Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
The anguish he passed through as the day went by and Lazarus went out
and came in and he himself received no orders, could not have been
expressed in any ordinary words. He writhed in his chair, he bit his
nails to the quick, he wrought himself into a frenzy of misery and
terror by recalling one by one all the crimes his knowledge of London
police-courts supplied him with. He was doing nothing, yet he dare not
leave his post. It was his post after all, though they had not given it
to him. He must do something.
In the middle of the night Loristan opened the door of the back
sitting-room, because he knew he must at least go upstairs and throw
himself upon his bed even if he could not sleep.
He started back as the door opened. The Rat was sitting huddled on the
floor near it with his back against the wall. He had a piece of paper in
his hand and his twisted face was a weird thing to see.
"Why are you here?" Loristan asked.
"I've been here three hours, sir. I knew you'd have to come out sometime
and I thought you'd let me speak to you. Will you--will you?"
"Come into the room," said Loristan. "I will listen to anything you want
to say. What have you been drawing on that paper?" as The Rat got up in
the wonderful way he had taught himself. The paper was covered with
lines which showed it to be another of his plans.
"Please look at it," he begged. "I daren't go out lest you might want to
send me somewhere. I daren't sit doing nothing. I began remembering and
thinking things out. I put down all the streets and squares he _might_
have walked through on his way home. I've not missed one. If you'll
let me start out and walk through every one of them and talk to the
policemen on the beat and look at the houses--and think out things
and work at them--I'll not miss an inch--I'll not miss a brick or a
flagstone--I'll--" His voice had a hard sound but it shook, and he
himself shook.
Loristan touched his arm gently.
"You are a good comrade," he said. "It is well for us that you are here.
You have thought of a good thing."
"May I go now?" said The Rat.
"This moment, if you are ready," was the answer. The Rat swung himself
to the door.
Loristan said to him a thing which was like the sudden lighting of a
great light in the very center of his being.
"You are one of us. Now that I know you are doing this I may even sleep.
You are one of us." And it was because he was following this plan that
The Rat had turned into Brandon Terrace and heard the Samavian song
ringing out from the locked basement of Number 10.
"Yes, he is one of us," Loristan said, when he told this part of the
story to Marco as they sat by the fire. "I had not been sure before.
I wanted to be very sure. Last night I saw into the depths of him and
_knew_. He may be trusted."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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