Lonely Road by Nevil Shute Page B

spite of rain the sand was discoloured till we left.
    I must have cleared an area of four square feet before I found the limits of that stain. One thing was quite clear then. Whoever had been there before had bled a bucketful.
    And as I rummaged in the sand my fingers struck on something soft and round. I pulled it out and dusted it, and turned it over in my hands; and then I sat there in the sunlight holding it, quite still, while the martins swept and wheeled about my head between the dunes. I was thinking of the little things that please us in a childish mood, that comfort us when we are quite alone.
    It was a rotten apple. Now that was a funny thing to find there in the sand.

CHAPTER IV
    A LL that afternoon I sat working with Tillotson in my office in the yard. He had got some book on management that had a chapter upon cost accounts, and we were trying to thrash out a means of harnessing the ancient art of ship-repairing with the reins of modern business. I remember that particularly, because it was a job that would take some doing at the best of times, and I had only half my mind on it that afternoon.
    I broke off for a minute in the middle of the afternoon, and rang up Dixon on the telephone. I wasn’t certain that he could tell me anything I didn’t know, but I made an appointment, finished up early at the office, and went up to see him after tea. He greeted me by asking how I was.
    “Pretty fit physically,” I replied. “Mentally—perhaps not quite so good.”
    He grinned. “You’re looking very well.”
    “Lunatics often do,” I said. “You should know that. Now, what I’ve come about is this. I want you to tell me all about that injury to my head.”
    He frowned in perplexity. “Tell you about it?”
    I nodded. “I want to know exactly what sort of condition I was in when first you saw me, after the crash.”
    He raised his eyebrows a little and reached for a ledger on his desk. I watched him with some amusement while he adjusted his eyeglasses. He turned a few pages, and then stopped.
    He coughed. “I saw you at seven-forty-five a.m.,” he said. “Well, you were quite unconscious … blanched appearance.” He scanned the page. “A lacerated and contused wound in the occipital region. Slight hæmatoma—that’s bleeding under the scalp, you know. No hemiplegia. Reflexes sluggish. Pupils equal, slightly dilated. Smell of alcohol.”
    He glanced at me. “Is that what you want to know?”
    I sat for a little time in thought. “I suppose it is,” I said at last. “There’s just one thing. You told me that you saw my car before it was repaired. You said it had a hole in the roof. Would you say that that injury is in keeping with the hole?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Well,” I said, “the car’s got a fabric roof. From the inside, there’s first a soft cloth ceiling, and then a layer of felt, and then a few small laths, and then the outer fabric. There’s nothing very hard. You say I rammed my head through the lot. Is that the sort of injury that you’d expect?”
    He smiled. “I really couldn’t say,” he replied. “I’ve never seen it done before. But it’s the sort of injury you got.”
    There was nothing to be gained by staying on. I got up and picked my hat and stick up from the chair. “Oh, well,” I said, “it’s interesting to know. Just one thing more. I suppose that injury could have been caused by any sort of blow? Of course, actually it happened in the crash. But you wouldn’t have to be in a car to get an injury like that?”
    “Oh, no. It could happen in a great variety of accidents.”
    I laughed. “It would be just like that if some kind friend had slugged me on the head from behind?”
    He laughed with me. “I should think so. Just like that.”
    I nodded. “That’s all I wanted to know. Put it down to the concussion if you like, or drink.”
    But he got to his feet, his brows contracted in a frown. “You weren’t speaking seriously?”
    I moved