Free Contango (Ill Wind) by James Hilton Page B

like to see it? No? Well, there you are, anyhow. This sort of thing
won’t do, you know, following men about and pestering
them….”
    With a quiet little cry of dreadfulness she put her hand to her head and
scampered away. But when she was a few dozen yards off she swung round,
flashed him her ever-bright smile, and called out: “It’s all
right. All my mistake….” Then she broke into a shrill peal of
laughter that echoed faintly across the valley to the green-blue glaciers. A
few heads looked out of windows, saw the puzzled man and the laughing woman,
and wondered what kind of joke, private or public, lay between them. But it
all seemed of small consequence, on that blazing August noontide in Mürren.
And a moment later Miss Faulkner turned the corner by the tramway-station and
was gone.
----

CHAPTER THREE. — STUART BROWN
    In the restaurant-car between Belfort and Paris, Stuart
Brown got into conversation with a dark-haired and very good-looking young
man sitting opposite. To Brown, who liked young men and who had lost an only
son, there was always pleasure in these encounters, the more so as their
transience minimised the risk of boredom. And at this particular moment Brown
was bored enough with his own company and with the world in general to
welcome any such attractive diversion. The deplorable issue of a recent
business visit to Italy, plus that annoying incident in Switzerland, had
induced what was for him an unwontedly darkened humour.
    The two chance travellers began to exchange commonplaces during the soup;
by the coffee stage the youth had proffered a visiting-card which declared
him to be a M. Palescu, of Bukarest. Brown did not reciprocate the intimacy,
but he put the card away in his pocket-book and congratulated Palescu on his
excellent English. “You speak so well,” he said, “that I
wasn’t at all sure you weren’t one of my countrymen.”
    “Ah, well, you see, my mother was English, and I have always had
many contacts with English people. I have had jobs in India, Malta, and
Egypt.”
    “You must have travelled a good deal.”
    The youth smiled. “That is one of the things I have been—a
traveller. What you call in England a ‘commercial’. Until
recently I worked for my uncle, who was the head of a big firm in Bukarest.
Then, early this year, owing to the crise mondiale, the firm went smash and
he killed himself. My parents are both dead and my sisters—”
    Brown toyed with his cigar, sympathetic but a little disappointed. He had
heard so many “hard luck” stories, and though he was by no means
cynical about them, he could not but prefer a conversation that did not so
soon and so inevitably drift into one. To his surprise and relief, however,
Palescu went on quite cheerfully: “My sisters have a little money,
which is lucky for them, and I— well, I never wanted to settle at one
thing for long. There’s so much I want to do, and at present I’m
my own master, at any rate, though I’m not yet making a
fortune.”
    Brown found this optimism in adversity rather refreshing, and his own
spirits willingly responded to it. He had always been a naturally optimistic
person himself; even during the darkest days of the War he had not despaired,
and throughout the post-War years of disappointments and disillusionments he
had found comfort in a steadfast if rather vague belief that things were
bound to take a turn for the better when they had finished taking turns for
the worse. Even so, however, the events of the first half of 1930 had given
his nerves one or two severe jolts, and in Italy he had just had a singularly
unpleasant experience.
    Still, he could exclaim, only those few weeks afterwards to his casual
acquaintance in the Paris train: “Splendid! It’s good to hear a
fellow of your age talking so hopefully. Most of the young chaps in England
nowadays …” He was about to enter upon his usual remarks about
demoralisation caused