The Japanese Girl Read Online Free PDF

theory to say you’d wait until you were caught, pay the penalty, go to prison, take the punishment and come out clean. But who likes the prospect of three years in jail? Youth doesn’t last for ever. Three of my best years gone for ever. What you could do with them. Three years without touching Yodi’s soft body, hearing her voice, even reading a letter from her. Sometimes in the night I couldn’t sleep, turning and tossing until even Hettie in the other bed was wakened.
    Yet to run now completely destroyed the scheme. All my life I’ve been a coward, always I’ve been afraid of being pursued – perhaps it’s what happened when I was a kid once and a whole baying pack of older boys came after me racing through the streets. Perhaps it’s just the way I was born. If I ran now I’d perhaps get right away, but should I ever have another moment’s peace? I’d read the story of the Train Robbers. What sort of a life had they had, hounded, tracked down, changing names, places, never at rest? In the end they’d nearly all given themselves up or been caught. If I stuck to the plan and it worked, I paid my penalty and came out free. I met Yodi as if I’d never known her before. I fell in love with her. Where her money came from was nobody’s business.
    I took her face in my hands. ‘Let’s wait,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a chance for another two or three weeks. I’m taking more every week now. If we get up to £35,000 we’ll think again.’
    â€˜I do not believe I can stand it,’ she said, beginning to weep. ‘If you leave me, if you go to prison, I shall have all this money! I shall be too terrified!’
    â€˜Nobody can touch you ,’ I said. ‘So long as no one discovers that we know each other, you’ll be absolutely safe.’
    â€˜But all those years I shall lose you. All those years and we can’t even – even write.’
    â€˜I know,’ I said. ‘Don’t weaken me now, dear. I know how you must feel – but understand how I feel. Just the same.’
    â€˜Let us go,’ she said. ‘ Let us make plans to leave early next month.’
    The following week, plunging now, I took three thousand. I knew it couldn’t be long now because of the auditors. It was a question of weeks, perhaps even days. Yet they were all so blind. They didn’t seem to want to find out. I realized I could have taken two thousand a week all the time and nobody would have questioned it. They didn’t deserve to catch me. I should slip away, I could slip away while there was still time.
    The next week I took another three thousand. I began to feel fatalistic about it. Nobody could expect this luck to last. I began to make preparations. Dover to Calais, you were over in an hour. Train to Paris. Hire a car there, drive to Geneva. Leave the car, train to Berne. Whom should I meet in a café but Miss Yodi Okuma who happened to have flown over to Zürich on a holiday. There was £10,000 in Zürich. That would last till the hue and cry died down. We were not Train Robbers. They wouldn’t go on pursuing me endlessly the way they had them.
    So I decided it was my last week. Another three thousand and then I was off. I promised Yodi this. I promised myself this. The Tuesday and the Wednesday went by, and I thought, if I am really going to bolt, why limit myself to £3,000? Why not five? Why not six? So I made plans, and on the Thursday morning when Mr Head called me in for his usual morning chat I had the whole scoop in line. Tomorrow when I left I would carry a bag. This would be the one big scoop.
    But when I went into his office Mr Cassell was there too, and with them were two grave-faced men I knew by sight. They were the auditors.
    So it all happened as planned. First questioned by them, then tackled, then challenged. I finally broke down and confessed what I had done. It was a nasty time,