Thou Shell of Death Read Online Free PDF

along, I decided to collect the principal legatees here for Christmas, where I could keep me eye on them—I never did care for having the fella with the gun sittin’ on your tail where ye can’t see him. The will is locked up in me safe.’
    ‘You mean, all the guests coming tomorrow are your heirs!’
    ‘I do not. One or two of them are. And I can’t tell you which, can I now, Strangeways? It wouldn’t be fair to them. They’re probably as innocent as a baby’s bottom. Still, there are circumstances in which even your best friend might murder ye for £50,000.’
    O’Brien’s eyes twinkled provocatively at Nigel as he delivered himself of this outrageous dictum.
    ‘You want me just to keep my eyes open, then,’ said Nigel, ‘to be a kind of watchdog in sheep’s clothing. It’s rather difficult when I don’t know whom I’ve got to watch.’
    The airman’s homely, ravaged features lit up in a smile extraordinarily winning. ‘It’s the devil. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do it. You’ll just have to take it on trust that I’ve got good reasons for not telling you who is going to profit by my death, yet. I’ve heard enough about you, and I’ve seen enough of you, to be sure that if you can’t succeed under these conditions no one could. You’ve got psychological knowledge, analytical intelligence, common sense and imagination. Don’t attempt to deny it, now! You
have
.’
    It was Nigel’s first taste of blarney—that warm, outrageously personal, almost childishly direct flattery which only Irishmen can get away with. He reacted, in the conventional English way, by staring hard at the floor and hastily changing the subject.
    ‘Have you any other theory of possible motives?’
    ‘There’s these plans I’m working on. Y’know, it’s been proved lately that the interceptor type of aircraft can never be really successful against a large-scale air attack. Bombing planes can attack now from much higher altitudes—ten thousand feet and upwards. Well, now, however fast your interceptor planes climb, they can’t reach those high altitudes before the damage is done. It follows that, in the war of the future your big cities and strategic points will have to be protected by a network of planes constantly in the air at different levels. What does that mean, tell me now?’ The little airman leapt up from his chair, strode over to Nigel, and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest with his forefinger. ‘It means that your defence planes of the future must be capable of remaining in the air over long periods. They must be fast, but at the same time capable of hovering, with vertical screws on the helicopter principle. And they must, above all, have a very low petrol consumption, for there simply wouldn’t be enough petrol at the present average rate of consumption for fighting planes to keep an adequate force permanently in the air for more than a fortnight. That’s what I’m working on now. An improved type of autogyro, with the lowest possible fuel consumption.’
    O’Brien flung himself back into his chair and combed his fingers through his beard. ‘I needn’t tell ye, all this must be secret as the grave. But I’ve got wind, through entirely unofficial channels, that a certain foreign Power is getting nosey about what I’m doing, and is employing an English agent to find out. Me plans aren’t yet sufficiently advanced to be of much use to them, even if they could steal ’em. But they might think it worthwhile to have me dead before I could bring the plans to completion.’
    ‘Do you keep these plans here?’
    ‘They’re in the only burglarproof safe in the world—in me own head. I’ve a great memory for figures and such like. So I burn most of the drawings and calculations that could tell them anything vital.’ O’Brien sighed. His face in the lamplight looked weary and tortured. His wide mouth, turned down deeply at both corners, suggested the fixed agony of a Greek tragedy mask.