Kindling by Nevil Shute Page A

Mortimer, seventy-eight years old and growing feeble in his pleasant house.
    “So that’s all I know, sir,” he was saying. “He’s been away for three days now. I thought you ought to know.”
    The old man considered for a moment. “You say he told you he might be away for a few days?”
    “Yes, sir. But it’s quite unlike him not to have let me know when he would be going, or where I could get hold of him.”
    “None of the servants knew where he was going to—except the chauffeur?”
    “No, sir. And he died.”
    “H’m.”
    There was a silence for a time. Then Morgan said:
    “He’s almost certainly somewhere in this country, probably in the north of England or Scotland. If you thought it wise, sir, I could broadcast for him on the B.B.C.”
    “Certainly not,” said the old man sharply. There was another pause, and then he said:
    “Never do anything to destroy confidence. Always remember, confidence is your chief trading asset. Don’t squander it.” He paused again.
    “I don’t see any reason for extreme measures,” he said. “Leave him alone, and he’ll come home, like the sheep. And bring his tail behind him—you know.” Morgan smiled politely. “You say there’s nothing very urgent. If there is, bring the papers down to me. Tell everyone he’s gone off on a holiday. Tell them the truth—thatthat damned woman of his has run off with a black man, and he’s too busy sorting out the mess to attend to business for a week or two. And keep in touch with me upon the telephone.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The old man stared into the distance. “He’ll come back all right,” he said. “But I am afraid he may be very different. It makes a great change in a man’s life, a thing like this.”

CHAPTER IV
    F OR three days after his operation Warren took little notice of his surroundings. In those three days, without conscious process of thought, he decided upon a policy in regard to his identity. He was in a ward of working-class people, labourers and artisans, in some northern town, he was not quite sure which. He would have to stay there for some weeks, perhaps; he had no desire to be different from the rest, and an object of curiosity. They had assumed, a little curiously, he thought, that he was an out-of-work clerk, and the sister had provided of her own accord a credible story. He was content to accept that story and to maintain it; it was good enough for him. He had no desire to be a merchant banker in a ward of labourers.
    On the morning of the third day he asked the sister, as she washed him, “What place is this?” She looked at him blankly. “I mean, what’s the name of this town?”
    “Sharples,” she said. “Didn’t you know?”
    “No. I was taken ill on the road a good way from here, I think.”
    “Aye, a lorry brought you in. Where did you come from?”
    “Glasgow,” he said readily. “I wanted to get to Hull. I used to work in Hull. I thought maybe they could fix me up with a job.”
    She made no comment upon that, and Warren lay digesting what he had heard. Presently he said:
    “They build ships here, don’t they?”
    “Used to, you mean. Barlows shut down five years ago, and the plate mills, and the joineries. There’s been no ship built here since then.”
    Warren nodded slowly. He knew now where he was. The Barlow proposition had been before him a few years before, not once, but many times. It had been hawked round the City in its later stages like a vacuum cleaner.
    He said, “Used to build a lot of ships here, didn’t they?”
    “Oh aye—one time. The Heather Line Boats, and the Myers’ boats—they all came from Barlows. And then there was a great many for foreigners, and floating docks, and that. There was the Admiralty work, too. There were seven Barlow destroyers at the battle of Jutland—did you know that?” She paused, and then she said, “It’s different here now to what it was in them days.”
    She left him, and Warren lay considering what he had