Sir Stafford Nye returned to his flat. A large woman bounced out of thesmall kitchen with welcoming words.
‘See you got back all right, sir. Those nasty planes. You never know, doyou?’
‘Quite true, Mrs Worrit,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘Two hours late, the planewas.’
‘Same as cars, aren’t they,’ said Mrs Worrit. ‘I mean, you never know, doyou, what’s going to go wrong with them. Only it’s more worrying, so tospeak, being up in the air, isn’t it? Can’t just draw up to the kerb, not thesame way, can you? I mean, there you are. I wouldn’t go by one myself,not if it was ever so.’ She went on, ‘I’ve ordered in a few things. I hopethat’s all right. Eggs, butter, coffee, tea–’ She ran off the words with the lo-quacity of a Near Eastern guide showing a Pharaoh’s palace. ‘There,’ saidMrs Worrit, pausing to take breath, ‘I think that’s all as you’re likely towant. I’ve ordered the French mustard.’
‘Not Dijon, is it? They always try and give you Dijon.’
‘I don’t know who he was, but it’s Esther Dragon, the one you like, isn’tit?’
‘Quite right,’ said Sir Stafford, ‘you’re a wonder.’
Mrs Worrit looked pleased. She retired1 into the kitchen again, as SirStafford Nye put his hand on his bedroom door handle preparatory to go-ing into the bedroom.
‘All right to give your clothes to the gentleman what called for them, Isuppose, sir? You hadn’t said or left word or anything like that.’
‘What clothes?’ said Sir Stafford Nye, pausing.
‘Two suits, it was, the gentleman said as called for them. Twiss andBonywork it was, think that’s the same name as called before. We’d had abit of a dispute with the White Swan laundry if I remember rightly.’
‘Two suits?’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘Which suits?’
‘Well, there was the one you travelled home in, sir. I made out thatwould be one of them. I wasn’t quite so sure about the other, but therewas the blue pinstripe that you didn’t leave no orders about when youwent away. It could do with cleaning, and there was a repair wanted do-ing to the right-hand cuff2, but I didn’t like to take it on myself while youwere away. I never likes to do that,’ said Mrs Worrit with an air of palp-able virtue3.
‘So the chap, whoever he was, took those suits away?’
‘I hope I didn’t do wrong, sir.’ Mrs Worrit became worried.
‘I don’t mind the blue pinstripe. I daresay it’s all for the best. The suit Icame home in, well–’
‘It’s a bit thin, that suit, sir, for this time of year, you know, sir. All rightfor those parts as you’ve been in where it’s hot. And it could do with aclean. He said as you’d rung up about them. That’s what the gentlemansaid as called for them.’
‘Did he go into my room and pick them out himself?’
‘Yes, sir. I thought that was best.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Sir Stafford. ‘Yes, very interesting.’
He went into his bedroom and looked round it. It was neat and tidy. Thebed was made, the hand of Mrs Worrit was apparent, his electic razor wason charge, the things on the dressing-table were neatly4 arranged.
He went to the wardrobe and looked inside. He looked in the drawers ofthe tallboy that stood against the wall near the window. It was all quitetidy. It was tidier indeed than it should have been. He had done a little un-packing last night and what little he had done had been of a cursorynature. He had thrown underclothing and various odds5 and ends in theappropriate drawer but he had not arranged them neatly. He would havedone that himself either today or tomorrow. He would not have expectedMrs Worrit to do it for him. He expected her merely to keep things as shefound them. Then, when he came back from abroad, there would be atime for rearrangements and readjustments because of climate and othermatters. So someone had looked round here, someone had taken outdrawers, looked through them quickly, hurriedly, had replaced things,partly because of his hurry, more tidily and neatly than he should havedone. A quick careful job and he had gone away with two suits and aplausible explanation. One suit obviously worn by Sir Stafford when trav-elling and a suit of thin material which might have been one taken abroadand brought home. So why?
‘Because,’ said Sir Stafford thoughtfully, to himself, ‘because somebodywas looking for something. But what? And who? And also perhaps why?’
Yes, it was interesting.
He sat down in a chair and thought about it. Presently his eyes strayedto the table by the bed on which sat, rather pertly, a small furry6 panda. Itstarted a train of thought. He went to the telephone and rang a number.
‘That you, Aunt Matilda?’ he said. ‘Stafford here.’
‘Ah, my dear boy, so you’re back. I’m so glad. I read in the paper they’dgot cholera7 in Malaya yesterday, at least I think it was Malaya. I always getso mixed up with those places. I hope you’re coming to see me soon? Don’tpretend you’re busy. You can’t be busy all the time. One really only ac-cepts that sort of thing from tycoons8, people in industry, you know, in themiddle of mergers9 and takeovers. I never know what it all really means. Itused to mean doing your work properly but now it means things all tiedup with atom bombs and factories in concrete,’ said Aunt Matilda, ratherwildly. ‘And those terrible computers that get all one’s figures wrong, tosay nothing of making them the wrong shape. Really, they have made lifeso difficult for us nowadays. You wouldn’t believe the things they’ve doneto my bank account. And to my postal10 address too. Well, I suppose I’velived too long.’
‘Don’t you believe it! All right if I come down next week?’
‘Come down tomorrow if you like. I’ve got the vicar coming to dinner,but I can easily put him off.’
‘Oh, look here, no need to do that.’
‘Yes there is, every need. He’s a most irritating man and he wants a neworgan too. This one does quite well as it is. I mean the trouble is with theorganist, really, not the organ. An absolutely abominable11 musician. Thevicar’s sorry for him because he lost his mother whom he was very fondof. But really, being fond of your mother doesn’t make you play the organany better, does it? I mean, one has to look at things as they are.’
‘Quite right. It will have to be next week–I’ve got a few things to see to.
How’s Sybil?’
‘Dear child! Very naughty but such fun.’
‘I brought her home a woolly panda,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
‘Well, that was very nice of you, dear.’
‘I hope she’ll like it,’ said Sir Stafford, catching12 the panda’s eye and feel-ing slightly nervous.
‘Well, at any rate, she’s got very good manners,’ said Aunt Matilda,which seemed a somewhat doubtful answer, the meaning of which SirStafford did not quite appreciate.
Aunt Matilda suggested likely trains for next week with the warningthat they very often did not run, or changed their plans, and also comman-ded that he should bring her down a Camembert cheese and half a Stilton.
‘Impossible to get anything down here now. Our own grocer–such a niceman, so thoughtful and such good taste in what we all liked–turned sud-denly into a supermarket, six times the size, all rebuilt, baskets and wiretrays to carry round and try to fill up with things you don’t want andmothers always losing their babies, and crying and having hysterics. Mostexhausting. Well, I’ll be expecting you, dear boy.’ She rang off.
The telephone rang again at once.
‘Hullo? Stafford? Eric Pugh here. Heard you were back from Malaya–what about dining tonight?’
‘Like to very much.’
‘Good–Limpits Club–eight-fifteen?’
Mrs Worrit panted into the room as Sir Stafford replaced the receiver.
‘A gentleman downstairs wanting to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘At least Imean, I suppose he’s that. Anyway he said he was sure you wouldn’tmind.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Horsham, sir, like the place on the way to Brighton.’
‘Horsham.’ Sir Stafford Nye was a little surprised.
He went out of his bedroom, down a half flight of stairs that led to thebig sitting-room13 on the lower floor. Mrs Worrit had made no mistake. Hor-sham it was, looking as he had looked half an hour ago, stalwart, trust-worthy, cleft14 chin, rubicund15 cheeks, bushy grey moustache and a generalair of imperturbability16.
‘Hope you don’t mind,’ he said agreeably, rising to his feet.
‘Hope I don’t mind what?’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
‘Seeing me againso soon. We met in the passage outside Mr GordonChetwynd’s door–if you remember?’
‘No objections at all,’ said Sir Stafford Nye.
He pushed a cigarette-box along the table.
‘Sit down. Something forgotten, something left unsaid?’
‘Very nice man, Mr Chetwynd,’ said Horsham. ‘We’ve got him quieteneddown, I think. He and Colonel Munro. They’re a bit upset about it all, youknow. About you, I mean.’
‘Really?’
Sir Stafford Nye sat down too. He smiled, he smoked, and he lookedthoughtfully at Henry Horsham. ‘And where do we go from here?’ heasked.
‘I was just wondering if I might ask, without undue17 curiosity, whereyou’re going from here?’
‘Delighted to tell you,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘I’m going to stay with anaunt of mine, Lady Matilda Cleckheaton. I’ll give you the address if youlike.’
‘I know it,’ said Henry Horsham. ‘Well, I expect that’s a very good idea.
She’ll be glad to see you’ve come home safely all right. Might have been anear thing, mightn’t it?’
‘Is that what Colonel Munro thinks and Mr Chetwynd?’
‘Well, you know what it is, sir,’ said Horsham. ‘You know well enough.
They’re always in a state, gentlemen in that department. They’re not surewhether they trust you or not.’
‘Trust me?’ said Sir Stafford Nye in an offended voice. ‘What do youmean by that, Mr Horsham?’
Mr Horsham was not taken aback. He merely grinned.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘you’ve got a reputation for not taking things seri-ously.’
‘Oh. I thought you meant I was a fellow traveller or a convert to thewrong side. Something of that kind.’
‘Oh no, sir, they just don’t think you’re serious. They think you like hav-ing a bit of a joke now and again.’
‘One cannot go entirely18 through life taking oneself and other people ser-iously,’ said Sir Stafford Nye, disapprovingly19.
‘No. But you took a pretty good risk, as I’ve said before, didn’t you?’
‘I wonder if I know in the least what you are talking about.’
‘I’ll tell you. Things go wrong, sir, sometimes, and they don’t always gowrong because people have made them go wrong. What you might call theAlmighty takes a hand, or the other gentleman–the one with the tail, Imean.’
Sir Stafford Nye was slightly diverted.
‘Are you referring to fog at Geneva?’ he said.
‘Exactly, sir. There was fog at Geneva and that upset people’s plans.
Somebody was in a nasty hole.’
‘Tell me all about it,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘I really would like to know.’
‘Well, a passenger was missing when that plane of yours left Frankfurtyesterday. You’d drunk your beer and you were sitting in a corner snoringnicely and comfortably by yourself. One passenger didn’t report and theycalled her and they called her again. In the end, presumably, the plane leftwithout her.’
‘Ah. And what had happened to her?’
‘It would be interesting to know. In any case, your passport arrived atHeathrow even if you didn’t.’
‘And where is it now? Am I supposed to have got it?’
‘No. I don’t think so. That would be rather too quick work. Good reliablestuff, that dope. Just right, if I may say so. It put you out and it didn’t pro-duce any particularly bad effects.’
‘It gave me a very nasty hangover,’ said Sir Stafford.
‘Ah well, you can’t avoid that. Not in the circumstances.’
‘What would have happened,’ Sir Stafford asked, ‘since you seem toknow all about everything, if I had refused to accept the proposition thatmay–I will only say may–have been put up to me?’
‘It’s quite possible that it would have been curtains for Mary Ann.’
‘Mary Ann? Who’s Mary Ann?’
‘Miss Daphne Theodofanous.’
‘That’s the name I do seem to have heard–being summoned as a missingtraveller?’
‘Yes, that’s the name she was travelling under. We call her Mary Ann.’
‘Who is she–just as a matter of interest?’
‘In her own line she’s more or less the tops.’
‘And what is her line? Is she ours or is she theirs, if you know who“theirs” is? I must say I find a little difficulty myself when making mymind up about that.’
‘Yes, it’s not so easy, is it? What with the Chinese and the Russkies andthe rather queer crowd that’s behind all the student troubles and the NewMafia and the rather odd lot in South America. And the nice little nest offinanciers who seem to have got something funny up their sleeves. Yes, it’snot easy to say.’
‘Mary Ann,’ said Sir Stafford Nye thoughtfully. ‘It seems a curious nameto have for her if her real one is Daphne Theodofanous.’
‘Well, her mother’s Greek, her father was an Englishman, and hergrandfather was an Austrian subject.’
‘What would have happened if I hadn’t made her a–loan of a certaingarment?’
‘She might have been killed.’
‘Come, come. Not really?’
‘We’re worried about the airport at Heathrow. Things have happenedthere lately, things that need a bit of explaining. If the plane had gone viaGeneva as planned, it would have been all right. She’d have had full pro-tection all arranged. But this other way–there wouldn’t have been time toarrange anything and you don’t know who’s who always, nowadays.
Everyone’s playing a double game or a treble or a quadruple one.’
‘You alarm me,’ said Sir Stafford Nye. ‘But she’s all right, is she? Is thatwhat you’re telling me?’
‘I hope she’s all right. We haven’t heard anything to the contrary.’
‘If it’s any help to you,’ said Sir Stafford Nye, ‘somebody called here thismorning while I was out talking to my little pals20 in Whitehall. He repres-ented that I telephoned a firm of cleaners and he removed the suit that Iwore yesterday, and also another suit. Of course it may have been merelythat he took a fancy to the other suit, or he may have made a practice ofcollecting various gentlemen’s suitings who have recently returned fromabroad. Or–well, perhaps you’ve got an “or” to add?’
‘He might have been looking for something.’
‘Yes, I think he was. Somebody’s been looking for something. All verynice and tidily arranged again. Not the way I left it. All right, he was look-ing for something. What was he looking for?’
‘I’m not sure myself,’ said Horsham, slowly. ‘I wish I was. There’s some-thing going on–somewhere. There are bits of it sticking out, you know, likea badly done up parcel. You get a peep here and a peep there. One mo-ment you think it’s going on at the Bayreuth Festival and the next minuteyou think it’s tucking out of a South American estancia and then you get abit of a lead in the USA. There’s a lot of nasty business going on in differ-ent places, working up to something. Maybe politics, maybe somethingquite different from politics. It’s probably money.’ He added: ‘You knowMr Robinson, don’t you? Or rather Mr Robinson knows you, I think hesaid.’
‘Robinson?’ Sir Stafford Nye considered. ‘Robinson. Nice English name.’
He looked across to Horsham. ‘Large, yellow face?’ he said. ‘Fat? Finger infinancial pies generally?’ He asked: ‘Is he, too, on the side of the angels–isthat what you’re telling me?’
‘I don’t know about angels,’ said Henry Horsham. ‘He’s pulled us out of ahole in this country more than once. People like Mr Chetwynd don’t go forhim much. Think he’s too expensive, I suppose. Inclined to be a meanman, Mr Chetwynd. A great one for making enemies in the wrong place.’
‘One used to say “Poor but honest”,’ said Sir Stafford Nye thoughtfully. ‘Itake it that you would put it differently. You would describe our Mr Robin-son as expensive but honest. Or shall we put it, honest but expensive.’ Hesighed. ‘I wish you could tell me what all this is about,’ he said plaintively21.
‘Here I seem to be mixed up in something and no idea what it is.’ Helooked at Henry Horsham hopefully, but Horsham shook his head.
‘None of us knows. Not exactly,’ he said.
‘What am I supposed to have got hidden here that someone comes fid-dling and looking for?’
‘Frankly, I haven’t the least idea, Sir Stafford.’
‘Well, that’s a pity because I haven’t either.’
‘As far as you know you haven’t got anything. Nobody gave you anythingto keep, to take anywhere, to look after?’
‘Nothing whatsoever22. If you mean Mary Ann, she said she wanted herlife saved, that’s all.’
‘And unless there’s a paragraph in the evening papers, you have savedher life.’
‘It seems rather the end of the chapter, doesn’t it? A pity. My curiosity isrising. I find I want to know very much what’s going to happen next. Allyou people seem very pessimistic.’
‘Frankly, we are. Things are going badly in this country. Can you won-der?’
‘I know what you mean. I sometimes wonder myself–’
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收听单词发音
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1
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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cuff
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| n.袖口；手铐；护腕；vt.用手铐铐；上袖口 | |
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3
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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6
furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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7
cholera
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| n.霍乱 | |
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tycoons
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| 大君( tycoon的名词复数 )； 将军； 企业巨头； 大亨 | |
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mergers
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| n.（两个公司的）合并( merger的名词复数 ) | |
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postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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sitting-room
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| n.（BrE）客厅，起居室 | |
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cleft
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| n.裂缝；adj.裂开的 | |
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rubicund
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| adj.(脸色)红润的 | |
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imperturbability
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| n.冷静；沉着 | |
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17
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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disapprovingly
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| adv.不以为然地，不赞成地，非难地 | |
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pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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