工程师大拇指案 31实地调查(2)（在线收听）

Some three hours or so afterwards we were all in the train together, bound from Reading to the little Berkshire village.

大约过了三个小时，我们一起上了火车，从雷丁出发前往伯克郡的小村子。

There were Sherlock Holmes, the hydraulic engineer, Inspector Bradstreet, of Scotland Yard, a plain-clothes man, and myself.

一行数人有歇洛克·福尔摩斯、那个水利工程师、苏格兰场的布雷兹特里特巡官，还有一位便衣侦探和我。

Bradstreet had spread an ordnance map of the county out upon the seat

布雷兹特里特在座位上铺开一张本郡的军用地图，

and was busy with his compasses drawing a circle with Eyford for its centre.

忙着用圆规以艾津为中心画了一个圆圈。

"There you are," said he. "That circle is drawn at a radius of ten miles from the village.

"就在这儿，"他说，"这个圆圈是以这个车站为中心、十英里为半径画的。

The place we want must be somewhere near that line. You said ten miles, I think, sir."

我们要找的那个地方大约是在靠近这边线的某个地方。先生，我记得您说的是十英里。"

"It was an hour's good drive."

"马车足足跑了一小时。"

"And you think that they brought you back all that way when you were unconscious?"

"您以为他们是在您昏迷之中把您从那么老远送回来的吗？"

"They must have done so. I have a confused memory, too, of having been lifted and conveyed somewhere."

"想必他们是这样做的。我模模糊糊地有点记得似乎是被抬起来运到什么地方去过。"

"What I cannot understand," said I, "is why they should have spared you when they found you lying fainting in the garden.

"我不能理解的是，"我说，"为什么他们在发现您昏迷在花园里时会饶了您？

Perhaps the villain was softened by the woman's entreaties."

可能那个坏蛋由于那个女人求情心软了？"

"I hardly think that likely. I never saw a more inexorable face in my life."

"我认为那不大可能。我一生中从来没有见到过比那更冷酷的面孔。"