No Highway by Nevil Shute Read Free Book Online Page B

it costs—something quite small. Two bob a quarter, or something like that.”
    “Really—so little as that? They’re very useful, aren’t they? I mean, with one of those you’ve got hot water all the time.”
    “That’s right,” I said. “We couldn’t do without ours. You can get a big one for the bath, you know.”
    “Can you!” He paused in thought. “I think I must see about getting one for the kitchen, anyway. It’s stupid to go on boiling up kettles to wash up with.”
    “It makes everything much easier,” I said. “You know the electricity office in the High Street? Go in and tell them that you want to hire one. They’ll fix you up all right.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said. “Thank you for telling me. It does seem to be a thing worth having.”
    I got into my car and drove home, and put it in the garage at the back of the flats, deep in thought. It seemed long odds to me that the tailplane of the prototype Reindeer would be still lying where it fell, in some Labrador forest. It was most urgent to get hold of it for technical examination; we must have a report on it within a week at the very latest, unless we were prepared to ground the Reindeers upon Mr. Honey’s word alone. One thing I was resolved upon, that no Reindeer should go on flying after seven hundred hours unless thisthing had been cleared up. But to achieve that end, to stop the whole British Transatlantic air service before another accident happened, I should have to show some better evidence than I had got up to date that Reindeers were unsafe.
    Shirley was waiting for me in the flat, “Did Mr. Honey take it seriously?” she asked.
    “And how!” I said, sinking down into my chair. “He was as pleased as Punch about it. He thought it was a wonderful thing to have happened.” And I told her all about it.
    She heard me to the end. “He
is
a funny little man.” And then she said, “Tell me, Dennis—do you really think, yourself, that Honey’s right? Are the Reindeer tails dangerous?”
    “There’s not a shred of evidence that you can hang your hat on that there’s anything wrong with them at all,” I said evenly. “But—yes, I think he’s probably right.”
    “Why do you think that,” she asked quietly, “if there isn’t any evidence?”
    “Fifteen years in the aircraft industry,” I said. “One gets to know the smell of things like this.”
    I reached for the cigarettes and gave her one, and lit one myself. We sat in silence for a time; I lay back in my chair and watched the blue clouds rising slowly to the ceiling, deep in thought. And presently she asked, “What’s Mr. Honey going to do about it?”
    I grinned at her. “He’s going to hire an electric hot-water-heater,” I said. “He’s already bought a mop.”
    I went up to the Ministry in London first thing next morning and saw Ferguson; I told him the whole thing. He was inclined to regard it as a mare’s nest, having had some experience of Mr. Honey over the lunch-table while he had been at the R.A.E. himself. “I don’t want to say anything against a member of your staff, Scott,” he remarked. “But there may be things you wouldn’t know about, that you really ought to know. Poor old Honey had a lot of trouble at the end of the war, you know—he lost his wife. That changed him a lot—he’s never been the same man since. It was very distressing, that.”
    He paused, and glanced at me. “Did he ever tell you about his experiments with planchette?”
    I was not now surprised at anything to do with Mr. Honey. “You mean, spiritualistic stuff?” I asked. “I’ve heard a lot about him, but I hadn’t heard that one.”
    He hesitated. “I dare say it’s all over now. It was probablyan effect of the distress he suffered at the time. But he used to do a lot with that.”
    I was suddenly deeply sorry for the uncouth little man. “Trying to get in touch with her, and all that sort of thing?”
    He nodded.
    I thought about it for a minute.