Read In Spite of Thunder for Free Online Page A

silhouetted her soft slender figure and threw a glow on the dark hair.
    “The Infant Prodigy of Fleet Street, Sir Gerald, is telling you the truth and the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Don’t you believe it?”
    “Dear lady! Of course I believe it. As far as it goes.”
    “As far as it goes?”
    “Dear lady! If I do our friend an injustice—”
    “Oh, stop this!”
    “Mrs. Ferrier had no need to touch her victim. She was used to being stared at; she expected to be stared at; she would never have dared touch him. He did turn faint, I grant you; but not from the altitude. I am now quite convinced she had drugged or poisoned him. And I think I see how she did it.”

IV
    H ATHAWAY, PEERING ROUND the side of his beard and moustache as though half triumphant and half defiant, bent forward to unfasten the clasp of the brief-case.
    “I’ve got an album of photographs here,” he continued, “which may convince both of you. Hector Matthews was a very tall man: six feet three inches, to be exact. A fairly low parapet, to him, could be a death-trap. Once you’ve drugged or poisoned him (eh?), you make him lean forward by pointing out and down.—Stop!”
    Brian, with bursting lungs, had been about to comment.
    The other man wouldn’t hear of it. Out of the brief-case on the sofa he took a large cardboard album, much thumbed and time-battered.
    “You have seen this before, I think?” And he held it up. “To keep any sort of photograph album is a loathsome and provincial habit. I don’t recommend it, except for a scientific (a purely scientific!) study of crime.”
    “Did you say scientific?”
    “I did.”
    “What else?”
    “Every photograph pasted in here, with the exception of the first one, was taken by the official Ministry of Propaganda in Germany. Pay no attention to the first one. That doesn’t concern us.”
    But it did concern them.
    “Hathaway, shall I tell you something about yourself?”
    The other man, as though struck in the face, opened the album so violently that he all but tore it apart. When it opened at the first page, a large full-face photograph of Eve Ferrier looked out with a glossy vividness as though alive in black and white.
    “Look at that!” Brian said. “Look at her . Then listen to yourself speak.”
    “Well?”
    “To anyone who didn’t know you, you’d sound like an obnoxious bounder with a personal spite against Mrs. Ferrier. But you’re not that. You’re a thoroughly good fellow.”
    Hathaway’s voice went high.
    “‘Obnoxious bounder.’ Confound your pompousness.” Breathing thinly, he flung the album on the sofa. “And don’t stand there and boom at me; this is insufferable; I won’t have it.”
    “Very well. I am as pompous and stuffy as you think I am. But somebody has got to be. We’re not the police, and Mrs. Ferrier is no case-history in a prison-record. You’re forgetting that; I was in danger of forgetting it myself until Miss Catford said what she did say.”
    “Thanks!” whispered Paula, who had taken a step forward. “Thanks!”
    Hathaway ran round behind the sofa, facing them over the back of it as though he were being physically attacked.
    “There’s no case against Mrs. Ferrier? Is that what you say, Innes?”
    “That’s it exactly. This talk of drugs or—”
    “Oh, no! I’ll remind you of what you yourself heard at the Hotel Metropole tonight. Desmond Ferrier says his wife is trying to poison him.”
    Back they swung in the old, ugly circle.
    “ Poison: that’s the operative word. I overheard it at the door, so don’t deny it. That’s why I didn’t intrude. I ‘hid,’ as you so sneeringly put it, because I wanted time to think. And in a telephone-box, just remember, because I had to put off a dinner-engagement with this lady here. That’s a part of the case; don’t think it’s not. And I shall be very happy to take it to Mrs. Ferrier herself.”
    “Yes, Sir Gerald, I’m quite sure you will,” said Paula. “So I