Ripley Under Ground Read Online Free PDF

recluse,” Ed said.
    The telephone rang. Ed answered, and Tom heard him assuring someone, no doubt Jeff, that Tom had arrived and was ready to go.
    Tom did not feel quite ready to go. He felt sweaty from nerves. He said to Bernard, trying to sound cheerful, “How’s Cynthia? Do you ever see her?”
    “I don’t see her anymore. Not very often, anyway.” Bernard glanced at Tom, then looked back at the floor.
    “What’s she going to say when she finds out Derwatt’s come back to London for a few days?” Tom asked.
    “I don’t think she’ll say anything,” Bernard replied dully. “She’s not—going to spoil things, I’m sure.”
    Ed finished his telephone conversation. “Cynthia won’t say anything, Tom. She’s like that. You remember her, don’t you, Tom?”
    “Yes. Slightly,” Tom said.
    “If she hasn’t said anything by now, she’s not going to,” Ed said. The way he said it made it sound like. “She’s not a bad sport or a blabbermouth.”
    “She is quite wonderful,” Bernard said dreamily, to nobody. He suddenly got up and darted for the bathroom, perhaps because he had to go there, but it might have been to throw up.
    “Don’t worry about Cynthia, Tom,” Ed said softly. “We live with her, you see. I mean, here in London. She’s been quiet for three years or so. Well, you know—since she broke up with Bernard. Or he broke up with her.”
    “Is she happy? Found somebody else?”
    “Oh, she has a boyfriend, I think.”
    Bernard was coming back.
    Tom had a scotch. Bernard took a Pernod, and Ed drank nothing. He was afraid to, he said, because he’d had a sedative. By five o’clock, Tom had been briefed or refreshed on several things: the town in Greece where Derwatt had officially last been seen nearly six years ago. Tom, in case he was queried, was to say he had left Greece under another name on a Greek tanker bound for Vera Cruz, working as oiler and ship’s painter.
    They borrowed Bernard’s topcoat, which was older looking than Tom’s or any of Jeff’s in his closet. Then Tom and Ed set off, leaving Bernard in Jeff’s studio, where they all were to meet later.
    “My God, he’s down in the mouth,” Tom said on the pavement. He was walking with a slump. “How long can he go on like this?”
    “Don’t judge by today. He’ll go on. He’s always like this when there’s a show.”
    Bernard was the old workhorse, Tom supposed. Ed and Jeff were burgeoning on extra money, good food, good living. Bernard merely produced the pictures that made it possible.
    Tom drew back sharply from a taxi, not having expected it to be bowling along on the left side of the road.
    Ed smiled. “That’s great. Keep it up.”
    They came to a taxi rank and got into a cab.
    “And this—caretaker or manager at the gallery,” Tom said. “What’s his name?”
    “Leonard Hayward,” Ed said. “He’s about twenty-six. Queer as Dick’s hatband, belongs in a King’s Road boutique, but he’s okay. Jeff and I let him into the circle. Had to. It’s really safer, because he can’t spring any blackmail, if he signed a written agreement with us to caretake the place, which he did. We pay him well enough and he’s amused. He also sends us some good buyers.” Ed looked at Tom and smiled. “Don’t forget a bit of woikin’ class accent. You can do it quite well as I remember.”

3
    E d Banbury rang a bell at a dark-red door flush with the back of a building. Tom heard a key being turned, then the door opened and Jeff stood there, beaming at them.
    “Tom! It’s super !” Jeff whispered.
    They went down a short corridor, then into a cozy office with a desk and typewriter, books, cream-colored wall-to-wall carpeting. Canvases and portfolios of drawings leaned against the wall.
    “I can’t tell you how right you look—Derwatt!” Jeff slapped Tom’s shoulder. “I hope that won’t make your beard fall off.”
    “Even a high wind wouldn’t,” Ed put in.
    Jeff Constant had gained weight, and