Marazan by Nevil Shute

Author:Nevil Shute [Shute, Nevil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781889439235
Publisher: The Paper Tiger
Published: 1951-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THEY took me back to Hugh Town in the motor-boat in the early dawn; we left two men in the Irene. They were to bring her round to Hugh Town later in the day, a sad, battered little vessel; in the saloon a covered figure lay upon the soaked cushions. They took me back to Hugh Town in the cold dawn; the ebb was flowing strongly against us out of Crow Sound, so that we were two hours on the way. All the way, nobody spoke a word. It was the sanest, most horrible hour of the twenty-four, the hour when nothing cloaks reality, the hour when one sees things as they really are. I don’t count myself a coward, but I have always been afraid of the dawn.

They took me straight to the police station in the little grey town and put me in a cell, not so much as a prisoner as for privacy. I sat there miserably till they brought me some breakfast, and then asked to see the inspector. He came and I had a short talk with him, a grizzled, unimaginative family man of about fifty, desperately worried and entirely at sea over the whole business. I told him about Joan, and sent him off to break the news to her at her hotel. It was impossible to keep her out of it any longer. Before he went he offered hopefully to bring me writing materials if I would like to make a statement. I said I wouldn’t.

That was all that happened till we left by the afternoon steamer for England; I slept a little, fitfully, throughout the morning. They took me aboard the boat before the crowd came and put me in a cabin below the bridge; from there I could see the Irene lying off the end of the breakwater. There were one or two ugly scars in her topsides, showing bright yellow wood. I saw nothing of Joan, though I learned afterwards that she travelled to England on the same boat.

We travelled up to London on the night train, and they lodged me in a room somewhere in Scotland Yard.

We got there about seven o’clock in the morning. I was tired and sick; a bath would have put me right, but there was no bath available. They allowed me to send out to my flat, though, to get some clean clothes, and in the meantime a barber came to shave me. I was more myself when I had shaved and changed. Then for some hours I was left to my own devices, till late in the afternoon they had me up for a sort of an examination.

They took me into a large room that was some sort of an office, of rather a menial variety. One knows the sort of place so well. The walls were distempered and peeling; the only furniture was two deal tables, ink-stained and loaded with files of dusty papers, and a few chairs. At one of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.