Through The Wall Read Online Free

to go back. Are you going to stay?”
    “Only a month. Business. My mother was an American, and I have a sister married over there—about the only relation I’ve got.”
    Her hand moved. He thought the movement was involuntary.
    “I’ve come in for a lot of relations as well as the money. It’s rather frightening. My uncle didn’t like them. He wrote me—an odd letter. I don’t know why he went on living with them if he felt like that.”
    He began to be quite sure about the rib. It just didn’t do to laugh. He said,
    “Perhaps they lived with him.”
    “Oh, yes, they did. There’s a house—it sounds big—and they must have expected—they must have thought it would come to them—and the money too. I haven’t had time to think about it yet, but I shall have to.”
    His hand was steady on hers.
    “These things have a way of settling themselves. I shouldn’t worry about it now.”
    After a very long silence she said,
    “If I’d been killed, Ina would have got some of it, and the relations would have had the rest. It would have saved a lot of trouble. If we don’t get out—”
    He said quite loudly and firmly,
    “Oh, but we’re going to get out.”
    Chapter 3
    Lying in hospital with a couple of broken ribs, Richard Cunningham was aware of a zest for life which recalled his early twenties. The morning papers had informed him of just how lucky his escape had been—his and Marian Brand’s. The smallest of the papers naturally had the largest headlines. TRAPPED UNDER TRAIN—WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE BURIED ALIVE—EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD CUNNINGHAM. That made him laugh, and you really can’t afford to laugh with your ribs strapped up. He recalled a reporter buzzing round when first Marian, and then he, had been dragged out from under the partially shifted wreckage. To the best of his recollection, he had replied to a spate of questions as to what it felt like to be buried alive with the single word, “Damnable!” After which he had tried to get on to his own feet instead of being carried like a carcase, and had promptly covered himself with shame by passing out.
    He perused the exclusive interview with enjoyment. It was packed with high-toned drama, and it would make a magnificent advertisement for his new book.
    He looked across at the long window which framed a view of low cloud and sheeting rain, and found it exceedingly good to be alive and—practically—undamaged. Daylight, even of this suffused and teeming kind, was an uplifting sight. He might have been lying on a mortuary slab, instead of which here he was, in a clean bed, and quite comfortable so long as he didn’t move too suddenly. Everything was pretty good.
    He began to think about Marian Brand. She hadn’t been taken to hospital—a stubborn line of enquiry had elicited that. She had said she was all right and would rather go home. She had been saying that quite perseveringly just before he went tumbling down into his swoon. An idiotic performance on both their parts. If he hadn’t been fool enough to faint he would have put it across her. Something on the lines of “Of course I know what it’s all about—you think Ina will be frightened. But if you want to terrify her into fits you have only got to loom up looking like death, with your hat stove in, your hair full of cinders and your face smothered in dust and blood.”
    He frowned when he remembered the blood. Someone had turned a powerful electric torch on her, and she was a messy sight. Of course a little blood goes a long way on a face. He thought it came from a cut somewhere up on the edge of the scalp. He supposed the first-aid people would have cleaned her up before they let her go. Because she had gone. Quite definitely they hadn’t managed to get her to the hospital. She had just faded away. Rather an intriguing end to the whole curious experience. Too commonplace really, to meet in this cool antiseptic light of day and compare bandages. He had an idea that she