The Hunter and the Trapped Read Online Free

walking there from Welmore Street but after leaving the shade between the high cliffs of the professional rabbit warren, he had come into the full blaze of the late afternoon sun and had promptly gone out of his course into Regent’s Park, where he had sat under a tree, forgetting the time until the lengthening shadows brought him unwillingly to his feet again. The buses now were crowded, with long queues of homing workers standing along the kerb. He took a taxi.
    This was a move into which his nature often led him, though it was an extravagance he could not afford. On the whole he managed to compensate for it in a great variety of ways, from cadging lifts in other people’s cars to frank borrowing of small sums which he usually failed to pay back.
    George was aware of this habit. He saw the taxi draw up as he was watching at his window for Simon’s arrival, so he went down at once to the foot of the steps, fumbling in his pocket for silver as he did so.
    â€œYou might …” began Simon, also fumbling as George came up. “He may not have change for a note.”
    â€œChange, guv?” said the taxi driver, pulling out a mixed up mass of silver and paper.
    â€œO.K.,” said George. He paid, his coins were added to the rest and thrust back into the man’s pocket. George took his friend by the elbow and walked him quickly into the house.
    â€œLate, as usual,” he said when he had got his visitor across the hall.
    â€œLater than that, I’m afraid,” said Simon, showing no signs of contrition.
    George called to his housekeeper and took Simon at once to the dining table. From long experience and a miraculous judgment Mrs. Tranter produced a perfect meal, unspoiled by the long delay.
    â€œYou don’t deserve it,” George said. “One day I shall eat the lot at the stated time and you’ll starve.”
    â€œIt isn’t my fault I can’t live by the clock,” Simon argued. “Anyway, you have your meal so bloody early.”
    â€œMrs. Tranter doesn’t live in. She has to get away home. You have to be punctual at the college. Why victimise your friends?”
    â€œIt relieves the strain,” Simon answered, simply.
    â€œIt isn’t as if you had no watch,” George went on. He was still feeling cross with himself for paying the taxi fare, which had been quite unnecessary, since Simon, just too late, had pulled some silver from his pocket and then dropped it back again. “You have a very fine watch. I don’t know why your father gave it to you, knowing you never look at it. But you could make some attempt to do so.”
    â€œI couldn’t just now,” said Simon, eating steadily and with relish, for he had denied himself any lunch that day. “It’s in pawn,” he explained.
    â€œYou’re hopeless.”
    They both laughed.
    â€œTell me the latest scandal at your dump,” George suggested, seeing that his friend was in good form.
    â€œThe college has been conducting its affairs with unusual discretion,” Simon answered. “The usual couples go about together as before but nothing new has developed to astonish us. My own difficulties have ended virtuously.”
    â€œAnd what exactly do you mean by that?”
    â€œThe character I told you about, the elderly goat who has been plying me with patronage came suddenly to the point the other night. He had given me an exceptionally good meal – almost as good as this – at his own house and then, when we were discussing – his own special subject – he said, without altering the level of his voice in any way, ‘Well, dear boy, and when do we go to bed?’”
    â€œWhat exactly did you answer?”
    â€œI said, in the same kind of voice, ‘We don’t, sir. Neither tonight or at any time.’ He seemed to be rather shocked, but I went on to tell him that my tastes did not lie that way at all. Then I