Читать книгу Payment Deferred. Psychological Thriller онлайн

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‘Did you have much difficulty in finding your way here?’ he asked—the inevitable question always addressed to the newcomer to the suburbs.

‘Oh, no,’ replied Medland. ‘I had your address, of course, mother dug it up from your old letters before she died. So I knew it was Dulwich, and in Trafalgar Square I saw dozens of buses all going to Dulwich, and I got on one and came as far as the terminus. Then it was easy. The first person I asked told me the way to Malcolm Road.’

‘Just so. And where did you say you were staying?’

Medland had not said he was staying anywhere, but he told him. It was a substantial Strand hotel. It was then that Medland, apropos of this, made the remark that was to alter everything.

‘It’s funny to think of,’ he said, striving to keep the conversation going, ‘but besides you there isn’t a soul in England who knows anything about me. I don’t think I was in the hotel more than an hour, and I only left my hand luggage there. The rest of my stuff is at Euston. What with going to the Bank and so on I simply didn’t have time to collect it, even if it had got there. I was thinking to myself as I came here that if I got lost and never found my way back no one would mind at all—except you, of course.’