Anne Belinda Read Free Page B

Kennedy—had made no end of a pile and was setting up as a landed proprietor. D’you ever come across Morrison?”
    â€œWe briefed him for the Burlsdon Bank Case only last week. He’ll be taking silk one of these days.”
    â€œAnd Purdie?”
    â€œGone under, poor devil.”
    The pause fell again; and again it was Lewis Smith who broke it.
    â€œWhat on earth have you been doing with yourself? And why on earth didn’t you come home a year ago, when Sir Anthony died?”
    John sat down on the arm of the big chair sacred to clients. With a swoop he retrieved his hat and cast it into the capacious leather seat. He answered the last question first.
    â€œI didn’t come home, because the place without any money was more than a bit of a white elephant, and I was in the thick of old Peterson’s book.”
    Lewis Smith got back into his chair, crossed his long legs, and said:
    â€œPeterson?”
    â€œOld Rudolphus Peterson. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of him—the snake man—tremendously famous.”
    â€œSnakes? Yes, I’ve got him. But where do you come in?”
    â€œWhen I got demobbed I went back to Canada. I’d been out there two years when the war started, so I thought I’d go back. I hadn’t any people over here, and Sir Anthony—well, he’d given me pretty plainly to understand that he didn’t want to set eyes on me. I don’t blame him, poor old chap; it must have been a most frightful knock for him, losing both his sons and feeling that I’d got to come in instead of the daughters. I must say it’s a pretty rotten law, and I don’t wonder he never wanted to see me.”
    â€œI think he ought to have seen you. The whole thing would have come easier if you hadn’t been an absolute stranger.”
    John made a quick, impatient gesture with his right hand.
    â€œI wasn’t keen myself. Hanging around waiting for dead men’s shoes is a beastly job. But I’d a pretty rough time over there.” He jerked his head in the supposed direction of Canada. “First I got cheated out of my gratuity like the veriest tenderfoot. It makes me sick to think what a mug I was; and it used to make me a great deal sicker when I was absolutely on my beam ends, doing any sort of beastly odd job to get a meal.”
    â€œAs bad as that?”
    â€œWorse, because I didn’t always get one. That’s how I ran into Peterson. I wanted to carry his bag for him; and he wanted to carry it himself, and went on saying ‘No’ in his funny cracked voice. And then, all of a sudden, he said, ‘You are hungry? No? Yes?’ And I said, ‘Damned hungry,’ and the old man looked at me as solemn as an owl and said, ‘It is wrong to swear, but it is damn wrong to be hungry. Come and eat, young man, come and eat at once. Carry my bag, and come and eat with me, and tell me why you are hungry. You are not a drunkard—no?’ Well, I went along with him, and about twelve hours later I woke up in a decent bed and thought I had dreamt the whole thing.”
    â€œAnd had you?”
    â€œIt was rather hard to realize that I hadn’t. I remembered a frightfully good dinner, and being asked where I was at school, and what I’d done in the war—‘the so much to be regretted and calamitous world catastrophe,’ as the old man called it. And the last thing I remembered was being engaged as his secretary to go round the world with him and correct his English whenever I wasn’t taking photographs of snakes. You must admit that it didn’t seem very probable.”
    Lewis Smith leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter.
    â€œWas he mad?”
    â€œNot in the least—one of the best—one of the very best. We knocked about together for five years, petting material for his book on snakes. Pretty hot work some of it. I assure you the trenches aren’t in it