"Christopher Priest - The Space Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

Twenty-Four - OF SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE


Chapter One
THE LADY COMMERCIAL

i


In the April of I893 I was staying in the course of my business at the Devonshire Arms in Skipton,
Yorkshire. I was then twenty-three years of age, and enjoying a modest and not unsuccessful career as
commercial representative of the firm of Josiah Westerman & Sons, Purveyors of Leather Fancy Goods.
Not much will be said in this narrative of my employment, for even at that time it was not my major
preoccupation, but it was instrumental, in its inglorious fashion, in precipitating the chain of events which
are the major purpose of my story.

The Devonshire was a low, grey-brick commercial hotel, threaded with draughty and ill-lit corridors,
drab with ageing paint and dark-stained panelling. The only congenial place in the hotel was the
commercials' lounge, for although it was small and burdened with furniture - the over-stuffed easy chairs
were placed so close together it was scarcely possible to walk between them - the room was warm in
winter and had the advantage of gas-mantle lighting, whereas the only sources of illumination in the
bedrooms were dim and smoky oil-lamps.

During the evenings there was little for a resident commercial to do but stay within the confines of the
lounge and converse with his colleagues. For me, the hour between the completion of dinner and nine
p.m. was the one that made me the most impatient, for by long-observed tacit agreement no one would
smoke between those times, and it was the accepted period for conversation. At nine, though, the pipes
and cigars would appear, the air would slowly turn a suffocating blue, heads would lean back on the
antimacassars and eyes would close. Then, unobtrusively, I would perhaps read for a while, or write a
letter or two.

On the evening of which I am particularly thinking I had been for a short stroll after dinner, and had
returned to the hotel before nine. I made a brief visit to my room to don my smoking-jacket, then went to
the ground floor and entered the commercials' lounge.

Three men were already there, and although it was still only seven minutes before nine I noticed that
Hughes, a representative from a Birmingham machine-tool manufacturer, had started his pipe.

I nodded to the others, and went to a chair in the furthest comer of the room.

At nine-fifteen, Dykes came into the lounge. Dykes was a young man of about my own age, and
although I had affected no interest in him it was his wont to address me in some confidence.

He came directly to my corner and sat opposite me. I pulled down the top leaf over the letter I had
been drafting.

"Will you smoke, Turnbull?" he said to me, offering his cigarette case.