The Little Girls Read Online Free PDF

only to us. Whole affair now looks like coming to light. Essential we meet before too late. You or anyone knowing the present whereabouts of Sheila nee Beaker and Clare nee Burkin-Jones, who in 1914 were at St. Agatha’s, Southstone, should at once write to Box xxxx.

Will Clare Burkin-Jones and Sheila Beaker, who took part in a secret rite with Diana Piggott, at once contact her. Unforeseen developments make a talk essential. Dicey will always stand by Mumbo and Sheikie. Write Box xxxx.

Where are Sheila Beaker and Clare Burkin-Jones, last heard of in Southstone? Anyone who can throw light on their disappearance is requested to contact their anxious friend, the former Diana Piggott. If alive but in hiding, the two should know they have nothing to fear from Dicey, who continues to guard their secret. Should they care to write, she will not reveal their whereabouts. Whatever the past, she would gladly see them. Write Box xxxx.

    To the five drafted notices, Francis found, were appended various notes and queries:

Times, Telegraph.
    ? Would they read Times ? Husbands anyway should, if any and living.
    Southstone and area papers, how find out names of? ? Telephone Mayor’s office?
    Also cast net wider. Rest of England?—Scotland,
    Wales, Ireland, also, oh my heavens! Do all places have papers? Telephone all mayors’ offices?
    Continent, Commonwealth, U.S.A.? What a bundle of hay. See what breaks here, first?
    Which of my adverts to go into which papers?
    Why not all 5 in rotation in all papers? YES. Place order on those lines—standing order? Cash advance necessary? Afterwards pay weekly?—monthly? Memo: remember to pay. See how Bank is, sell out something if need be. Why notl Get typewriter, get someone to type, get paper to type on, envelopes, paper clips, oceans of stamps. Get map of England.
    What a labour of Hercules.
    IDEA, though. Get hold of Packie. Knows all the ropes, always did—or is he still furious? No harm trying.
    On NO account let—

    At that point, the reader was interrupted. Francis’s ever-acute hearing warned him of Mrs. Delacroix’s car now in the lane—far off still, but tearing along. Vexed, he rose from the sofa. What a wrecker she was, what trouble she gave. Thoughtless. Of all scatter-brained homecomings, here was the most untimely. He set about restoring the many sheets to the disorder in which he’d found them, stowed them back where they came from, looked round the drawing-room. Why not partake of a little music? This, provided nobody was around, it was understood he should always be free to do. Showing of interest in his interest in music was a condition of having Francis assigned to one. Would there be a stereophonic gramophone for him? She had a record player. He strolled to it and switched on—letting the needle fall upon a record which dwelled almost permanently upon the player: “Rhapsody in Blue.” Few were the days and still fewer the evenings on which either sustained bursts or torn-off snatches of this did not fill Applegate, Dinah having for years been as wedded to it as now was Francis, and Frank acclimatized to it, perhaps more.
    Yet on this occasion it was with an air of mutiny that Dinah entered her sounding drawing-room. She was in a mood, but not one for this. She flapped for silence.
    “I’m sorry, madam. I understood you were out.” “That doesn’t alter the fact that I’m now in. Haven’t you got anything to do?”
    “There is no Silvo.”
    “Anyway, get out, will you? I want to telephone.”
    He at once shot at her, out of his mobile eye, a look of intelligence she could not fathom.

Three

    The tea room at the top of a Knightsbridge department store was the place appointed; the time, 3:45 of an afternoon by now some way on into September. The decor nicely estimated the patrons* likings: tables low, chairs sympathetic, and carpet costly. Now and then a mannequin prowled through. There have been stranger places for a council of war.
    A big woman wearing a