波洛圣诞探案记01

PART ONE,DECEMBER 22ND,Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dimfog clouded the station. Large engines hissed ¹ superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the coldraw air. Everything was dirty and smoke-grimed.,Stephen thought with revulsion:,“What a foul ² country—what a foul city!”,His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well-dressed, attractivewomen, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone ³ set in a dingy ⁴ setting.,Sunshine—blue skies—gardens of flowers—cool blue flowers—hedges of plumbago—blueconvolvulus clinging to every little shanty ⁶.,And here—dirt, grime, and endless, incessant ⁷ crowds—moving, hurrying—jostling. Busyants running industriously ⁸ about their anthill.,For a moment he thought, “I wish I hadn’t come. .?.?. ”,Then he remembered his purpose and his lips set back in a grim line. No, by hell, he’d go onwith it! He’d planned this for years. He’d always meant to do—what he was going to do. Yes,he’d go on with it!,That momentary ¹⁰ reluctance ¹¹, that sudden questioning of himself: “Why? Is it worth it? Whydwell on the past? Why not wipe out the whole thing?
”—all that was only weakness. He was not aboy—to be turned this way and that by the whim ¹² of the moment. He was a man of forty, assured,purposeful. He would go on with it. He would do what he had come to England to do.,The iron hissed as it pressed the wet cloth. 熨斗压在湿布上时发出了嘶嘶声。,Take off those foul clothes and let me wash them.脱下那些脏衣服让我洗一洗 。