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1、【英文小说】War in HeavenChapter OneThe PreludeThe telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.A few moments later there was. Lionel Rackstraw, strolling back from lunch, heard in the corridor the sound of the bell in his room, and, entering at
2、a run, took up the receiver. He remarked, as he did so, the boots and trousered legs sticking out from the large knee-hole table at which he worked, but the telephone had established the first claim on his attention.“Yes,” he said, “yes . . . No, not before the 17th . . . No, who cares what he wants
3、? . . . No, who wants to know? . . . Oh, Mr. Persimmons. Oh, tell him the 17th . . . Yes . . . Yes, Ill send a set down.”He put the receiver down and looked back at the boots.It occurred to him that someone was probably doing something to the telephone; people did, he knew, at various times drift in
4、 on him for such purposes. But they usually looked round or said something; and this fellow must have heard him talking. He bent down towards the boots.“Shall you be long?” he said into the space between the legs and the central top drawer; and then, as there was no answer, he walked away, dropped h
5、at and gloves and book on to their shelf, strolled back to his desk, picked up some papers and read them, put them back, and, peering again into the dark hole, said more impatiently, “Shall you be long?”No voice replied; not even when, touching the extended foot with his own, he repeated the questio
6、n. Rather reluctantly he went round to the other side of the table, which was still darker, and, trying to make out the head of the intruder, said almost loudly: “Hallo! hallo! Whats the idea?” Then, as nothing happened, he stood up and went on to himself: “Damn it all, is he dead?” and thought at o
7、nce that he might be.That dead bodies did not usually lie round in one of the rooms of a publishers offices in London about half-past two in the afternoon was a certainty that formed now an enormous and cynical background to the fantastic possibility. He half looked at the door which he had closed b
8、ehind him, and then attempted the same sort of interior recovery with which he had often thrown off the knowledge that at any moment during his absence his wife might be involved in some street accident, some skidding bus or swerving lorry. These things happened a small and unpleasant, if invisible,
9、 deity who lived in a corner of his top shelves had reminded him these things happened, and even now perhaps . . . People had been crushed against their own front doors; there had been a doctor in Gower Street. Of course, it was all untrue. But this time, as he moved to touch the protruding feet, he
10、 wondered if it were.The foot he touched apparently conveyed no information to the strangers mind, and Lionel gave up the attempt. He went out and crossed the corridor to another office, whose occupant, spread over a table, was marking sentences in newspaper cuttings.“Mornington,” Lionel said, “ther
11、es a man in my room under the table, and I cant get him to take any notice. Will you come across? He looks,” he added in a rush of realism, “for all the world as if he was dead.”“How fortunate!” Mornington said, gathering himself off the table. “If he were alive and had got under your table and woul
12、dnt take any notice I should be afraid youd annoyed him somehow. I think thats rather a pleasant notion,” he went on as they crossed the corridor, “a sort of modern Kings Threshold get under the table of the man whos insulted you and simply sulk there. Not, I think, starve thats for more romantic ag
13、es than ours but take a case filled with sandwiches and a thermos . . . Whats the plural of thermos? . . . ” He stared at the feet, and then, going up to the desk, went down on one knee and put a hand over the disappearing leg. Then he looked up at Lionel.“Something wrong,” he said sharply. “Go and
14、ask Dalling to come here.” He dropped to both knees and peered under the table.Lionel ran down the corridor in the other direction, and returned in a few minutes with a short man of about forty-five, whose face showed more curiosity than anxiety. Mornington was already making efforts to get the body
15、 from under the table.“He must be dead,” he said abruptly to the others as they came in. “What an incredible business! Go round the other side, Dalling; the buttons have caught in the table or something; see if you can get them loose.”“Hadnt we better leave it for the police?” Dalling asked. “I thou
16、ght you werent supposed to move bodies.”“How the devil do I know whether it is a body?” Mornington asked. “Not but what you may be right.” He made investigations between the trouser-leg and the boot, and then stood up rather suddenly. “Its a body right enough,” he said. “Is Persimmons in?”“No,” said
17、 Dalling; “he wont be back till four.”“Well, we shall have to get busy ourselves, then. Will you get on to the police-station? And, Rackstraw, youd better drift about in the corridor and stop people coming in, or Plumpton will be earning half a guinea by telling the Evening News.”Plumpton, however,
18、had no opportunity of learning what was concealed behind the door against which Lionel for the next quarter of an hour or so leant, his eyes fixed on a long letter which he had caught up from his desk as a pretext for silence if anyone passed him. Dalling went downstairs and out to the front door, a
19、 complicated glass arrangement which reflected every part of itself so many times that many arrivals were necessary before visitors could discover which panels swung back to the retail sales-room, which to a waiting-room for authors and others desiring interviews with the remoter staff, and which to
20、 a corridor leading direct to the stairs. It was here that he welcomed the police and the doctor, who arrived simultaneously, and going up the stairs to the first floor he explained the situation.At the top of these stairs was a broad and deep landing, from which another flight ran backwards on the
21、left-hand to the second floor. Opposite the stairs, across the landing, was the private room of Mr. Stephen Persimmons, the head of the business since his fathers retirement some seven years before. On either side the landing narrowed to a corridor which ran for some distance left and right and gave
22、 access to various rooms occupied by Rackstraw, Mornington, Dalling, and others. On the right this corridor ended in a door which gave entrance to Plumptons room. On the left the other section, in which Lionels room was the last on the right hand, led to a staircase to the basement. On its way, howe
23、ver, this staircase passed and issued on a side door through which the visitor came out into a short, covered court, having a blank wall opposite, which connected the streets at the front and the back of the building. It would therefore have been easy for anyone to obtain access to Lionels room in o
24、rder, as the inspector in charge remarked pleasantly to Mornington, “to be strangled.”For the dead man had, as was evident when the police got the body clear, been murdered so. Lionel, in obedience to the official request to see if he could recognize the corpse, took one glance at the purple face an
25、d starting eyes, and with a choked negative retreated. Mornington, with a more contemplative, and Dalling with a more curious, interest, both in turn considered and denied any knowledge of the stranger. He was a little man, in the usual not very fresh clothes of the lower middle class; his bowler ha
26、t had been crushed in under the desk; his pockets contained nothing but a cheap watch, a few coppers, and some silver papers he appeared to have none. Around his neck was a piece of stout cord, deeply embedded in the flesh.So much the clerks heard before the police with their proceedings retired int
27、o cloud and drove the civilians into other rooms. Almost as soon, either by the telephone or some other means, news of the discovery reached Fleet Street, and reporters came pushing through the crowd that began to gather immediately the police were seen to enter the building. The news of the discove
28、red corpse was communicated to them officially, and for the rest they were left to choose as they would among the rumours flying through the crowd, which varied from vivid accounts of the actual murder and several different descriptions of the murderer to a report that the whole of the staff were un
29、der arrest and the police had had to wade ankle-deep through the blood in the basement.To such a distraction Mr. Persimmons himself returned from a meeting of the Publishers Association about four oclock, and was immediately annexed by Inspector Colquhoun, who had taken the investigation in charge.
30、Stephen Persimmons was rather a small man, with a mild face apt to take on a harassed and anxious appearance on slight cause. With much more reason he looked anxious now, as he sat opposite the inspector in his own room. He had recognized the body as little as any of his staff had, and it was about
31、them rather than it that the inspector was anxious to gain particulars.“This Rackstraw, now,” Colquhoun was saying: “it was his room the body was found in. Has he been with you long?”“Oh, years,” Mr. Persimmons answered; “most of them have. All the people on this floor and nearly all the rest. Theyv
32、e been here longer than me, most of them. You see, I came in just three years before my father retired thats seven years ago, and threes ten.”“And Rackstraw was here before that?”“Oh, yes, certainly.”“Do you know anything of him?” the inspector pressed. “His address, now?”“Dalling has all that,” the
33、 unhappy Persimmons said. “He has all the particulars about the staff. I remember Rackstraw being married a few years ago.”“And what does he do here?” Colquhoun went on.“Oh, he does a good deal of putting books through, paper and type and binding, and so on. He rather looks after the fiction side. I
34、ve taken up fiction a good deal since my father went; thats why the business has expanded so. Weve got two of the best selling people today Mrs. Clyde and John Bastable.”“Mrs. Clyde,” the inspector brooded. “Didnt she write The Comet and the Star?”“Thats the woman. We sold ninety thousand,” Persimmo
35、ns answered.“And what are your other lines?”“Well, my father used to do, in fact he began with, what you might call occult stuff. Mesmerism and astrology and histories of great sorcerers, and that sort of thing. It didnt really pay very well.”“And does Mr. Rackstraw look after that too?” asked Colqu
36、houn.“Well, some of it,” the publisher answered. “But of course, in a place like this things arent exactly divided just just exactly. Mornington, now, Mornington looks after some books. Under me, of course,” he added hastily. “And then he does a good deal of the publicity, the advertisements, you kn
37、ow. And he does the reviews.”“What, writes them?” the inspector asked.“Certainly not,” said the publisher, shocked. “Reads them and chooses passages to quote. Writes them! Really, inspector!”“And how long has Mr. Mornington been here?” Colquhoun went on.“Oh, years and years. I tell you they all came
38、 before I did.”“I understand Mr. Rackstraw was out a long time at lunch today, with one of your authors. Would that be all right?”“I daresay he was,” Persimmons said, “if he said so.”“You dont know that he was?” asked Colquhoun. “He didnt tell you?”“Really, inspector,” the worried Persimmons said ag
39、ain, “do you think my staff ask me for an hour off when they want to see an author? I give them their work and they do it.”“Sir Giles Tumulty,” the inspector said. “You know him?”“Were publishing his last book, Historical Vestiges of Sacred Vessels in Folklore. The explorer and antiquarian, you know
40、. Rackstraws had a lot of trouble with his illustrations, but he told me yesterday he thought hed got them through. Yes, I can quite believe he went up to see him. But you can find out from Sir Giles, cant you?”“What Im getting at,” the inspector said, “is this. If any of your people are out, is the
41、re anything to prevent anyone getting into any of their rooms? Theres a front way and a back way in and nobody on watch anywhere.”“Theres a girl in the waiting-room,” Persimmons objected.“A girl!” the inspector answered. “Reading a novel when shes not talking to anyone. Shed be a lot of good. Beside
42、s, theres a corridor to the staircase alongside the waiting-room. And at the back theres no-one.”“Well, one doesnt expect strangers to drop in casually,” the publisher said unhappily. “I believe they do lock their doors sometimes, if they have to go out and have to leave a lot of papers all spread o
43、ut.”“And leave the key in, I suppose?” Colquhoun said sarcastically.“Of course,” Persimmons answered. “Suppose I wanted something. Besides, its not to keep anyone out; its only just to save trouble and warn anyone going in to be careful, so to speak; it hardly ever happens. Besides ”Colquhoun cut hi
44、m short. “What people mean by asking for a Government of business men, I dont know,” he said. “I was a Conservative from boyhood, and Im stauncher every year the more I see of business. Theres nothing to prevent anyone coming in.”“But they dont,” said Persimmons.“But they have,” said Colquhoun. “Its
45、 the unexpected that happens. Are you a religious man, Mr. Persimmons?”“Well, not not exactly religious,” the publisher said hesitatingly. “Not what youd call religious unpleasantly, I mean. But what ”“Nor am I,” the inspector said. “And I dont get the chance to go to church much. But Ive been twice
46、 with my wife to a Sunday evening service at her Wesleyan Church in the last few months, and its a remarkable thing, Mr. Persimmons, we had the same piece read from the Bible each time. It ended up And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch. It seemed to me fairly meant for the public. What I say
47、 unto you, thats us in the police, I say unto all, Watch. If there was more of that thered be fewer undiscovered murders. Well, Ill go and see Mr. Balling. Good day, Mr. Persimmons.”Chapter TwoThe Evening in Three HomesIAdrian Rackstraw opened the oven, put the chicken carefully inside, and shut the
48、 door. Then he went back to the table, and realized suddenly that he had forgotten to buy the potatoes which were to accompany it. With a disturbed exclamation, he picked up the basket that lay in a corner, put on his hat, and set out on the new errand. He considered for a moment as he reached the garden gate to which of the two shops at which Mrs. Rackstraw indifferently supplied her needs he should go, and, deciding on the nearest, ran hastily down the road. At the shop, “Three potatoes,” he said in a low, rather worried voice.“Yes, sir,”