The silent world of Nicholas Quinn Read Online Free PDF Page A

whenever their muted, distant clacking compelled him to lift up one or other
    (he never knew which). But neither rang that morning, and with quiet concentration
    Quinn carried through the agreed string of amendments to the History questions. By a
    quarter to one he had finished four of the question papers, and was pleasantly
    surprised to find how quickly the morning had flown by. He locked the papers away
    (Bartlett was a martinet on all aspects of security) and allowed himself to wonder
    whether Monica would be going for a drink and a sandwich at the Horse and Trumpet
    —a pub he had originally misheard as the 'Whoreson Strumpet'. Monica's office was
    immediately opposite his own, and he knocked lightly and opened the door. She was
    gone.
    In the lounge bar of the Horse and Trumpet a tall, lank-haired man pushed his way
    gingerly past the crowded tables and made for the furthest corner. He held a plate of
    sandwiches in his left hand, and a glass of gin and a jug of bitter in his right He took
    his seat beside a woman in her mid-thirties who sat smoking a cigarette. She was very
    attractive and the appraising glances of the men who sat around had already swept
    her more than once.
    'Cheers!' He lifted his glass and buried bis nose in the froth.
    'Cheers!' She sipped the gin and stubbed out her cigarette.
    'Have you been thinking about me?' he asked.
    'I've been too busy to think about anybody.' It wasn't very encouraging.
    'I've been thinking about you .'
    'Have you?'
    They lapsed into silence.
    'It's got to finish—you know that, don't you?' For the first time she looked him directly in the face, and saw the hurt in his eyes.
    'You said you enjoyed it yesterday.' His voice was very low.
    'Of course I bloody well enjoyed it. That's not the point, is it?' Her voice betrayed
    exasperation, and she had spoken rather too loudly.
    'Shh! We don't want everybody to hear us, do we?'
    'Well—you're so silly! We just can't go on like this! If people don't suspect something
    by now, they must be blind. It's got to stop! You've got a wife . It doesn't matter so much about me, but—'
    'Couldn't we just—?'
    'Look, Donald, the answer's "no". I've thought about it a lot—and, well, we've just got to stop, that's all. I'm sorry, but—' It was risky, and above all she worried about Bartlett finding out. With his Victorian attitudes . . .
    They walked back to the office without speaking, but Donald Martin was not quite so
    heart-broken as he appeared to be. The same sort of conversation had taken place
    several times before, and always, when he picked his moment right, she was only too
    eager again. So long as she had no other outlet for her sexual frustratio1ns, he was
    always going to be in with a chance. And once they were in her bungalow together,
    with the door locked and the curtains drawn—God! What a hot-pants she could be. He
    knew that Quinn had taken her out for a drink once; but he didn't worry about that. Or
    did he? As they walked into the Syndicate building at ten minutes to two, he suddenly
    wondered, for the first time, whether he ought perhaps to be a fraction worried about the innocent-looking Quinn, with his hearing aid, and his wide and guileless eyes.
    Philip Ogleby heard Monica go into her office and gave her no second thought today.
    He occupied the first room on the right-hand side of the corridor, with the Secretary's
    immediately next door, and Monica's next to that—at the far end. He drained his
    second cup of coffee, screwed up his thermos flask, and closed an old copy of Pravda .
    Ogleby had been with the Syndicate for fourteen years, and remained as much a
    mystery to his present colleagues as he had done to his former ones. He was fifty-
    three now, a bachelor, with a lean ascetic face, and a perpetually mournful, weary look
    upon his features. What was left of his hair was grey, and what was left of his life
    seemed greyer still. In his younger days his enthusiasms had been as numerous as
    they were