Stamboul Train Read Online Free PDF Page A

The man watched him with suspicion, and something in the sudden change from sleep to a more accustomed anxiety, something in the well-meaning clothes betrayed by the shabby mackintosh, touched Myatt to pity. He presumed on their earlier encounter. ‘You’ve found a compartment all right?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    Myatt said impulsively: ‘I thought perhaps you were finding it hard to rest. I have some aspirin in my bag. Can I lend you a few tablets?’ The man snapped at him, ‘I have everything I want. I am a doctor.’ From habit Myatt watched his hands, thin with the bones showing. He apologized again with a little of the excessive humility of the bowed head in the desert. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you. You looked ill. If there is anything I can do for you—’
    â€˜No. Nothing. Nothing.’ But as Myatt went, the other turned and called after him, ‘The time. What is the right time?’ Myatt said, ‘Eight-forty. No, forty-two,’ and saw the man’s fingers adjust his watch with care for the exact minute.
    As he reached his compartment the train was slowing down. The great blast furnaces of Liège rose along the line like ancient castles burning in a border raid. The train lurched and the points clanged. Steel girders rose on either side, and very far below an empty street ran diagonally into the dark, and a lamp shone on the café door. The rails opened out, and unattached engines converged on the express, hooting and belching steam. The signals flashed green across the sleepers, and the arch of the station roof rose above the carriage. Newsboys shouted, and a line of stiff sedate men in black broadcloth and women in black veils waited along the platform; without interest, like a crowd of decorous strangers at a funeral, they watched the line of first-class coaches pass them, Ostend—Cologne—Vienne—Belgrade—Istanbul—the slip-coach for Athens. Then with their string bags and their children they climbed into the rear coaches, bound perhaps for Pepinster or Verviers, fifteen miles down the line.
    Myatt was tired. He had sat up till one o’clock the night before discussing with his father, Jacob Myatt, the affairs of Stein, and he had become aware as never before, watching the jerk of the white beard, of how affairs were slipping away from the old ringed fingers clasped round the glass of warm milk. ‘They never pick off the skin,’ Jacob Myatt complained, allowing his son to take the spoon and skim the surface clear. There were many things he now allowed his son to do, and Page counted for nothing; his directorship was a mere decoration awarded for twenty years’ faithful service as head clerk. I am Myatt, Myatt and Page, he thought without a tremor at the idea of responsibility; he was the first born and it was the law of nature that the father should resign to the son.
    They had disagreed last night over Eckman. Jacob Myatt believed that Stein had deceived the agent, and his son that the agent was in league with Stein. ‘You’ll see,’ he promised, confident in his own cunning, but Jacob Myatt only said, ‘Eckman’s clever. We need a clever man there.’
    It was no use, Myatt knew, settling down to sleep before the frontier at Herbesthal. He took out the figures that Eckman proposed as a basis for negotiation with Stein, the value of the stock in hand, the value of the goodwill, the amount which he believed Stein had been offered by another purchaser. It was true that Eckman had not named Moult in so many words; he had only hinted at the name and he could deny the hint. Moult’s had never previously shown interest in currants; the nearest they had come to it was a brief flirtation with the date market. Myatt thought: I can’t believe these figures. Stein’s business is worth that to us, even if we dumped his stock into the Bosphorus, because we should gain a monopoly; but for any other