The Rasp quotes

Anthony Ruthven Gethryn was something of an oddity. A man of action who dreamed while he acted; a dreamer who acted while he dreamed.

The son of a hunting country gentleman of the old type, who was yet one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his day, and of a Spanish lady of impoverished and exiled family who had, before her marriage with Sir William Gethryn, been in turn …

“Then—then—you are a ’tective, sir.”

“What exactly I am,” said Anthony, “God Himself may know. I do not. But you can make five pounds if you want it.”

As they walked, first along the white road, then through fields and finally along the bank of that rushing, fussy, barely twenty-yards wide little river, the Marle, Mr. Syme told what he knew.

“Of course,” he said, “she was a little fool to try it. Think of the distance. And the tide was strong. It’d be impossible even for an athletic Englishwoman.”

He is to be congratulated upon making so ridiculous a statement in so natural a tone.

“Oh! Mr. Gethryn, surely not,” cried Dora excitedly. “Why Loo—”

Those eyes blazed at him. “Do you dare to suggest that I—”

“Oh, woman, Illogicality should be thy name,” Anthony groaned.

“I was merely endeavouring, madam, to show how safe you’d be in telling me all that you know. Listen. I’m in this business privately. I oblige a friend. If I don’t like my own conclusions, I shall say nothing about them.

Anthony nodded. “More prejudice, you see. And I know the man the bobbies have got hold of had nothing to do with it either. Again prejudice.

Bias, lady, bias! There’s nothing like it to clear the head, nothing!

Now, have you a telephone?”

She turned in a flash. “You were asleep,” she said, and blushed under the stare of the green eyes.

“I’m so psychic, you know,” sighed Anthony. “I always know when spirits are about.”

She laughed; and the sound gave him more pleasure even that he had anticipated. Like her voice, it was low and soft and golden.

“I,” said Anthony, opening the door,

“I am Dupont, I am Lecoq, I’m Fortune, Holmes and Rouletabille. Good night.”

She was left staring at the closed door. When she opened it to peer into the hall, he had gone.

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely safe, that’s what I feel.” A pause. “Just as a tiny girl feels if her father takes her out, say, in a tandem.”

Anthony fell from heaven with a crash. Good God! “Father!”

So he had aroused an emotion akin to filial, had he? Unfortunately for him, to drive a car a man must keep his eyes on the road: he had not seen the little half-smile of joyous mockery that had accompanied that last thrust.

Mrs. Roland Mainwaring pleased Anthony not at all. It is to be deplored that he was at no pains to conceal his distaste.

“Mrs. Mainwaring?” he said. “Madam, the thrill is yours.”

She stood blocking his path. Perforce he stood still.

Awestricken eyes were rolled at him. “Oh, colonel,” she whispered. “Oh, colonel! How won‑derful!” Then, coyly: “How lucky for little me that I’m a poor, weak woman!”

“I have always,” said Anthony gravely, “believed in equal rights for women. They occupy an equal footing with men in my⁠—opinions.”

He bowed and brushed past her, crossing the hall.

“That’s nothing,” Anthony said.

“I go a damn sight too fast for myself sometimes.”

“But what are you driving at? What’s all this about the wood-rasp?”

This time it was her eyes that fell. Anthony was angry—with himself.

And a man angry with himself is invincible.

With a grace that burned a picture into his mind she crossed the room, to stand with her back to the door.

Down in the street, Anthony jumped into his car; then for a moment sat staring before him. Like many lesser men, he had, being angry, said more than he had meant. And now he was frightened.

They had, it must be admitted, behaved like silly children. Very silly children. But then the best people so often do.

For Belford’s shrivelled, sharp-featured little face was working in a way which was not good to see.

Gratitude is sometimes more terrible to watch than baser emotions.

Anthony thrust the notes into one limp hand and beat hurried retreat.

“P.S.—You were rather hard on me, weren’t you? You see, I had asked Dot and she had urged me to go to town!”

There is a peculiar and subtle and quite indefinable pleasure that comes to a man when the woman he loves first writes to him.

Soever curt, soever banal the letter, there is no matter. It is something from Her to him; something altogether private and secret; something She has set down for him to read; something not to be shared with a sordid world.

Suddenly there came a knocking on the great front door. This knocking was not loud, yet it seemed to the old man the more terrible for that.

For there is always something terrible about a knock upon a door.

For a full minute he strove to leave the shelter of the little, cheerful, glowing room. At last he succeeded, struggling through the beastly mysteries of the dimly lighted hall to open with trembling hands the great oak door.