The Face of a Stranger Read Online Free PDF Page A

the urgency of the present need overtook him
again. He bent to pick up a child shaking with terror and cold, and wrapped it
in a warm blanket, holding it close to his own body, stroking it with soft,
repetitive words as he might a frightened animal.
    By dawn it was over. The seas were still running high
    and hard, but Rob was back, too tired to speak and too weary with loss
of those the sea had taken. He simply took off his wet clothes in the kitchen
and climbed up to bed.
    * * * * *
    A week later Monk was fully recovered physically; only dreams troubled
him, vague nightmares of fear, sharp pain and a sense of being violently struck
and losing his balance, then a suffocation. He woke gasping, his heart racing
and sweat on his skin, his breath rasping, but nothing was left except the
fear, no thread to unravel towards recollection. The need to return to London
became more pressing. He had found his distant past, his beginnings, but memory
was virgin blank and Beth could tell him nothing whatsoever of his life since
leaving, when she was still little more than a child. Apparently he had not
written of it, only trivialities, items of ordinary news such as one might read
in the journals or newspapers, and small matters of his welfare and concern
for hers. This was the first time he had visited her in eight years, something
he was not proud to learn. He seemed a cold man, obsessed with his own
ambition. Had that compelled him to work so hard, or had he been so poor? He
would like to think there was some excuse, but to judge from the money in his
desk at Grafton Street, it had not lately been finance.
    He racked his brains to recall any emotion, any flash of memory as to
what sort of man he was, what he had valued, what sought. Nothing came, no
explanations for his self-absorption.
    He said good-bye to her and Rob, thanking them rather awkwardly for
their kindness, surprising and embarrassing them, and because of it, himself
too; but he meant it so deeply. Because they were strangers to him, he felt as
if they had taken him in, a stranger, and offered him acceptance, even trust.
They looked confused, Beth coloring shyly. But he did not try to explain; he
did not have words, nor did he wish them to know.
    * * * * *
    London seemed enormous, dirty and indifferent when he got off the train
and walked out of the ornate, smoke-grimed station. He took a hansom to Grafton
Street, announced his return to Mrs. Worley, then went upstairs and changed
his clothes from those worn and crumpled by his journey. He took himself to the
police station Runcorn had named when speaking to the nurse. With the
experience of Beth and Northumberland behind him he began to feel a little
confidence. It was still another essay into the unknown, but with each step
accomplished without unpleasant surprise, his apprehension lessened.
    When he climbed out of the cab and paid the driver he stood on the
pavement. The police station was as unfamiliar as everything else—not strange,
simply without any spark of femiliarity at all. He opened the doors and went
inside, saw the sergeant at the duty desk and wondered how many hundreds of
times before he had done exactly this.
    " 'Arternoon, Mr. Monk." The man looked up with slight
surprise, and no pleasure. "Nasty haccident. Better now, are yer,
sir?"
    There was a chill in his voice, a wariness. Monk looked at him. He was
perhaps forty, round-faced, mild and perhaps a trifle indecisive, a man who
could be easily befriended, and easily crushed. Monk felt a stirring of shame,
and knew no reason for it whatever, except the caution in the man's eyes. He
was expecting Monk to say something to which he would not be able to reply with
assurance. He was a subordinate, and slower with words, and he knew it.
    "Yes I am, thank you." Monk could not remember the man's name
to use it. He felt contempt for himself—what kind of a man embarrasses someone
who cannot retaliate? Why? Was there