The Megstone Plot [antikvár]

CHAPTER iIt all began with a chance encounter on a murky evening in November 1954. I had just left the office and had stopped in Whitehall to buy a paper. As I turnéd away from the stand I felt a detaining hand on my arm and a man said, "Surely it's Glive Easton?"I knew his face, but for a second I couldn't place him."Dunoon!" he saidand then it all came back. His name was Walter Cowley. He'd had a job during the war advising on low temperature equipment for the Navy, and I'd run into him on the Clyde when the H95 was being fitted out for an Arctic mission. It had been a brief and superficial acquaintance, but as I remembered it he'd been a tolerable drinking companion in a lean week and I wasn't too appalled at seeing him again.It was cold for standing about so I suggested we should pop into the Red Lion and have a chat. He obviously wanted to talk, but he said his wife was expecting him and wouldn't I go along and have a drink with them at home it wouldn't take more than three or four minutes in a taxi, and he knew she would be delighted to meet me. I'd have preferred the pub, but he pressed me and I couldn't decently refuse.On the way, we exchanged our bits of news. I told him I'd been working at the Admiralty as a sort of back-room boy since the war, and that I hadn't married, and that I was living in a fiat near Sloane Square. He told me that after leaving the Service he'd gone back to his refrigerating plánt business, and that he was doing fairly well on the export side and travelled abroad a good deal. He said