have appeared to Comberford his strongest card, and he had led with it straightaway. Really and truly, big money had been only an uncertain prospect a long way ahead.
This was what it was now, despite Gadberry’s spectacular promotion of only an hour ago. A half-share in £5,000 a year might still be what his efforts were pulling in when Mrs Minton was celebrating her hundredth birthday. What was more, it would be all that Comberford in his Riviera seclusion was pulling in too. There was something puzzling about the whole thing.
The suspicion that he had been cheated – that his own imposture was conducting itself, so to speak, inside another one in which he himself was the dupe – didn’t, Gadberry found, very much annoy him in itself. He didn’t feel morally outraged by his discovery; indeed, there would have been a certain unreasonableness in a reaction of that sort, since any such situation placed him, after all, in the role of the biter bit, and one mustn’t expect honour among thieves. There was a sense in which he was even relieved, since Mrs Minton’s death – or so he had been coming to think – must finally and fatally involve him in permanent deception on an intimidating scale. In this feeling he was again, perhaps, up against a magical sense of the thing. His present situation could be viewed as a fantastic lark. But there was a kind of death in the notion that never in life could plain George Gadberry – but also talented George Gadberry, for had he not enjoyed that big success in The Rubbish Dump? – bob up again.
Of course Gadberry could, he supposed, bob up again now . All that was necessary was the resolution to make a clean break. He had only to pack a small bag, stuff his pockets with as much cash as his own sporadically operative conscience would permit, and hasten away from Bruton through its rising winds and falling snows. Out, out into the storm: such a departure would have a certain theatrical quality that made an appeal to him. He might even accomplish the initial stage of his flight here and now by commandeering Mr Grimble’s fly.
At this moment Mr Grimble made his appearance again. He seemed to have been straying around the imperfectly enclosed cloisters for some time. Snow was sprinkled on his shoulders and the rime sparkled in his beard. He would have looked like Father Christmas if there hadn’t been something about him more suggestive of an imp or troll. He greeted Gadberry with a cackle of laughter, and with a gleeful rubbing together of his hands which, although no doubt no more than a precautionary measure against frostbite, somehow conveyed an impression of cunning which Gadberry didn’t like. Quite unreasonably, Gadberry found himself rather frightened of this disagreeable but presumably harmless old creature.
‘Did you get through, sir?’ he asked solicitously. He had a notion that it especially became the heir of Bruton to adopt a deferential attitude towards a dependant so venerably advanced as Grimble within the vale of years.
‘Everything is in train, Comberford, everything is in train.’ Something sinister about the manner in which Grimble said this was enhanced – or perhaps it was merely suggested – by a particularly desperate hooting-act put on at this moment by one of the Abbey’s resident owls. For all its feathers – Gadberry supposed – the creature was a-cold. ‘In train, I say, in train,’ Grimble repeated. His frosted breath hung around like a miasma. The temperature must be dropping like a stone. Grimble seemed aware of the phenomenon himself. ‘This place is too cold for hell,’ he said, and walked on.
Boulter, who had a commendable instinct to achieve some effect of sanity in those spheres of Bruton life that lay within his province, had contrived in the drawing-room a fire before which it would have been perfectly feasible to roast an ox. Unfortunately most of the heat that didn’t go straight up the chimney made its way into
This was what it was now, despite Gadberry’s spectacular promotion of only an hour ago. A half-share in £5,000 a year might still be what his efforts were pulling in when Mrs Minton was celebrating her hundredth birthday. What was more, it would be all that Comberford in his Riviera seclusion was pulling in too. There was something puzzling about the whole thing.
The suspicion that he had been cheated – that his own imposture was conducting itself, so to speak, inside another one in which he himself was the dupe – didn’t, Gadberry found, very much annoy him in itself. He didn’t feel morally outraged by his discovery; indeed, there would have been a certain unreasonableness in a reaction of that sort, since any such situation placed him, after all, in the role of the biter bit, and one mustn’t expect honour among thieves. There was a sense in which he was even relieved, since Mrs Minton’s death – or so he had been coming to think – must finally and fatally involve him in permanent deception on an intimidating scale. In this feeling he was again, perhaps, up against a magical sense of the thing. His present situation could be viewed as a fantastic lark. But there was a kind of death in the notion that never in life could plain George Gadberry – but also talented George Gadberry, for had he not enjoyed that big success in The Rubbish Dump? – bob up again.
Of course Gadberry could, he supposed, bob up again now . All that was necessary was the resolution to make a clean break. He had only to pack a small bag, stuff his pockets with as much cash as his own sporadically operative conscience would permit, and hasten away from Bruton through its rising winds and falling snows. Out, out into the storm: such a departure would have a certain theatrical quality that made an appeal to him. He might even accomplish the initial stage of his flight here and now by commandeering Mr Grimble’s fly.
At this moment Mr Grimble made his appearance again. He seemed to have been straying around the imperfectly enclosed cloisters for some time. Snow was sprinkled on his shoulders and the rime sparkled in his beard. He would have looked like Father Christmas if there hadn’t been something about him more suggestive of an imp or troll. He greeted Gadberry with a cackle of laughter, and with a gleeful rubbing together of his hands which, although no doubt no more than a precautionary measure against frostbite, somehow conveyed an impression of cunning which Gadberry didn’t like. Quite unreasonably, Gadberry found himself rather frightened of this disagreeable but presumably harmless old creature.
‘Did you get through, sir?’ he asked solicitously. He had a notion that it especially became the heir of Bruton to adopt a deferential attitude towards a dependant so venerably advanced as Grimble within the vale of years.
‘Everything is in train, Comberford, everything is in train.’ Something sinister about the manner in which Grimble said this was enhanced – or perhaps it was merely suggested – by a particularly desperate hooting-act put on at this moment by one of the Abbey’s resident owls. For all its feathers – Gadberry supposed – the creature was a-cold. ‘In train, I say, in train,’ Grimble repeated. His frosted breath hung around like a miasma. The temperature must be dropping like a stone. Grimble seemed aware of the phenomenon himself. ‘This place is too cold for hell,’ he said, and walked on.
Boulter, who had a commendable instinct to achieve some effect of sanity in those spheres of Bruton life that lay within his province, had contrived in the drawing-room a fire before which it would have been perfectly feasible to roast an ox. Unfortunately most of the heat that didn’t go straight up the chimney made its way into
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