Cry in the Night Read Online Free PDF

born, my schooling, jobs, family background.
    I was aware throughout that he either didn’t like me or my answers or the interview itself. He was abrupt, cold, and very nearly rude.
    Then came the question I had dreaded.
    “Do you speak Spanish, Miss Ramsay?”
    I shook my head apologetically. “No, I’m afraid not, Dr. Freidheim. I speak French and some German, but no Spanish.”
    “German,” he repeated.
    I could tell nothing from his face. It gave no hint how he judged me. He straightened the page upon which he had made notes as we talked.
    “Interest has been expressed by several persons in making the trip, Miss Ramsay.” He smiled, a humorless smile that did not reach those icy blue eyes. “Something for nothing is always attractive, am I right?”
    I felt suddenly grasping and small. He was right, of course. The trip was a freebie on a giant scale and I had always prided myself on having too much style to go to openings for free baubles.
    He looked down at the sheet then, viciously, gouged a check mark at the bottom of the page with his pen.
    I shrank a little in my chair.
    “I will check your background,” he said curtly, rustling the paper. “We must, you understand, have someone who is responsible.”
    I nodded quickly, not understanding any of it.
    “The return of the manuscript has been ordered.” He glared at me. “I am not finished with my study of it.”
    If there was a reply to make, I couldn’t think of it.
    “The Ortegas,” he continued, and the name was ugly on his lips, “have insisted that the manuscript be returned. Dr. Rodriguez says there must be a reason. But they have not given it.”
    I nodded again, mutely, finally realizing that the trip was part and parcel of the angry scene I had stumbled into.
    A muscle twitched in his scarred cheek. “The manuscript belongs to them so we must return it. But I will not permit a member of this department to carry it to them.”
    “I see,” I said tentatively.
    “It is an insult, you understand.”
    I had no idea who was insulting whom, but I could tell well enough that Dr. Freidheim had worked it out in his own mind that sending a museum employee from another section took some of the sting out of having to return the manuscript.
    “It is one of the few extant documents from the period directly following the Conquest so it is highly prized, you understand.”
    I leaned forward in my chair, curious to see what might make it possible for me to go to Mexico.
    He pushed back his chair and stood. Turning, he lifted down a leather-bound book from a shelf behind his desk. Covered in protective plastic, the book was massive—a foot in width, a foot and a quarter in length, and several inches thick. His huge hands touched it gently. He laid the book on a nearby table and began turning its golden-toned vellum pages.
    As Freidheim spoke, I learned a good deal about its author, one Father Sanchez, and his work among the
indios
, as the Spaniards called the natives. Freidheim described the priest’s work among his charges, how he had learned Nahuatl—the Aztec language—and translated many codices, the painted fig-bark books in which the Aztecs wrote their histories.
    I also laid to rest, as Freidheim droned on and on, the niggling little worry about the advisability of accepting free passage anywhere, a carryover from those long-ago days when I was warned never to accept a ride from strangers.
    What could be safer, more respectable than serving as a messenger for my museum?

Chapter 3
    One week passed, then a second. The chill days of April slipped into the teasing warmth of May.
    I would hope, and then I would despair. One moment I would feel confident that Dr. Freidheim would be impressed with my respectable background. The next I would be sure that he wouldn’t even seriously consider an applicant who didn’t speak Spanish.
    Just in case, I scurried about, got my clothes clean, checked on getting a tourist card, even buying (an extravagance) a