Free Marazan by Nevil Shute

Tube and took a ticket for Waterloo. At Waterloo I came up into the daylight again and plunged at random into a labyrinth of mean houses and squalid streets. After walking for five minutes I found a post office and sent the following telegram:
    ‘Grigger will be found in a ditch by a haystack near the Dorchester Abingdon road tied up and covered over with hay.’
    I put a false name and address on this and passed it across the counter; the girl looked at me curiously as she gave me the change, but didn’t make any comment. I impressed myself on her memory by asking the way to St. Pancras Station, and being so dense that she had to explain it all to me twice. Then I got away, found my way back to Waterloo and so to Paddington again. I had a quarter of an hour to spare, so I went out and bought a cheap suitcase, into which I put the rucksack without unfastening it. It made me a little too conspicuous for my liking.
    I got down to Exeter without any further incident, though I must say I was glad the train didn’t stop at Didcot. It seemed to me that I shouldn’t run much risk in going to a hotel for the night so long as it was one in keeping with my clothes and general appearance. I wasn’t exactly tired, but I had the feeling that the chance of a good night in bed wasn’t one that I could afford to despise.
    I had stayed in the town once or twice when I had been flying in the neighbourhood, but I didn’t want to go to the sort of hotel that I had stayed at then. For one thing, they might remember me, and that would tend to spoil any dramatic effects that I might want to produce when I left the town. I took my bag and walked from the station up to the High Street, and then down the hill towards the river. I crossed the bridge and a little farther on I saw exactly the sort of place I was looking for, a ‘family and commercial’ hotel of a definitely middle-class type. I went in there and booked a room, signing myself in the register as E. C. Gullivant.
    I was afraid to stay in the hotel; it was becoming clear to me what a nerve-shaking thing it must be to be a genuine fugitive from justice. I didn’t quite consider myself as that yet, though I must say the Abingdon affair had turned me into something remarkably like it. I went out again into the street, and up the town, and presently I turned in to a picture-house.
    I like the pictures. It’s the only place where I can enjoy myself when I’m at all tired. I never was one for reading much, and most theatres nowadays seem to require that one should be a little drunk to appreciate them properly. But the pictures are different; I turned in to this show with my pipe, sat down in the darkness behind a pair of couples and began to think what I was going to do next. I thought it pretty certain that I had thrown off any pursuit from Abingdon; at the same time I had managed to lay a good fat red herring there in the approved desperate character style. My next move must be calculated to bring discredit on the fair name of Gullivant.
    This was Thursday evening. By this time Joan Stevenson would be in Salcombe fixing up the vessel for me—it seemed incredible that it was only that morning that I had left her and Compton. She would be clear of Salcombe by to-morrow afternoon; I could go down there to-morrow evening if I wished and get to sea at once. I knew that I could trust her to have everything ready for me.
    There were two girls in front of me sitting together and flanked by their attendant swains. Suddenly one of them turned to the other:
    ‘He’s bitten me!’ she said indignantly.
    This sent me into a paroxysm of subdued laughter and put a stop to any further planning for the moment. I laughed so much that they heard me and broke awayfrom the clinch; it was evident that I had spoiled their evening and presently they got up and went out, not without dignity. I was sorry then. It has always seemed to me that one should live and let live; after all, one never knows when one