Beautiful Lies Read Online Free PDF Page A

guided him, past the alley. “Be sure you don’t miss the good Broome has to offer.”
    â€œA job finding pearls I can’t own myself?” Archer spat in the street.
    â€œWe have to learn the business one way or the other. We’ll find out how it’s done, and maybe by next season we’ll have a lugger of our own. I still have funds in California.”
    â€œNot enough for a lugger, you don’t.”
    â€œBut enough to help us get a start. In the meantime, we have to keep an eye open for the main chance. That’s what Garth said he did. Don’t forget, this is just the beginning.”
    Archer’s dreams were big ones and not easily deferred, but, as Tom knew, he wasn’t one to brood. He shook off Tom’s hand. “Right now I’ll settle for something to eat.”
    John Garth had given each man an advance on the pay he would receive at the season’s end. They had already moved their meager belongings to the Roebuck Bay Hotel, more suitable quarters than the hovel where the skipper had found them. All that remained was to find a laundry that would return their clothes by the morning. Then they could go back to the hotel to fill up on cheap, nourishing food. John had warned them to expect nothing better than rice and fish once they were on board the Odyssey.
    â€œThere’s the laundry John recommended.” Tom pointed out the sign at the end of the block. “Sing Chung’s.”
    Chinatown, called Japtown by some, was the home of a dozen Asian nationalities, with various social clubs and businesses, but here, as in other parts of the world, the Chinese had honed and bartered marketable skills they had brought with them from the old country. The Chinese washed and pressed the uniforms and incidental clothingof those pearling masters who couldn’t afford to send their laundry to Singapore.
    â€œDo you suppose the poor bastards work all night long? Don’t they need sleep the same as you and me?” Archer said.
    â€œThey’re exactly like any man. They do whatever they can, whenever they can, to survive.”
    â€œI wouldn’t stand over a kettle of boiling water in this heat.”
    â€œYou would if that was all you could do to support your wife and children.”
    Archer flashed a winning grin. “I’m planning to marry a woman who can support me.”
    â€œAnd I’m sure you’ll find a dozen like that in Broome. If you can find a dozen women.”
    â€œI won’t be staying in this hellhole long enough to find anything except a pearl. I’ll make my fortune quick, then I’m going to Victoria. I’ll buy a place, settle down and raise cattle. That’s what I know. And when I’m done, I’ll have a kingdom to leave my sons.”
    Tom understood where his friend’s ambitions had originated. Archer was the only child of immigrants who had traveled to Texas with dreams of their own. His father had died in a West Texas jail with nothing to show for years of struggle except a prison sentence he hadn’t deserved. His mother, destitute and sickly, had been forced to place her young son in an orphanage. Archer had spent the remainder of his childhood on the ranch of the local mayor as an unpaid laborer.
    Tom clapped him on the back. “Let’s dispose of the laundry, then you can fortify yourself so you’ll have the strength to build that kingdom.”
    Archer was laughing as they walked through the door.
    The room was dark and cramped, and the heat was almost unbearable. Tom supposed the wash was boiled in the curtained partition behind this one, adding ten degrees to the temperature. The only light came from the doorway behind them. As his vision adjusted, he saw a slender figure behind a low table. As it sharpened, the figure became a woman, a young woman with a delicate heart-shaped face and eyes that were modestly fixed on the table before her.
    Archer, who was in a