The Good Companions by J.B. Priestley — Read

We left Inigo Jollifant hurrying away from Washbury Manor in the darkness of Monday night. We have just seen him arrive at the Station Refreshment Rooms in Rawsley on Thursday afternoon. In order to understand how he came to be there at all, we must know what happened to him during those three days, or, to be more precise, those sixty-four hours that began at 12: 30 a.m. on Tuesday.

Then it was that Inigo decided that Fauntley had been right. He ought to have gone to bed. The night was not warm enough and certainly not light enough to make walking very pleasant, especially after a long day of French and History and birthday celebrations. He ought to have drunk more Rob Roy or less. As it was, Rob had played him false, for after conjuring him out of the school, out of his bed, he had not stayed with him and kept him glowing inside but had gradually dropped behind, and now, at the end of half an hour's walk, had slunk away altogether. A little more Rob or a little less, and he would have been in bed now. So Inigo argued, and incidentally entertained himself, as he walked the last half mile or so of a familiar side-road that linked Washbury to the world. When he came at last to the main road, running north and south, he was back again in the world, but there was little of it to be seen as nothing was happening in it. He turned to the right, then spent the next minute wondering which of the faint points of light was the North Star, and the next ten minutes wondering about stars in general. It was, as usual, a cheerless meditation. If you are going to bother about these things, he decided, you have to turn astronomer, to weigh them and measure them, out of sheer self-defence.