The Boy Who Followed Ripley Read Online Free PDF

family disappeared. The one called Frank. The family’s worried.”
    “Oh?— I didn’t know.”
    Had the boy’s face gone paler? “It just occurred to me—he might be you,” Tom said.
    “Me?” The boy sat forward, beer glass in hand, and his eyes left Tom and fixed on the fireplace. “I wouldn’t be working as a gardener, I think, if—”
    Tom let some fifteen seconds pass. Nothing more came from the boy. “Shall we try your record? How did you know I liked Fischer-Dieskau? From the harpsichord?” Tom laughed. He switched on the hi-fi controls, which were on a shelf to the left of the fireplace.
    The piano began, then Fischer-Dieskau’s light baritone came in, singing in German. Tom felt instantly more alive, happier, then he smiled, thinking of an awful deep baritone he had happened to catch on his transistor only last evening, a groaning Englishman singing in English and making Tom think of a dying water buffalo, maybe lying in mud with its feet in the air, though the words had been about a dainty Cornish maiden he had loved and lost years ago, a good many years ago, judging from the maturity of the voice. Tom suddenly laughed out loud, and realized that he was unusually tense.
    “What’s funny?” asked the boy.
    “I was thinking of a title I made up for a Lied. ‘My soul has not been the same since Thursday afternoon, when on opening a book of Goethe’s poems, I discovered an old laundry list.’ It goes better in German. ‘Seit Donnerstag nachmittag ist meine Seele nicht dieselbe, denn ich fand beim Durchblättern eines Bandes von Goethegedichten eine alte Wäscheliste.’ ”
    The boy was laughing too—with the same kind of tension? He shook his head. “I don’t understand many German words. But it’s funny. Souls! Ha!”
    The lovely music continued, and Tom lit a Gauloise and walked slowly about the living room, wondering how he should proceed. Really force it and ask to see the boy’s passport, ask to see something—such as a letter addressed to him—by way of settling the matter?
    At the end of a song, the boy said, “I don’t think I want to listen to the whole side, if you don’t mind.”
    “Of course not.” Tom switched the machine off. He put the record back into its sleeve.
    “You were asking me—about the man called Pierson.”
    “Yes.”
    “What if I were to say—” The boy’s voice sank low, as if someone else in the room or maybe Mme. Annette in the kitchen might be listening. “—I’m his son who ran away?”
    “Oh,” Tom said calmly, “I would say that’s your business. If you wanted to come to Europe—incognito—it’s been done before.”
    The boy’s face looked relieved, a corner of his mouth twitched. But he kept silent, rolling his half-full glass between his palms.
    “Except that the family is worried, it seems,” Tom said.
    Mme. Annette came in. “Excuse me, Monsieur Tome, will there be—”
    “Yes, I think so,” said Tom, because Mme. Annette had been about to ask if there would be two for dinner. “You can stay for a bite, can’t you, Billy?”
    “Yes, I’d like to. Thank you.”
    Mme. Annette smiled at the boy, more with her eyes than her lips. She liked guests, liked making them happy. “About fifteen minutes, Monsieur Tome?”
    When Mme. Annette left the living room, the boy squirmed to the edge of the sofa and asked, “Can we take a look at your garden before it gets dark?”
    Tom stood up. They went out through the French windows, down the few steps to grass level. The sun was sinking in the left corner of the horizon, glowing orange and pink through the pine trees. Tom sensed that the boy wanted to get farther away from Mme. Annette’s ears, but for the moment he was taken by the scenery.
    “Now this has some quality—as a layout. Nice—but not too formal.”
    “I can’t take credit for the design. It was here. I just try to maintain it.”
    The boy bent to look at some London Pride (not blooming now), and he knew it by name