![]() ![]() It was after midnight but not yet closing hours in the lounge bar, for Lonnie Gilbert, with a heroically foolhardy disregard for what would surely be Otto's fearful wrath when the crime was discovered, had both glass doors swung open and latched in position, while he himself was ensconced in some state behind the bar itself, a bottle of malt whisky in one hand, a soda syphon in the other. Lonnie, unsurprisingly, was still at his station in the lounge when I reached there. I closed the door behind me, carefully wedging a spent book match between the foot of the door and the sill: that door would have to open only a crack and the match would drop clear. I then locked my medical bag-it was considerably larger and heavier than the average medical bag but then it held a considerably greater amount of equipment -and put it out in the passage. In spite of the trawler's wildly erratic behaviour those coins would remain where they were, held in place by the pressure of the clothes inside but as soon as the lid was opened, the pressure released, and the lid then lifted even partway towards the vertical, the Coins would slide down to the feel? of the pockets. Both my cases had elasticised linen pockets in the lids and in each pocket in each lid, holding the lids as nearly horizontal as possible, I placed a small Goin just at the entrance to the pocket. As far as I could recall everything was as I had left it and nothing had been disturbed but, then, a practised searcher rarely left any trace of his passing. If anybody had been in my cabin and gone through my belongings, he'd done it in a very circumspect way. This Hippocratic spirit-" He broke off only to resume almost at once. Hot-foot to the succour of suffering mankind? A new and dreadful epidemic, is it? Your old Uncle Lonnie is proud of you, boy, proud of you. Look your last on all things lovely every hour."' Your Shakespeares are all very well, but Walter de la Mare is my boy." He lifted his glass and squinted myopically at it against the light. We Gilberts have the indomitable spirit, the unconquerable soul. A tragic figure, a sad man, fated and laden with doom. Otto will have you drawn and quartered if he finds you here." Anyway, doctor's orders and do me a favour-get to hell out of here. I don't think he quite meant it in that way, Lonnie. She nodded, her eyes following me until I closed the door behind me. "You think I'm headed for the next world with my gas pedal flat on the floor, don't you?" Now I just looked at her, wondered if she had been expecting me to take a peck at her, then made my way foreword and down to the passenger accommodation. Ten years ago I'd have been back in that saloon pretty rapidly, arms round her and telling her that all her troubles were over. I peered through the plate-glass window and she was sitting as I'd left her, only now she had her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, shaking her head slowly from side to side. Once outside I remained still for twenty seconds or so, ignoring the vagrant flurries of snow that even here, on the lee side, seemed bent on getting down my collar and up the trouser cuffs, then walked quickly foreword. ![]()
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