Saturn Over the Water by J. B. Priestley, J.B. Priestley Read Free Book Online

glittered and danced with sudden anger. Fortunately for either his manners or mine, we were joined then by Nadia, the witch of Prague, the sorceress of Cracow. Dr Magorious gave her something between a large nod and a small bow, and marched off.
    ‘Thank you,’ I said to her. ‘We weren’t getting on very well, the doctor and I.’
    ‘He is a strange man, but very clever,’ she said. Then she rested a hand on my arm. ‘I bring a message to you from your host. Everyone will be going soon – it is one of those parties, not intimate, mostly for business – and he wishes to talk to you. But first there may be a man he has to see, do you understand?’
    ‘Yes, I do. I’ve had to see men sometimes, though not often.’
    ‘You are being satirical with me, you bad man. So. When everyone is going, please slip through that door over there – it leads into the library – and I will join you there, to talk to you until Sir Reginald has done with this stupid man. You will do this, Mr Bedford? You will not be kept long.’ Her enormous eyes shone like green lamps through a grey veil, and she pulled her lips in and forward to make a sketch of a cheeky face at me. I felt like kissing her there and then, and to hell with the usages of good society, but I got myself under control.
    ‘My dear Countess,’ I said, ‘it will be a pleasure.’ I might have been in a musical of Old Vienna.
    ‘I think so.’ She smiled at me. ‘But you must call me Nadia – everyone does.’ And she glided away, either to move the South Americans nearer the door or to stick dainty pins into wax images of Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Schweitzer.
    All this is fairly important, though of course I didn’t know it was at the time, and that’s why I’m telling it in this funny-man style. No doubt I’m forcing and pressing a bit, trying to recapture the mood, which isn’t easy, not after all that happened afterwards. This is perhaps where I ought to make the point that, apart from that brief talk with my cousin Isabel, I wasn’t really taking this business seriously, even though poor Mrs Semple’s state of mind hadn’t been any joke. All the sudden preparations for distant travel were making me feel almost light-headed, and of course this evening’s sumptuous dining and wining, plus the Central European witchery, weren’t as yet making my head any heavier.
    After Lord and Lady Something had led the way out – perhaps Gipsy Lad was waiting up for them – I did what I’d been asked to do and slipped into the library. It was lined with books right up to the ceiling. The carpet and the leather in the chairs were a deep carmine. It was very quiet in there, and the lighting was restful. On a table were whisky, soda, lemonade, sandwiches. I didn’t really want another whisky and I certainly didn’t need any sandwiches, but I have never spent enough time with the rich to take arrangements of this kind for granted; I feel somebody’s gone to the trouble of putting the stuff out for me, so I can’t ignore it. I gave myself a whisky and ate a ham sandwich. Nothing happened. I drank half the whisky, then began on another sandwich.
    The wall opposite the door I’d used looked as if it was all books, but it wasn’t. A man came in that way. He was wearing a wide smile that vanished as soon as he took me in. He was a chunky man in his fifties, and I knew at once he was a Russian. When you see photographs of Russian leaders reviewing a thousand tanks, you catch sight of this man, or somebody exactly like him, towards the edge of the picture.
    ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Have a sandwich.’
    ‘No, thank you,’ he said, looking more puzzled than annoyed.
    ‘My name’s Bedford.’
    That didn’t pull his name out of him. ‘You wait here for Sir Reginald Merlan-Smith?’
    ‘Not exactly.’ I finished my sandwich.
    He was still frowning over that when Nadia came in, through the wall of books as he had done. They talked hurriedly for a minute in what I took