Read Online The Follower by Patrick Quentin - Free Book Online Page A

tobacco stall and a long rack displaying American magazines to a lobby inside. A barefoot Indian padded by with a pile of Christmas trees roped to his back.
    Mark walked into the lobby. The enormous ordeal was over. In a moment he would be with her.
    After the brilliance of the sunshine it was almost dark inside the lobby. A few people, mostly American, sat around in heavy old-fashioned chairs. They looked harassed, as if worn out by a morning’s sight-seeing. There was a solid family atmosphere. It wasn’t Ellie’s sort of place. He wondered why she had picked it.
    He saw the desk in a far corner. A clerk stood before the high pigeon-holes for keys and mail. A bellhop, very small and dark, hurried for Mark’s bag. He nodded him away and carried the suitcase to the desk.
    The front of the desk had a glass top and served as a showcase for tourist trinkets, silver ornaments, combs, leather belts, little pottery figures. As Mark reached it, the clerk moved along the desk and stopped in front of him.
    ‘Yes, sir?’ he inquired in English. ‘You wish a room?’ He was young, about twenty, scrupulously tidy with dandified black hair and brown eyes framed by thick black lashes. Mark said: ‘What is Mrs Liddon’s number?’
    ‘Mrs Liddon?’ The boy watched him thoughtfully. ‘Mrs Mark Liddon?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘You are, perhaps, her husband? The gentleman who telephoned yesterday from New York?’
    ‘I am.’
    The boy smiled dazzlingly. ‘I am so sorry. Yesterday when you call I make an error. I think Mrs Liddon has just made a walk, but no — ‘He shook his head and ran a delicate brown finger over the side wing of his hair. ‘She has gone. She has already checked out.’
    He felt as if iced water had been dashed in his face. Was it always going to be this way? Was the pattern going to repeat itself endlessly?
    ‘She didn’t get my message?’
    ‘Oh no, sir. I am sorry, sir. It was an error.’
    A plump middle-aged American woman, covered in Taxco silver with a spray of bougainvillea in her hair, flounced to the desk and asked querulously:
    ‘Hey, Oscar, any mail for me?’
    ‘I am sorry, madam.’ The clerk turned on her a white, infinitely friendly smile. ‘Is Christmas time. The letters come late.’
    The woman pouted and stomped away.
    Mark said: ‘But she was here? Mrs Liddon was at this hotel?’
    ‘Oh yes, sir.’
    ‘Where did she go?’
    Oscar looked blank. ‘Who knows, sir?’ He began to study the manicured nails of his right hand. ‘Yesterday morning about twelve a gentleman comes to see her. They go out together to take the lunch perhaps.’
    Mark’s hand suddenly tightened into a fist. ‘What sort of gentleman?’
    Oscar pondered this problem solemnly. ‘He was from the States like you, sir, and blond-haired like you. But more small, less beautiful.’
    ‘What happened then?’
    ‘I have the afternoons free and return for the evening. Soon after they leave, I leave too and the other boy is on duty. But Mrs Liddon returns with the gentleman. They pay the bill and they take her bags away. This I do not see myself.’ He looked proud. ‘But after you telephone I make inquiries and find this out from the other boy.’
    ‘Where is the other boy now?’
    Oscar’s dark eyes became almost dreamy. ‘His mother is sick. This morning he goes to his mother. Where does she live?’ He gesticulated. ‘Guadalajara? Oaxaca? Vera Cruz? Who knows?’
    This may or may not have been the Mexican temperament at work, but, whatever it was, it was immensely irritating. ‘She didn’t leave a forwarding address?’
    Oscar did not answer. He had lowered his gaze and was studying the trinkets on sale beneath the glass top of the counter. Without looking, up he announced:
    ‘We have here many pretty things. Mementoes; souvenirs of your stay in Mexico. Perhaps you wish to buy a watch bangle?’
    ‘No.’
    Oscar looked up mournfully. ‘No, sir?’ His gaze had settled now on the grey cashmere