Neverwhere Read Online Free PDF Page B

photocopies to his chest. He had said nothing until this moment—just waited, huge and impassive. Now he laughed, once, low and dirtily. There was something unhealthy about that laugh.
    “The police? Alas,” said the smaller man, “we cannot claim that felicity. A career in law and order, although indubitably enticing, was not inscribed on the cards Dame Fortuna dealt my brother and me. No, we are merely private citizens. Allow me to make introductions. I am Mister Croup, and this gentleman is my brother, Mister Vandemar.”
    They did not look like brothers. They did not look like anything Richard had seen before. “Your brother?” asked Richard. “Shouldn’t you have the same name?”
    “I am impressed. What a brain, Mister Vandemar. Keen and incisive isn’t the half of it. Some of us are so sharp,” he said as he leaned in closer to Richard, went up on tiptoes into Richard’s face, “we could just cut ourselves.” Richard took an involuntary step backwards. “Can we come inside?” asked Mr. Croup.
    “What do you want?”
    Mr. Croup sighed, in what he obviously imagined was a rather wistful manner. “We are looking for our sister,” he explained. “A wayward child, willful and headstrong, who has close to broken our poor dear widowed mother’s heart.”
    “Ran away,” explained Mr. Vandemar, quietly. He thrust a photocopied sheet into Richard’s hands. “She’s a little . . . funny,” he added, and then he twirled one finger next to his temple in the universal gesture to indicate mental incapacity.
    Richard looked down at the paper.
    It said:
    HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL ?
    Beneath that was a photocopy-gray photograph of a girl who looked to Richard like a cleaner, longer-haired version of the young lady he had left in his bathroom.
    Under that it said:
    ANSWERS TO THE NAME OF DOREEN.
    BITES AND KICKS. RUN AWAY.
    TELL US IF YOU SAW HER. WANT HER BACK. REWARD PAYED.
    And below that, a telephone number. Richard looked back at the photograph. It was definitely the girl in his bathroom. “No,” he said. “I haven’t seen her, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”
    Mr. Vandemar, however, was not listening. He had raised his head and was sniffing the air, like a man smelling something odd or unpleasant. Richard reached out to give him back his piece of paper, but the big man simply pushed past him and walked into the apartment, a wolf on the prowl. Richard ran after him. “What do you think you are doing? Will you stop that? Get out. Look, you can’t go in there—” Mr. Vandemar was headed straight for the bathroom. Richard hoped that the girl—Doreen?—had had the presence of mind to lock the bathroom door. But no; it swung open at Mr. Van-demar’s push. He walked in, and Richard, feeling like a small and ineffectual dog yapping at the heels of a postman, followed him in.
    It was not a large bathroom. It contained a bathtub, a toilet, a sink, several bottles of shampoo, a bar of soap, and a towel. When Richard had left it, a couple of minutes before, it had also contained a dirty, bloody girl, a very bloody sink, and an open first aid kit. Now, it was gleamingly clean.
    There was nowhere the girl could have been hiding. Mr. Vandemar stepped out of the bathroom and pushed open Richard’s bedroom door, walked in, looked around. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” said Richard. “But if you two don’t get out of my apartment this minute, I’m phoning the police.”
    Then Mr. Vandemar, who had been in the process of examining Richard’s living room, turned back toward Richard, and Richard suddenly realized that he had never been so scared of another human being in his life.
    And then foxy Mr. Croup said, “Why yes, whatever can have come over you, Mister Vandemar? It’s grief for our dear sweet sibling, I’ll wager, has turned his head. Now apologize to the gentleman, Mister Vandemar.”
    Mr. Vandemar nodded, and pondered for a moment. “Thought I needed to use the toilet,” he said.