Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 Read Online Free PDF

everyone over there. You could stay anywhere you want, or on board if you didn’t want company. I’ll tell Bernard.’
    ‘Something to look forward to?’ he said. The put-down in his voice was like the one I’d had.
    There was another silence. Then she said, ‘Believe me, you won’t feel as tired as this all the time. All the same, I don’t know what you were thinking of, letting these people in. What’s she called, this girl Ferdy’s wished on you?’
    ‘I don’t know. Geddes, I think,’ he said.
    ‘And what’s she like?’
    There was another silence. Then he said, ‘Small. Tough. Scottish. She’s listening to you.’
    The bastard. I whipped the receiver away from my ear without thinking, and so missed the first half of a very smart leave-taking. I heard Johnson say, ‘It’s too much trouble for you. No, please don’t. But of course I’ll remember. Give my love to Joanna.’
    Then the woman rang off, but he didn’t. He just laid the phone off the rest, so no more calls could get in.
    It also meant that I couldn’t phone out.
    As I’ve probably said, attack first is my motto. I got up and banged on the door of his bedroom. Why not?
    I had credit cards and an account. I could go to a hotel. Pal Johnson wasn’t going to suffer, with his folks and the Judge and Joanna’s mother and all to mollycuddle him. So I walked into his room without waiting too long for a sniffy invitation. He wasn’t likely to be taking calls starkers.
    Starkers he wasn’t, but the Owner of the Apartment he certainly was, sitting straight up in bed as if he’d money rammed into both pillows. On the bed stood the filing basket full of letters, florists’ cards and parcel tags, and beside it a tray of pens and paper and stuff he’d been answering with.
    The phone was purring beside him on the table. I put the receiver back on its rest and said, ‘I have some calls to make. Do you want me here or not?’
    ‘It depends rather,’ he said, ‘on whether Ferdy comes back.’
    A man of few words. What he meant was, he couldn’t be bothered to row, but he wasn’t going to lease 17 b as a knocking-shop.
    I said, ‘There’s nothing for him to come back for. How long is your housekeeper taking?’
    ‘Till tomorrow night, I imagine,’ he said. ‘I should have asked Ferdy.’
    The phone rang, and he looked at it. He didn’t pick it up. It went on ringing. I said, ‘I’ll go into the kitchen and whistle,’ but got no reaction. Against the ringing, he said, ‘Stay or leave as you like. You need a bed?’
    The ringing came to an end, and he turned his head and unhooked and laid down the receiver. ‘I’m afraid that is essential,’ he said.
    Behind the table, there was a telephone socket in the skirting. I got down on my knees and, pushing aside Bessie, who wanted to die for me, unplugged the cable. In two other rooms, the telephone started to ring again.
    I got to my feet. Johnson pulled the blotter over his knees and picked his pen up, as if in return he’d unplugged me. I stood and looked at him sorting his papers.
    I wanted to make calls and receive them from, for example, Ferdy or Natalie Sheridan.
    The Owner wasn’t going to answer the telephone. Which, if I stayed, made me his personal answering service.
    He had started writing again, and I might as well have been a pot with a Zulu in it. I walked out and into the studio. I sat down at the piano and treated it to a yard or two of punchy Scott Joplin, waiting for the ringing to end so that I could start to make my phone calls.
    I stopped because my legwarmers had got stamped down to my ankles, and the way I felt about the tantalised fruits told me I was starving.
    There was a phone in the kitchen. I had just got a pan out when the ringing stopped and I made a dive to unhook the receiver. The ringing started again as I did it, and a voice spoke before I could get the thing down. ‘Connie? Is that you? How is Mr Johnson today?’
    This time, it was a man. I had the