Free The Sleeping Partner by Winston Graham

uranium in the earth – give off gamma rays that can be picked up by a man walking over them with a Geiger counter?’
    â€˜Yes. I had a vague idea of that.’
    â€˜Well, a low-flying plane can take the place of a man and do the job a hundred times quicker. But in a plane a Geiger counter’s no use because of the swamping effects of cosmic radiation. So this later thing is used instead.’ I let the seat go and it sprang up again. ‘The way you make a scintillation probe unit is to get a crystal of a special kind and mount it in a sealed box with a window at the end and a photomultiplier tube shoved against the window. The gamma rays pass through this particular type of crystal and cause tiny scintillations of light which the photo cathode converts into electrical impulses and amplifies several hundred million times until at the anode end they can be counted and checked. In the equipment we’re making now there are various complications, but that’s the general principle of the thing.’
    Simon said: ‘I wonder if Lynn realises that you’re a much rarer bird than she is or her dilettante friends. I know you keep it all well out of sight behind an unexceptionable frontispiece, but in fact you’re a morbid, introspective, sensitive brute, with just as many peculiarities as any artist and just as emotionally involved in your work. It’s a gift you’ve got to use, and in your ordinary life allowances have to be made for it,’
    I said: ‘I wonder what Lynn’s doing with herself now. I wonder who she’s with.’
    We got the thing working by the Wednesday morning. Frank Dawson was very helpful at this stage, and on the Thursday I phoned Thurston to say that we could at least try it out on the day. I asked Frank to go, expecting that Stella wouldn’t be able to make it; but at the last minute she said she’d found someone to look after her husband for a couple of nights, so in the end I took them both.
    I didn’t get a reply from Lynn. Every morning or evening I went over to Hockridge, but there was nothing there. On Wednesday Ray rang me at the office.
    â€˜Oh, hullo, Mike, is Lynn back at Greencroft now or still madly sowing her wild oats in London?’
    â€˜Still in London.’
    â€˜Ah, I thought so. I tried your phone three or four times. What’s her number in Town?’
    â€˜â€¦ She hasn’t got one.’
    â€˜But she must have, dear boy, she rang me on Friday. Unless it was from a call box. She’s still staying with Hazel – what’s it – Hazel Boylon, then?’
    I hesitated. ‘At …’
    â€˜At Swiss Cottage.’
    â€˜That’s the latest information. Oh, I believe we should congratulate you, Ray.’
    â€˜Thanks. I feel quite blissful. You met Margot?’
    â€˜Yes. When are you getting married?’
    â€˜Early next month. Mike, it’s going to be a very quiet wedding – Margot’s as shy as a deer but I hope very much you and Lynn will be able to come.’
    When I rang off I thought, so she’s moved on. I wonder why she’s moved on. But in a way it was more satisfactory to know she was with Hazel Boylon. It was the last time I thought about Lynn for several days.

Chapter Eight
    W E LEFT just after eight. Stella and Frank Dawson shared the back seat together, and the front passenger’s seat and the boot were occupied by three not particularly bulky packages wrapped in blankets which represented most of the primary headaches of the last few weeks. We were in Brecon soon after twelve-thirty and reached Llanveryan about an hour later in time for a rather delayed lunch.
    Llanveryan had been an aerodrome – a glorified landing strip – in the first place; then it had been where some of the early work on guided missiles had been tried out. It was on the sea side of the Cambrian Mountains and in the winter would be a bleak spot, but Friday was