: Terry by Hilton James - English fiction 20th century

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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nally, and with completely bad manners, he shouted across the table in response to some remark, not addressed to him, that he chanced to have overheard. "Dat iss one goot price," he bellowed at a couple of aged professors who were discussing confidentially the amount of money they had made out of certain text-books. But it wasn't hard to believe that he was clever, and he certainly showed signs of being well-informed about other matters besides science. "I haf heard of Hampstead before," he said once. "It iss where--iss it not?--you haf your 'Arry and your 'Arriet on the holiday of the banks." That, I thought, was not bad for a Russian-born Austrian.

My own position at table was between Helen and the greatest living authority on palaeobotany, who, being dyspeptic as well as deaf, must have had a rather miserable time. But Helen talked most of the while to her other neighbour, a middle-aged professor of physics. Once she turned to me and said, very softly: "I don't think I like Karelsky very much.... Is Terry going to go to Vienna with him?"

"I think so," I answered, and then she said, lightly: "I wonder how he'll like it--being abroad...."

All that time the temperature was rising. I mean the actual, physical temperature; somebody who, as befitted a scientist, carried a pocket thermometer about with him, informed us that the mercury stood at eighty-three. Because of the heat, coffee and liqueurs were served on the lawn beyond the French windows, and there, without the artificial breeze of electric fans, the air seemed even hotter. Collars were limp; beads of sweat ran down scientific noses and beards; even scientific tempers were not too equable. Only Severn, talking more than anybody, managed to give an impression of coolness; it reminded him, he said, of an evening he had once spent in Colombo. He told an exciting story about a Cingalese who, maddened by the heat, ran amok and killed half-a-dozen passers-by. Then Karelsky discussed with him in German-English the effect of intense heat upon the human brain.... Of the whole crowd of us there in the garden, only those two seemed thoroughly alive--Karelsky with his huge face streaming with perspiration, and Severn like a lithe sharp-eyed panther. The rest were puppets, sagging in their armchairs and moving only to sip their brandy and iced coffee. The smell of vegetation rose up like steam out of the warm earth, but even the palaeobotanist was not enthusiastic about it. And Karelsky, with an immense bellow of "It iss verr hot" suddenly tore off his collar and tie and stuffed them in his pocket. I admired him for that; it was the sort of thing that needs courage of the kind that few of us possess. Severn, of course, laughed. It sounded to me like the mocking, diabolical laughter of a madman lost amidst tropical jungle; but that, no doubt, was only the combined effect of brandy, heat, and Severn's story of the maniac Cingalese.

Then at last the first streak of lightning flooded the garden and showed us the heavy trees, reaching over us like gigantic grasping arms. And it was in that sharp and blinding glow that I caught sight of Terry and Helen; they had completely separated themselves from the rest and were walking slowly across the further end of the lawns towards the kitchen-gardens....

"Yes ... Karelsky goes to Vienna to-morrow night, and Terry will accompany him, if he can make arrangements in time."

"That's rather quick work, isn't it?"

"I'll tell you this much," he went on, without waiting for my opinion, "Karelsky's a man of business as well as a man of science. He'll get his value out of Terry, you can bet your life. But then, what Terry must do is to get his value out of Karelsky. See?"

"And on the whole you think it'll be a good thing for Terry?"

I told him I hadn't seen her for some while, and soon afterwards he had to leave me to bid the first of the good-byes.

I stammered an apology and he interrupted hurriedly: "My dear chap, you needn't say all that. It has been an interesting example of what Karelsky was talking about--the effects of heat on the human brain. Or was it something else as well as the heat?... Anyhow, Professor Foljambe could hardly walk to his taxi. Even Terry the teetotaller had to clear off in a hurry."

"Did he?--Wh--why?"

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