Pray for a Brave Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

shutting in the room, one shutting out the corridor, with a brief threshold between them. I’ll have some privacy here, thought Denning with considerable satisfaction.
    Denning had his shirt off, when a quiet knock sounded on his room door. That’s Gustav with my bag, he thought, and called, “Come in, come in.” But a round-faced woman, crisply dressed in blue, with towels over her arm, entered.
    “Excuse me, sir.” She didn’t retreat, but left the doors tactfully open as she hurried over to the bathroom. “Would you like me to run your bath?”
    “Don’t bother,” Denning said. “I think I’ve still got strength enough left for that.”
    “Please?”
    But just then, he heard an angry voice outside his room. A small procession passed along the corridor. First, a dapper little figure in a silver-grey suit, who was talking peremptorily over his shoulder to two boys laden with luggage, followed by a polite, persevering, but breathless Gustav. “It’s all mine, I tell you, such stupidity, it’s all mine,” the man’s precise voice was saying with increasing annoyance as he hurried his short steps.
    Denning moved swiftly into the corridor. “Just a minute,” he told one of the green-aproned boys, “I think you’ve got my bag mixed up with that stuff.”
    The procession halted.
    Gustav, red-faced and still breathing heavily from all the running he had done, said, “The hall porter told me it must be—”
    But the little man broke in with, “What’s this? What’s this?” He gave Denning’s naked chest a withering glance.
    “I think,” said Denning, his face expressionless, “I think this is my bag.” He pointed to one of the smaller grips.
    “Are you sure?” The man had realised Denning was right, but he wouldn’t admit his mistake too quickly. He looked at the label on Denning’s bag. “Let me see…”
    “Yes, let us see,” Denning said shortly and flipped over a label on one of the other small bags. Charles A. Maartens, he read. The man looked at him angrily.
    Denning could only hope that neither surprise nor confusion had shown on his face. He glanced along the corridor where two stray schoolgirls had halted, wide-eyed, surprised into a giggling match. He stepped quickly back into the shelter of his room. From there, he heard Mr. Charles A. Maartens’ high-pitched voice say, “Idiot! Take this bag away. Why don’t you pay attention?”
    Gustav, his face red once more—but this time not from running—brought the offending bag into Denning’s room.
    “That’s fine,” Denning said, “and don’t worry, Gustav. It wasn’t your mistake.”
    The boy wasn’t much comforted. “He doesn’t know German very well.” Gustav was trying to excuse his hotel’s new guest. “That’s why the gentleman did not understand me at first.”
    “I’ve run the bath, sir,” the chamber-maid said with conscious virtue, coming out of the bathroom. “If there’sanything you need—” She frowned at Gustav and fluttered her hand, which had been pointing to the bell, angrily towards the corridor. They both left, and the woman—now speaking in a quick rush of Bernese German—was asking Gustav if he didn’t know everyone was arriving today, everyone, and there was so much to do, if he had time to waste then he’d better help her count pillowcases and hand-towels.
    Denning looked at his bag. That possessive little character in the pearl-grey suit had almost set him doubting. But it was his bag, all right. It wasn’t locked, though. He searched quickly through it. The contents were all in order. Seemingly. Except that Peggy’s photograph had shifted, and now lay under, instead of over, his handkerchiefs. Someone had been checking on him. A friend?
    He looked round the room, thinking of Meyer again. It was an efficient, comfortable, and antiseptic box. Quiet, restrained to the point of anonymity. That polished brass bed with its white starched cover had welcomed more schoolteachers,