Читать книгу The Footsteps at the Lock - Ronald Arbuthnott Knox - Страница 8

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In spite of the computations mentioned in the last chapter, Nigel found himself without a ticket on Oxford platform. He had to accost the collector, to be waved back until the collector had dealt with all the other passengers, and to undergo the indignity of a personally conducted tour to the guichet. His digs, however, were in the High; his education, incomplete in many respects, had at least accustomed him to quick changes, and it was only a minute or two past ten when he presented himself at the door of the Schools, white-tied and respectable.

'What are you, sir?' asked the porter.

'History.'

'History viva voce examinations don't start till to-morrow. Ten o'clock, sir.'

Nigel turned away, hardly with the air of one disappointed, and retired to his digs. Oxford was full of all the horrors of a Long Vacation; earnest Americans with guide-books, with sketch-books, with cameras; charabanc-loads of breezy Midlanders, losing one another, hailing one another, roaring inaudible jokes across the street; patient little men who had come up for a summer school of Undertakers, trying to find their way back to Keble. There seemed to be no more room than during term, whether in the perilous streets or on the thronging pavements; North Oxford went marketing as relentlessly as ever; shop-assistants bicycled past, with lady shop-assistants perched stork-like on their steps; Cowley Fathers stumped along, eyes in the distance and cloak on shoulder; dons met, dons button-holed each other, dons asked each other when each other was going down; only the undergraduate, for once, was a bird of passage. A grim notice of 'Apartments to Let' hung in the window of Nigel's own sitting-room; a pot of ferns stood underneath it—no, this was no place for him. He changed his white tie, hailed a taxi, and within a quarter of an hour had been deposited at Eaton Bridge.

The Gudgeon Inn stands close by Eaton Bridge, with a pleasant though untidy stretch of grass sloping down to the river; at the end is a tiny quay to which a few boats are moored, at the back of it a verandah, where holiday guests can have their tea in wet weather without actually going indoors. On the whole, there are worse places in which to wait for a dilatory cousin. Nigel explained his movements to the young lady at the bar, and, after consulting her as to the hour, ordered a large stone ginger. This, when it was brought out to him on the lawn, he fortified from a handy flask in his pocket, and sat down in its company to wait. It was impossible that Derek should arrive yet; on the other hand, it was pretty clear that he ought to turn up within half an hour or an hour at most; his course lay downstream, and he had a fair wind behind him. There was nothing for it but to sit here and philosophize. Indeed, the slow swirl of the river at his feet invited to philosophy; it chimed in with the mood of a man just coming down from Oxford, and with no very sensational achievements, so far, to be put down to his credit. A large peacock edged suspiciously into view: Nigel picked up some fragments of bread, doped them with gin, and threw them at the bird in the hope that it would become interested. A drunk peacock would surely be an exquisite sight; to see it lose, at last, the shocked staidness of its demeanour. A camping party on the other side of the stream, a little lower down, claimed his attention; two brawny young men appeared to be washing up dishes, and hanging clothes out to dry. Nigel speculated whether it would ever be possible to enjoy the kind of life in which you had to wash up your own dishes and feed on tinned salmon. There seemed to be people who did it for the love of the thing. Probably it was a compensation of some kind; you could explain anything as a compensation nowadays.

Half-past eleven came, and still no sign of the canoe. Nigel wandered up and down restlessly, consulting his watch at intervals; at last he ordered and consumed a solitary luncheon, of which the main features were cold mutton and cherry brandy. At about a quarter to one he decided to wait no longer; he approached the barmaid—he was getting anxious, he explained, about his friend in the canoe. The gentleman had been in poor health recently; it seemed possible that there might have been an accident of some sort. Anyhow, he intended to walk upstream and look for him; would it be possible for him to have a companion? He himself was not much of a swimmer, and it might be a good thing to have somebody present who was more of an expert; was there anybody connected with the inn who could come with him? It appeared that there was. The odd man would be prepared for any emergency; he swam like a duck he did. Nigel was introduced to the odd man, who turned out to be a very ordinary man. His engagements seemed to admit a walk of an hour or so spent in a good cause. Together they crossed the bridge, and set out upon the swathe of trodden hay, called by compliment a tow-path, which runs along the eastern bank of the river.

The Muse of detective fiction—she must surely exist by now—has one disadvantage as compared with her sisters; she cannot tell a plain unvarnished tale throughout. If she did, there could be no mystery, no situation, no dénouement; the omniscience of the author and the omnipresence of the reader, walking hand in hand, would lay waste the trail; no clue would be left undiscovered, no detail lack its due emphasis. Needs must, then, that from time to time we should interrupt the thread of dull historical narration; should see the facts not as they were in themselves but as they presented themselves to those who partook in the events concerned. Let me give you, then, the next stage of my story in the form in which it appeared next morning to a million readers.