Marazan by Nevil Shute Read Free Book Online Page A

the attention of the police off you and on to something else. We’ve got to lay a few red herrings. I think I’d better cut off to-night and start laying them.’
    I don’t know to this day what made me say that. It may have been a sudden flash from the whisky; I know that the moment I had said it I wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t fit; I was still feeling rotten from the crash and I was most frightfully tired. But even so I was glad at the way the girl took me up.
    She looked me straight in the face in that embarrassing way of hers. ‘What do you mean?’ she said.
    I laughed, not very merrily. ‘Why, safety first. If he gets caught it’s all up with us—all the lot of us. We’re all in the same boat now. I don’t know if it would mean quod, but there’d be the hell of a scandal. Now I’m pretty much the same build as Compton. Look at me. Think if I had my hair cut and walked with a limp and wore clothes that didn’t fit me … I don’t say that anyone who had the photograph of Compton in his hand would mistake us for a minute. But for the others … I could lay a pretty hot scent.’
    ‘Oh …’ she said. ‘You can’t do that. It’s not safe.’
    I took my glass and went and helped myself to another whisky.
    ‘It’s not safe to sit here doing nothing,’ I said shortly.‘I could work out that scheme all right. If anyone’s got a better one, let’s have it.’
    ‘That might work all right for a day or two,’ said Compton slowly. ‘It doesn’t appeal to me much. But you couldn’t possibly keep it up; if you laid a strong enough trail to direct their attention to you they’d get you long before the 18th.’
    I shot the whisky down and felt better. ‘I can fix that all right,’ I said. ‘And incidentally, I’ll get you over to France at the end of that time if you want to go.’
    He eyed me steadily. ‘How would you do that?’
    I set down my glass, feeling more myself than I had since the crash. ‘What I think of doing is this,’ I said slowly. ‘I start off from here and lay a trail to the coast—to Devonshire. I take two days getting down there, perhaps three. I can do that. I can fix it so that they’re damn certain they’re tracing you, and I can do it without being caught myself. In Devonshire I pick up a seven-ton yacht, the
Irene
, belonging to a pal of mine, and get away to sea on her.’
    ‘Oh …’ said Compton.
    I thought for a little. ‘That would be about the 9th,’ I said. ‘I’d have to leave a pretty clear trail to show which way I’d gone, and get away to sea. Then I’d simply have to keep at sea till the 18th; it’s a long time to be single-handed in a small vessel, but I can do it all right. On the evening of the 18th I stand inshore, pick you up, and trot you over to France. Then I think I should cruise on up Channel for a bit to throw off the scent, and come back a week or so later.’
    ‘It’s possible,’ said Compton. ‘Where would you pick me up?’
    ‘The best place would be the Helford River,’ I said. ‘That’s near Falmouth, you know.’
    We discussed the details of the business for half an hour or so. At last I got fed up.
    ‘Well, there it is,’ I said. ‘It’s a perfectly sound scheme and it’ll get you out of the country as soon as you’ve finished whatever it is you want to do.’ I looked at my watch; it was a quarter to one. ‘If I’m going to start off on this I must be well away from here by dawn,’ I said. ‘Now, what is it to be?’
    Nobody spoke for a bit, and then Joan Stevenson said: ‘I can’t see why you should do all this for us, Mr. Stenning.’
    ‘Better to be doing this than to be dead,’ I said. I turned to the telephone. ‘That’s settled then. Now, I’ve got one or two things to fix up before I go. May I use your phone?’
    We tied a table napkin round the bell to prevent it from ringing and then I got down to it. First I rang up Dorman, the owner of the
Irene
. He lives in a residential club near Marble