Death Devil's Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

company of men was excellent, as well. Charles was fond of the elderly vicar, who dined regularly at Bishop’s Keep, and his friend Bradford Marsden. And tonight, he had particularly enjoyed Charlie Rolls, a handsome, fine-featured lad with flashing dark eyes under thin dark brows, amazingly mature and self-possessed for nineteen, if a trifle conceited. While Rolls was at Eton (as Charles himself had been), he had specialized in practical electricity, and was presently working toward a degree in mechanical engineering at Trinity College.
    The young man’s greatest passion was not for his studies, however, but for motorcars, and his exuberant, school-boyish report of “larks” with his French-made Peugeot—at three and three-quarters horsepower, the most powerful automobile yet manufactured—had held the rapt attention of the entire dinner company. His listeners had been enthralled by the story of Rolls’s breakneck journey from Victoria Station to Cambridge, which he completed in eleven hours and forty-five minutes, at an average speed well above the legal limit.
    In fact, Charles thought, listening to the quick, impulsive Rolls, the boy was a daredevil, a rebel bent on challenging human limits by every possible means. He raced his father’s yacht, he rowed in competition, he had just won his half-blue for cycling, and he was an avid balloonist. “If there’s a record of any kind, on land, sea, or in the air,” he had boasted at dinner, “I intend to break it.”
    But for the moment, Rolls’s activities were land-based. He and Bradford were organizing a grand motorcar exhibition involving the leading proponents of motoring from all over England, the planning of which had occasioned his stay at Marsden Manor. Charles had remarked to himself that while Rolls was not gifted with a notable fortune, he obviously had a keen eye for profit and an even keener relish for competition. In combination, these two motives might in the end propel him to great wealth—although that was not likely to happen soon enough to satisfy Lady Marsden’s requirements of a suitor for her daughter. Charles suspected that Patsy’s infatuation with young Rolls would lead nowhere, except, most like, to their mutual unhappiness.
    The vicar relaxed on the sofa, stretching his feet to the fire. “Well, Charles,” he said comfortably, “you seem to be progressing quite well with your modernizing—although not necessarily in the kitchen.”
    Charles grimaced wryly. “I fear I have overestimated the staff. One would think that one’s cook, of all people, would be anxious to relieve the kitchen maids of the coal-carrying. But she, and the maids too, are afraid that the new cooker will explode—and I’m not at all sure that Kate doesn’t share their apprehension. Tell you what, Vicar—why don’t you go down to the kitchen and reassure them as to its safety? They’ll trust you.”
    Bradford Marsden glanced up at the gas chandelier, which spilled a warm glow over the room. “You’ve gotten that coal gas plant of yours operating successfully, then?”
    Marsden was a fair-haired, handsome man in his mid-thirties, with a blond mustache and haughty, angular features, as impeccably groomed and dressed as any gentleman of high breeding and good birth. But his mouth wore a cynical half-smile, and his restless glance seemed to see into a future that held greater excitement than the tedious present. He suffered from a consuming and expensive passion for motorcars, much to the chagrin of his elderly father, whose only passion was his horses. Indeed, it was well that Lord Christopher Marsden was absent on holiday, Charles reflected, for the old man would certainly object to the motorcar exhibition that Bradford planned to hold on the Marsden estate a fortnight hence. Not only would the motorized vehicles frighten the stud, but the exhibition itself