Trusted Like The Fox Read Online Free PDF Page A

empty promises. He was surprised to find that he was sorry for the girl, that she interested him. It was an odd sensation. For many years now women had meant nothing to him, but this girl attracted him, and the fact that she had been exploited forged a bond between them.
    As he descended the last flight of stairs, the full force of his predicament flashed through his mind. He had not, until now, admitted to himself how much he had been relying on the Deaf and Dumb Friendship League to get him a job. Their advertisement had completely taken him in. Deaf and dumb people urgently needed in many spheres of business, the advertisement had read. The Friendship League was in touch with all important business executives, and work was found for trained or untrained applicants afflicted by deafness or who were deaf and dumb. And they had left an old twister like that in charge!
    Ellis wanted a job. He had to get a job. His money was running out, and he was afraid to open his mouth in public. A job for the deaf and dumb would have suited him. And now he had to start all over again.
    As he crossed the hall he saw the girl in the grey skirt walking slowly ahead of him. She pushed open the glass door and moved into the street.
    Still interested in her, he followed her. The Strand was crowded; the air stale and oppressive. He walked slowly, thinking, wondering what he was to do. Twelve shillings and ten- pence! That was all he had. Somehow he had got to get money. He thought of Scragger. Scragger would help him if he could find him, but where to look for him?
    He saw the girl in the grey skirt turn down Villiers Street, and because he had nothing better to do and six; was an individual in a crowd of strangers, he followed, his mind pre- occupied, but his eyes on her legs. You didn’t often see such pretty legs, he thought. Most women’s legs were ugly. He wondered who the girl was. A deaf jailbird, the old twister had called her, and yet he hadn’t shouted at her. Perhaps she could lip-read. It dawned on him that he could talk to her and she wouldn’t know him by the sound of his voice. She would read the words as they formed on his lips and not, of course, hear his voice. He found that idea vaguely pleasing. A man couldn’t go through life entirely alone. A woman was useful. This girl hadn’t any money, nor had he. She was a jailbird; he was a fugitive. They might make a pair. He frowned. Why was he wasting time thinking of such rubbish? There were more important things to think about, but his eyes never left the girl as she moved through the crowds, alone, despairing.
    A band was playing in the gardens by Charing Cross Underground. The music sounded gay, and a large crowd was sitting round the bandstand.
    The girl walked through the iron gateway into the gardens, moved slowly along the concrete path. Ellis followed her. He thought she was going to sit down, but she kept on, past the bandstand, her shoulders bowed, her atrocious little hat a joke in the bright sunlight.
    Eventually she did sit down after they had left the bandstand in the distance. She selected one of the free seats opposite the Savoy Hotel. She sat there, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the waiters who stood at the Savoy windows waiting for the first diners.
    Ellis drew near, sat down a seat away from the girl. He studied her, felt a stab of disappointment. She was plain. Her pinched white face was ordinary; her brown hair limp and unwashed. Her eyes were deep-set and dark-ringed. She was, he guessed, about twenty years of age. Now he could see her properly he wondered angrily how she could have ever stirred him. Apart from her figure, she was nothing: just an ordinary shop girl, a clerk, any menial worker you see in the London streets without even being smart.
    He looked away from her, soured and disappointed. “Anyway,” he thought, “I don’t have to bother my head about women. I’m through with women.” Yet at the back of his mind he still hankered after