Free The Confidential Agent by Graham Greene Page B

addressed you, sir, naturally, if I hadn’t felt that you were – well, of one’s own kind.’ Was there really a snobbery in begging or was it just a method of approach which had proved workable? ‘Of course, if it’s inconvenient at the moment, say no more about it.’
    D. put his hand into his pocket. ‘Not here, if you don’t mind, sir, in the full light of day, as it were. If you would just step into this mews. I confess to a feeling of shame – asking a complete stranger for a loan like this.’ He sidled nervously sideways into the empty mews: ‘You can imagine my circumstances.’ One car stood there, big green closed gates: nobody about. ‘Well,’ D. said, ‘here’s half a crown.’
    â€˜Thank you, sir.’ He grabbed it. ‘Perhaps one day I shall be able to repay . . .’ He was off with lanky strides, out of the mews, into the street, out of sight. D. began to follow. There was a small scraping sound behind him, and a piece of brick suddenly flew out of the wall and struck him sharply on the cheek. Memory warned him: he ran. In the street there were lights in windows, a policeman stood at a corner, he was safe. He knew that somebody had fired at him with a gun fitted with a silencer. Ignorance. You couldn’t aim properly with a silencer.
    The beggar, he thought, must have waited for me outside the hotel, acted as decoy into the mews: if they had hit him the car was there ready to take his body. Or perhaps they only meant to maim him. Probably they hadn’t made up their own minds which, and that was another reason why they had missed, just as in billiards if you have two shots in mind, you miss both. But how had they known the hour at which he would be leaving the hotel? He quickened his step, and came up Bernard Street, with a tiny flame of anger at his heart. The girl, of course, would not be at the station.
    But she was.
    He said, ‘I didn’t really expect to find you here. Not after your friends had tried to shoot me.’
    â€˜Listen,’ she said, ‘there are things I won’t and can’t believe. I came here to apologise. About last night. I don’t believe you meant to steal that car, but I was drunk, furious. . . . I never thought they meant to smash you as they did. It was that fool Currie. But if you start being melodramatic again. . . . Is it a new kind of confidence trick? Is it meant to appeal to the romantic female heart? Because you’d better know, it doesn’t work.’
    He said, ‘Did L. know you were meeting me here at seven-thirty?’
    She said, with a faint uneasiness, ‘Not L.; Currie did.’ The confession surprised him. Perhaps, after all, she was innocent. ‘He’d got your notebook, you see. He said it ought to be kept in case you tried anything more on. I spoke to him on the telephone to-day – he was in town. I said I didn’t believe you meant to steal that car and that I was going to meet you. I wanted to give it back to you.’
    â€˜He let you have it?’
    â€˜Here it is.’
    â€˜And perhaps you told him where, what time?’
    â€˜I may have done. We talked a lot. He argued. But it’s no use you telling me Currie shot at you – I don’t believe it.’
    â€˜Oh no. Nor do I. I suppose he happened to meet L. and told him.’
    She said, ‘He was having lunch with L.’ She exclaimed furiously, ‘But it’s fantastic. How could they shoot at you in the street – here? What about the police, the noise, the neighbours? Why are you here at all? Why aren’t you at the police station?’
    He said gently, ‘One at a time. It was in a mews. There was a silencer. And as for the police station, I had an appointment here with you.’
    â€˜I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. Don’t you see that if things like that happened life would be