Landslide. Desmond Bagley
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Название: Landslide
Автор: Desmond Bagley
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Приключения: прочее
isbn: 9780008211448
isbn:
DESMOND BAGLEY
Landslide
HARPER
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1967
Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1967
Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008211165
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN 9780008211448
Version: 2016-11-23
CONTENTS
For Philip Joseph and all good booksellers
I was tired when I got off the bus at Fort Farrell. No matter how soft the suspension of the bus and how comfortable the seat you still feel as though you’ve been sitting on a sack of rocks for a few hours, so I was tired and not very impressed by my first view of Fort Farrell – The Biggest Little City in the North-Eastern Interior – or so the sign said at the city limits. Someone must have forgotten Dawson Creek.
This was the end of the line for the bus and it didn’t stay long. I got off, nobody got on, and it turned and wheeled away back towards the Peace River and Fort St John, back towards civilization. The population of Fort Farrell had been increased by one – temporarily.
It was mid-afternoon and I had time to do the one bit of business that would decide if I stayed in this backwoods metropolis, so instead of looking for a hotel I checked my bag at the depot and asked where I could find the Matterson Building. The little fat guy who appeared to be the factotum around the depot looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and tittered. ‘You must be a stranger round here.’
‘Seeing I just got off the bus it may be possible,’ I conceded. I wanted to get information, not to give it.
He grunted and the twinkle disappeared. ‘It’s on King Street; you can’t miss it unless you’re blind,’ he said curtly. He was another of those cracker-barrel characters who think they’ve got the franchise on wisecracks – small towns are full of them. To hell with him! I was in no mood for making friends, although I would have to try to influence people pretty soon.
High Street was the main drag, running as straight as though it had been drawn by a rule. Not only was it the main street but it was practically the only street of Fort Farrell – pop. 1,806 plus one. There was the usual line of false-fronted buildings trying to look bigger than they were and holding the commercial enterprises by which the locals tried to make an honest dollar – the gas stations and auto dealers, a grocery that called itself a supermarket, a barber’s shop, ‘Paris Modes’ selling women’s fripperies, a store selling fishing tackle and hunting gear. I noticed that the name of Matterson came up with monotonous regularity and concluded that Matterson was a big pumpkin in Fort Farrell.
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