Читать книгу The Inquisitor. A Novel онлайн

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He stopped.

'Would you mind telling me,' he asked the policeman at the corner, 'where The Scarf is? It's the name of a house. I don't know the street. Belongs to a Mr. Stephen Furze.'

The policeman directed him.

He turned to the right and down, finding himself then in an unexpected quiet, passing some railings that guarded a drop of sheer black-fronted rock. He stayed there a moment and looked downwards, to the life and lights of Seatown. He knew nothing of Seatown as yet nor of the spirit that informed it, but he had the sharp sniffing apprehensions of a child or a puppy and he realized that there was, down there, some world very different from the High Street just as the High Street was different again from the Cathedral. So small a place and three distinct worlds in it—or were they distinct? These speculations, however, were not for him, whose whole instinct was towards self-preservation and self-glory. Nevertheless he was apprehensive. The mist came up from the river and with the mist a sea-tang, a breath of the unknown. He translated this, as he moved forward, into a new nervousness as to how his brother would receive him. He was not afraid of his brother. Oh no, not he! They had never cared for one another—but who could care for Stephen? Michael had left the home in Hull—their father had been a shipping merchant—at a very early age, apprentice to the Merchant Service, and after that it was only at odd moments that they had met. Stephen had moved to London, had been some sort of broker in the City. Twenty years ago Michael had spent a week-end with them at Tulse Hill—on his own invitation, needless to say. And what a week-end! Poor Mike had emerged on the Monday a starved man: every mouthful had been grudged him. Stephen's meanness had become a mania—yes, the intensity, the preoccupation, the watching waiting lust of madness.