“We’re giving out that it was the rehearsal of a cinema production.”
“Well, I’ll be hanged!... All right. I’ll make myself scarce. I’ll shove off somewhere this very night.”
And three hours later he was on the boat bound for Corsica.
END OF BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE
The Man Hunt
CHAPTER ONE
THE VALLEY OF THE GOLO
1.
IN the glimmer of early dawn, the big boat swung slowly into the harbour. Under the lightening sky the steel grey waters changed to steel blue; and the dark mysterious land smiled into friendliness. The grey cubes piled against the mountain brightened into tall houses still locked in sleep. Presently, with a fore-glow of citron, the clear rim of the sun cut the sea-line; and the sea became jade green. The air was diamond pure; the mountains took on colour; and Bastia awakened to another careless day.
High caserne-like houses, massive-walled and stucco-fronted; shabby shops half a century behind the times; mustiness and age; cigarettes, vendetta knives, and goat-flesh,—these were some of Hugh’s first impressions of Bastia.
He found a room in a tall hotel near the upper end of the town. It had vast rambling corridors with many doors, none of which were numbered, and to find his room he had to count each time the doorways from the head of the staircase. The interiors of all the rooms were alike in their simplicity. Each had high yellow walls, and a ceiling painted with a design of flowers and fruit, a bed, a commode with water-jug, two cane bottomed chairs.