Quest for Alexis Read Online Free PDF Page A

usual warm polished gleam. The room was small, workmanlike, one wall lined with bookshelves. On the library desk Rudi had left a transistor radio. He switched it on, and the burst of pop music sounded incongruous in these surroundings. There was a time check, and then the smooth, unemotional voice of the BBC newscaster. The item about Alexis came fourth, after a bank holdup in Edinburgh.
    Dr. Alexis Karel, about whom there has been some anxiety since he was reported missing from his Sussex home, has now been found to be safe and well at a fashionable hotel in Palma, Majorca. Listeners were re minded that Dr. Karel was shortly to publish an im portant new book, Czechoslovakia in Chains, for which it was understood he had received a large sum for newspaper serialization in England and America. Almost as an afterthought it was added that Miss Belle Forsyth, who had been employed by Dr. Karel as his invalid wife’s nurse and companion, was staying at the same hotel.
    Rudi reached out and switched off the radio. I felt too sickened to speak, and into the unhappy silence the telephone rang, a sudden jarring noise.
    “It’s sure to be another newspaper,” said Rudi. “They haven’t left us alone.”
    “Oh ... will you answer it, then? I’ll go and see the Warrenders.” I hesitated. “Is ... is Brett at home?”
    “No, he’s not there now. He went back to London yesterday.” Picking up the phone, Rudi looked at me sadly, and I realized that he had misinterpreted my question. He believed that I was turning to Brett for help—not that I wanted above everything to avoid him. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to explain.
    I went through the doorway that separated the west wing from the main part of the house with a feeling of apprehension. What was my reception going to be?
    I hesitated in the staircase hall. It was quiet and dim there, little light piercing the tall oriel window on this dark winter afternoon. The great Elizabethan stairs turned upward into shadow.
    A studded door beside the stairway opened, and the Warrenders’ maid appeared, wheeling a tea cart. She gave me her usual bright smile, then her face sobered.
    “Hello, Miss Fleming. I heard you were coming.”
    “Hello, Jenny. Are Sir Ralph and Lady Caterina alone?”
    “Yes, I’m just taking in their tea.”
    She went to the door of the Ivory Room, obviously expecting me to follow her in. But I hung back ner vously.
    “Jenny, tell them I’m here first, will you?”
    “Yes, if you like.”
    A moment later I heard Caterina’s exclamation, and she came hastening out to me. She was a generously built woman, an opera singer in the old tradition, yet as light on her feet as a dancer. Caterina was given to wearing long flowing garments in gorgeous fabrics, which invested her with regal dignity. Today, she was neck to ankles in a crimson velvet caftan.
    “Gail, my poor little one—what a terrible, terrible business this is.” Impulsively, she hugged me and kissed my cheek, then drew me after her into the room, still voluble. “We’ve been so concerned, so worried.... Jenny, fetch another cup, please. Ralph, my darling, here she is, our poor dear Gail.”
    Her husband was standing before the hearth, with its superb ivory overmantel. He was a tall man with neatly parted iron-gray hair. In retirement, since his blind ness, Sir Ralph had grown thinner, but he still held himself with an upright bearing. He stretched out his hand for me to take, but his welcome noticeably lacked the warmth of Caterina’s.
    “Good afternoon, Gail. You wasted no time coming back to England.”
    “I felt I had to come at once, Sir Ralph—for Mad eleine’s sake.”
    “Yes, poor soul. It’s going to be an appalling shock to her, but she will have to know the truth.”
    The truth? He was taking it for granted that Alexis had cut loose from his responsibilities like a man with out honor or principle. Even Caterina accepted it as a fact. For all her charm, for all her