In Spite of Thunder Read Online Free PDF Page B

Don’t make me laugh!”
    Hathaway, a humped interrogation-point with a bald head, had bounced to his feet. Brian also jumped up. And then, in a heavy silence while the minute-hand clicked on a big electric clock, they looked at each other unmirthfully. Hathaway seized hat and briefcase.
    “Come along,” he said. “Come along, now!”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Don’t ask questions. If you are not interested in protecting Miss Page, I am. I have some information still to get. And we will beat Gideon Fell at his own game.”
    Restraint was abandoned.
    “Will you tell me,” Brian demanded, “why you keep dragging Dr. Fell into this? He isn’t concerned in the matter, is he? Eve Ferrier hasn’t invited him for a pleasant week at the villa?”
    “No,” Hathaway said curtly, “but Desmond Ferrier has.”
    Chairs scraped on a hard-rubber floor.
    “Yes!” continued Hathaway, jamming the Guy-Fawkes hat on his head and immediately snatching it off again. “That was what I said: Desmond Ferrier. He whistled to your elephantine friend; Fell has been at the Villa Rosalind since noon today. Now pay our bill and follow me.”
    Brian put a bank-note on the table. He acted slowly, to gain time for thought. Past open French windows, past the terrasse and the Quai Turrettini, he could hear the River Rhône foaming at its narrowest round the island bridge. Its sound, unnoticed by day, grew loud in the quieter hours. Brian stalked after Hathaway into the foyer.
    Few of the hotel’s guests had yet returned from theatre or restaurant or night-club. The dining-room was still open. Chromium clock-hands above the reception-desk, in a foyer resplendent with colours of cream and orange and black, pointed to nearly half-past ten. Hathaway dragged his companion over towards the lifts.
    “We are shortly to discover,” he announced, “whether my careful planning is better than Gideon Fell’s scatterbrain. By the way! Did you ever meet Miss Paula Catford?”
    “No.”
    “But you’ve seen a photograph of her, perhaps?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    “Ah! Then if you will glance where I am pointing—so!—you may get something of a surprise.”
    One of the lifts had swooped down and rolled open its green metal door. Brian stopped short. Hathaway was right: he had half-expected any globe-trotting woman journalist to be a tough and strident egomaniac with elaborate gestures and too much make-up. Astonishment, when he saw Paula Catford, took him in more ways than one.
    Out of the lift stepped a gentle, modest, well-rounded girl, tall and slender, with black hair and a sympathetic manner. You thought ‘girl’ rather than ‘woman,’ though she must have been in her middle or later thirties. Though she was not exactly pretty, a clear complexion and large eyes made her seem so. And, except for her very fashionable clothes, she might have been the vicar’s daughter on holiday.
    She hurried up to Hathaway, putting away a room-key in her handbag.
    “Am I late, Sir Gerald?”
    “On the contrary, dear lady, you are five minutes early. And here and now I apologize for all.”
    “Well, I do wish you wouldn’t. You’re rather an overpowering person, and I’m not all that used to so much attention.”
    Hathaway’s beard vibrated with gallantry.
    “Dear lady, it was bad enough to drag you here from Stockholm without one proper word of explanation. But to offer you dinner, and then ’phone and put you off because of this miscreant Innes …!”
    Paula, smiling, extended a warm and friendly hand.
    “Mr. Innes? It’s a great pleasure. Sir Gerald couldn’t seem to find you.”
    “At his flat,” and Hathaway pursued a grievance, “they said he was due back by a plane arriving at seven o’clock. By eight o’clock, when he still hadn’t turned up, I was unfit for human company until I had tramped the streets to work off steam. Even then, when by sheer accident I met him at the Hotel Metropole, he delayed me another half hour by