Free Night Without Stars by Winston Graham

different from the other two.
    It was Alix’s idea as usual. We’d walked out from Nice about two miles, and suddenly she said why not go on to Villefranche, have a drink there and get the last bus back. I said all right, if she felt like that. The place was busier than usual, it being a Sunday, and as we turned into the Rue St Agel there was the sound of singing from the bistro on the opposite corner. At the Café Gambetta someone was playing a concertina. The rusty music and the babel of voices met us as we went in.
    â€œGo on into the inner room,” Alix said. “ I’II tell Mère Roget we’ve come.”
    I went in, pushing through the jingling bead curtains, and Gaston, who happened to be there, stumped across and led me to an empty table. Now from the first Gaston had been one of the friendliest. Last week he’d stood for ten minutes leaning on an empty chair telling me how he lost his leg; a customer had had to bang on a table three times before Gaston would move. To-night I could hardly drag a word out of him. It was “yes, m’sieu,” “no, m’sieu”; and “but certainly.” As soon as he could he hobbled away.
    The inner room was much quieter than the outer one tonight—in fact there were only four people in the room: Uncle Henri Delaisse, a fellow called Dramont, another called Jean Roux, and a new man addressed as Rastel. None of them spoke to me, but I soon picked out each voice for myself. I wondered what the devil was wrong. They’d all been talking freely a minute before I walked in.
    The boy Maurice came in, and I ordered the usual coup de blanc and lit a cigarette and waited for Alix. After a minute or two the conversation loosened up, but it was self-conscious stuff, about a cycle race that was going to begin in a couple of days.
    Then the concertina stopped in the outer bar, and I suddenly realised that there was someone else in this room.
    It’s surprisingly hard to cheat a blind man. He comes to hear and identify the slightest sounds, for no one ever stays quite still. He almost always knows when someone is near him and what they are doing.
    But this was the stillest sitter I’d come across. He could hardly have moved a muscle, and certainly wasn’t moving now; it was only because the concertina had given out for a minute that I heard his breathing, which was quiet enough but with a just detectable and distinctive tick-tick sound at the back of the nose.
    At first I thought of saying something but decided against it. If somebody didn’t want to be sociable it was really not my affair.
    Gaston came limping across from the kitchen. “ Mère Roget has some special wine to offer you, m’sieu, and would like you to come into the kitchen to take it.”
    â€œVery well.” The inner room wasn’t for me to-night.
    As I got to the kitchen door someone came out and stood on one side to let me pass. I thanked him, but he didn’t speak, so I couldn’t be sure that it was Armand Delaisse.
    Things were a bit distant in the kitchen too, and we left fairly early. On the way home Alix, for the only time ever, talked too much. She was bright and lively, but the brightness didn’t ring true, and there was a jarring note somewhere.
    In the end I said: “ Look, Alix, dear, you don’t need to be the life and soul of the party. In fact there’s no party, and I’d rather have you in your depressed mood than—this way.”
    She stopped. “This way?” she said. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘this way.’ ”
    â€œOh … faintly over-anxious to convince yourself that you don’t care a damn for anybody.”
    She was silent a bit, faintly whistling through pursed lips. “ Why should I have to convince myself of what I know to be the truth?”
    â€œWhy indeed? If it is the truth.”
    We walked along some way. She gave a little irritable flick