Fellow Passenger Read Free

leaning towards lawlessness. I do not think that is true. I did consider at great length what a really English Englishman would do. He would undoubtedly write to the Ministry of Supply, giving every possible reference for his respectability, and ask permission to search for and recover his family property. I was instinctively unwilling to take this step. My father’s conception of property, while never dishonest, had a certain originality, and - since all my enquiries had led nowhere -I found it hard to prove what the connection of the Howard-Wolferstans with Moreton Intrinseca really was.
     
    A chestnut tree, growing in the manor garden, appeared to me less futile than correspondence with the Ministry. It extended a noble branch into an open field, passing a clear ten feet above the wire-topped wall. I bought a length of good, light rope and attached a heavy hook to the end of it. With this and other simple necessaries in a small rucksack, and myself attired as a hiker out for serious exercise, I departed from London in a motor coach and got off it at a cross-roads some eight miles from Moreton Intrinseca.
     
    It was a hot evening in early May, when a temperature of seventy feels like ninety. The hawthorn was out; the hay was growing; and the scent of the countryside was as deliciously overpowering as anything I have known in the tropics. This island remains inhabited, I think, merely for the sake of that week in May; another, probably, in June; and a third, reasonably certain, in September. I walked across country to the edge of the downs above Moreton Intrinseca, and waited for darkness.
     
    When the night was velvet black I circled round the village and found - after a couple of bad shots - the manor field and the chestnut tree. My first swing at the branch failed to catch and made a noise much more alarming than it really was. However, a wood-pigeon obligingly flew out, and under cover of her clatter, as she swerved towards the house through the little plantation inside the wall, I made a second swing at the branch and the hook caught.
     
    I climbed the rope, pulled it up after me and stayed quiet for several minutes. Everything else was quiet - wood-pigeons, dogs, scientists and the village itself. The thick, smooth trunk of the chestnut looked as if it would be impossible to climb on my way out; so I shifted the hook to a firm hold on the garden side, curled up the rope in a fork and left hanging from it a piece of string by which it could be pulled down. When I had dropped to the ground, I attached the end of the string to a twig above my head. I reckoned that it would never be noticed even in daylight.
     
    Once in the garden, I undid my pack and changed into pyjamas, dressing-gown and bedroom slippers. I did not know how many people lived permanently in the manor, but it stood to reason that there must be occasional distinguished visitors staying the night. A figure glimpsed on his way to the bathroom, with his face partly obscured by towel and dressing-gown collar, was most unlikely to be questioned even if he could not be immediately identified.
     
    The luck, to start with, was all with me. On so warm a night the french windows to the lawn were open, and two men were strolling on the paved and very weedy terrace - one of them in sweater and trousers, the other, like me, in dressing-gown and pyjamas. Though it was after midnight there were faint lights in several windows, as if the cloistered scientists were reading or writing in bed.
     
    I could not be sure what eyes might be looking out of the darkened house, so I moved from cover to cover slowly and meditatively, with the air of one seeking new experiments with which to tickle up a bored universe. When the two strollers had their backs to me, I nipped in through the french windows.
     
    The room turned out to be the dining hall. I escaped from its uncompromising bareness into a lounge or common room, from which a fine oak staircase rose into the darkness.