Sixty Days to Live Read Online Free PDF

calculation.’
    ‘Success!’ Sam echoed, with a queer little laugh. ‘Anyhow, you don’t seem at all put out about the impending catastrophe yourself.’
    ‘Oh, no, not at all. You see, as a scientist, I can only regard the ending of the world as an extraordinarily interesting phenomenon. In fact, I count it a great privilege to be living at a time when such a momentous event is about to take place and I hope to have the opportunity of making observations up to the very last moment. But, of course, you people having other interests are naturally inclined to take a rather different view. I’m so sorry if I’ve upset any of you by letting the cat out of the bag a little prematurely.’
    Gervaise was not listening to his brother’s rather vague apology for his pronouncement, which might well be calculated utterly to disrupt the even tenor of all their lives. He was studying the expressions of the people grouped about him.
    Derek Burroughs’ open face showed quite clearly that the full import of Oliver’s words had not yet come home to him. Sir Samuel Curry’s was veiled, but Gervaise felt instinctively that the millionaire believed Oliver to be a crank, although he was much too polite to say so.
    Margery had entered the room while they were talking and she had also been present during the earlier part of the discussion, before the arrival of Lavina and Derek. Her father knew that, although for a long time she had given up going to church, she was still imbued with the rather narrow religious beliefs of her youth; and therefore regarded Oliver’s prognostications with a somewhat similar disbelief to that displayed by the priests of the Middle Ages when Galileo declared the world to be round. He gave an inward chuckle at the thought that her reactions could almost be summed up with some such phrase as ‘I’m sure God would never permit His creatures all to be wiped out, without warning, like that.’
    Gervaise’s eye then fell upon his younger daughter. Lavina, he knew, was a fatalist and she had unbounded faith in her uncle’s scientific knowledge. The night before she had thoughtthat he was joking, but it was clear that she had now accepted his prophecy of death for all mankind without further question.
    Gervaise was not surprised when she laid her hand on Sam Curry’s arm and said, ‘Well, if we’ve only got sixty days, darling, I’ll marry you just as soon as you like.’

4
A STRANGE PREMONITION
    When Lavina had promised Sam Curry that she would marry him just as soon as he liked, she had not meant that quite literally; and the ten days that followed seemed to her one long series of abominably crowded hours punctuated by intervals of exhausted sleep.
    At times he chaffed her, on the lines that, if the world was really coming to an end on June 24th, why should she worry herself about a hundred little things which would not matter to anyone on June 25th.
    As the passing days had not in the least shaken her belief in the accuracy of her uncle’s scientific prediction, she admitted that many of her activities were really a waste of time; yet some innate sense compelled her to put her house in order. She spent hours with her agent, who thought her mad, wrangling about the cancellation of future contracts; and further hours endeavouring to placate irate film magnates. In addition, she had made up her mind that, even if she was not going to have a big wedding, that was no reason at all why she should not get herself a complete trousseau, and her dressmakers claimed her constant attention.
    Sam had not pressed her unduly about the date of the wedding, as he did not believe for one moment that the world was coming to an end on June 24th, but he got her to agree to marry him on May 12th and in the meantime he was anxious that she should meet as many of his friends as possible; for which purpose he arranged a series of luncheons at his big house in St. James’s Square.
    Most of these were large affairs but on May