spy?’
    â€˜No. No.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t mind,’ she said, ‘what you are.’ He sat down on the bed and took off his shoes: she watched him with fascination. She said, ‘That lady on the ’phone . . .’
    He looked up with a sock in one hand and the papers in the other. ‘She mustn’t know. You and me only.’ Her face glowed: he might have given her a jewel; he changed his mind quickly about offering her money. Later perhaps when he was leaving, some present she could turn into money if she chose, but not the brutal and degrading payment. ‘Where will you keep them?’ he asked.
    â€˜Where you did.’
    â€˜And nobody must know.’
    â€˜Cross my heart.’
    â€˜Better do it now. At once.’ He turned his back and looked out of the window. The hotel sign in big gilt letters was strung just below: forty feet down the frosty pavement and a coal cart going slowly by. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’m going to sleep again.’ There were enormous arrears of sleep to make up.
    â€˜Won’t you have some lunch?’ she asked. ‘It’s not so bad to-day. There’s Irish stew and treacle pudding. It keeps you warm.’ She said, ‘I’ll see you get big helpings – when her back’s turned.’
    â€˜I’m not used yet,’ he said, ‘to your big meals. Where I’ve come from, we’ve got out of the way of eating.’
    â€˜But you have to eat.’
    â€˜Oh,’ he said, ‘we’ve found a cheaper way. We look at pictures of food in the magazines instead.’
    â€˜Go on,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe you. You’ve got to eat. If it’s the money . . .’
    â€˜No,’ he said, ‘it’s not the money. I promise you I’ll eat well to-night. But just now it’s sleep I want.’
    â€˜Nobody’ll come in this time,’ she said. ‘Nobody.’ He could hear her moving in the passage outside like a sentry: a flap, flap, flap; she was probably pretending to dust.
    He lay down again on his bed in his clothes. No need this time to tell his sub-conscious mind to wake him. He never slept for more than six hours at a time. That was the longest interval there ever was between raids. But this time he couldn’t sleep at all – never before had he let those papers out of his possession. They had been with him all across Europe, on the express to Paris, to Calais, Dover; even when he was being beaten up, they were there, under his heel, a safeguard. He felt uneasy without them. They were his authority and now he was nothing – just an undesirable alien, lying on a shabby bed in a disreputable hotel. Suppose the girl should boast of his confidence, but he trusted her more than he trusted anyone else. She was simple: suppose she should change her stockings and leave his papers lying about, forgotten. . . . L., he thought grimly, would never have done a thing like that. In a way the whole future of what was left of his country lay in the stockings of an underpaid child. They were worth at least £2,000 on the nail – that had been proved. They would probably pay a great deal more if you gave them credit. He felt powerless, like Samson with his hair shorn. He nearly got up and called Else back. But if he did, what should he do with the papers? There was nowhere