Bone Idol Read Online Free PDF

everything about him rotating crazily around his head, he tumbled towards the heaving deck.
    Around an enormous dining table, bolted to the floor but set with the finest silver and crystal, the men were bluff and jovial in their black and white evening dress. Their wives and daughters were by their sides, got up like peacocks in brightly coloured silks and brocades, heeled shoes and high, piled-up coiffeurs affected to make them appear fashionably tall.
    Henry knew that the steam liner company had experimented with gas lamps on this very vessel, but the technology had proved a little ahead of itself, and so the room was lit by oil lamps and candlelight, flickering uncertainly off polished surfaces and making deep pools of shadow in the corners of the great room.
    Arthur Boundry was expounding on a subject dear to his heart, and one that Henry could not help but feel uncomfortable about—betrayal by a fellow scientist.
    “Of course, Marsh is a blackguard of the worst sort. He published that paper out of the purest spite, to discredit a man he knows to be a finer scientist than he. It was a mistake easily made. And, after all, the man has shown himself to have no integrity—why, I have heard that he has hired teams of thugs to take specimens from Professor Cope’s dig sites, even to destroy them with explosives if they cannot be stolen!”
    Dawlish, sitting to his right, paused with his spoon suspended over a bowl of vichyssoise. His voice came out in a sort of sustained yawn, as though the effort of speaking exhausted him. He was obviously somewhat the worse for wear and his habitual drawl was exacerbated by a slight, drunken slur. He had managed to spill soup on his dinner jacket.
    Henry had met him only briefly and on infrequent occasions, but he knew him well by reputation. He had reddish, curly hair and a distinct lack of chin. His clothes were ostentatiously expensive, even dandyish.
    “From what I hear, they’re each as bad as the other. Neither one can call himself a gentleman.”
    To Henry’s surprise, Dawlish’s wife, a pretty, mousy little thing, spoke up in a shy, musical voice. “I believe Professor Cope’s people have some odd sort of religious notions—”
    But her husband cut her off almost at once. “How he squares that with the dinosaur business I can’t think—and Marsh positively reeks of new money. And they fight like cat and dog, from what I hear.”
    Henry couldn’t help but notice that his eyes slid from the reverend to himself. And he saw the way Dawlish’s wife, Maude, curled in on herself. Her own parents had the distinct odour of trade about them, and it was common knowledge that her husband had married her for her money.
    The reverend bristled. “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. The greatest minds of our time have seen no reason to suppose that bone hunting is incompatible with a good and a Godly life.”
    Dawlish cast him a speaking glance and his reply, when it came, was heavily laced with scepticism. “Quite so…Reverend.”
    Mr Boundry, obviously flustered and made suddenly self-conscious by this remark, opened his mouth, closed it, and blinked rapidly behind his eyeglasses. He subsided into silence and concentrated on his soup.
    Henry had been both flattered and relieved when Arthur had asked him to accompany him on the journey, yet somewhat baffled by his cold demeanour since they had boarded the ship.
    But he had never liked bullies and did not intend to allow such behaviour to stand now, least of all from Dawlish, a man whose reputation spoke of scandal, impropriety and perhaps brutality. Certainly not of piety.
    “‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth’?” he quoted. “Open up your Bible, Dawlish, and have a look at the Book of Job. If you have a copy.”
    Dawlish looked both angry and contemptuous. “You’re a religious man, Elkington?”
    “No,” Henry replied. “I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in courtesy.”