The Peacemaker by C. S. Forester

Author:C. S. Forester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-05-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Next morning at breakfast Dr. Pethwick opened The Times with his nerves set and ready to keep his expression from changing. He turned over the pages rapidly, but on none of them was printed the long letter he had written with so much trouble to the Editor. Dr. Pethwick was by no means surprised. Somewhere in his intellectual make-up there still remained a residuum of cool judgment. He had guessed that The Times must receive every day from cranks and lunatics a collection of letters every bit as startling as his; he had fully anticipated that his letter would be classed with the others, and, if not put in the waste-paper-basket, at least put aside for later consideration. In point of fact, Dr. Pethwick had been quite sure this would happen, and had made all his arrangements accordingly. It was only now that his judgment had been proved correct that he looked back and thought he had not been quite sure—but that was like him.

Dr. Pethwick was elaborately casual after breakfast.

‘I shall have to go to South Kensington again to-day,’ he said. ‘Do you mind, Mary?’

‘Me?’ said Mary with elaborate sarcasm. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t count. Go if you like.’

‘Thank you,’ said Dr. Pethwick. ‘I’ll be back to tea, I expect.’

Dr. Pethwick went up to London in his shabby everyday clothes, but no sooner had he slipped into his office and locked the door behind him than he proceeded to change into the fine flannel suit, and the silk underclothes and all, taking them out with care from the cupboard into which he had locked them the night before. Donning those clothes had become like a priestly rite to him; he could not now contemplate action taken without that suit and those underclothes; they were like a priest’s vestments or a knight’s armour to him now. Properly dressed, and his old clothes locked away in the cupboard, he proceeded to take the decisive steps. He felt no excitement about it; no additional tension. Decisive though the moment was, it was only one stage in the series of actions he had planned. Dr. Pethwick had the type of mind which will not draw back from an enterprise once begun, nor even contemplate retirement. From the moment when he had entered the Regent Street shop to buy his fine clothes it was as certain as anything can be on earth that he would proceed onwards to this moment and beyond.

The preliminaries took very little time. He unrolled a sheet of drawing-paper and pinned it on the office table. With a compass and a large-scale map of London he made a few simple measurements which resulted in the ruling of a line diagonally across the sheet—very strict accuracy was not essential, for he had a margin of possible error of at least ten per cent at his disposition. The table stood against the wall and to the wall Pethwick pinned another sheet of paper. He produced a crude form of sextant—a protractor and a pendulum made of thread with a weight attached.

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