The Secret House quotes

“Sit down,” he said—he spoke in French—“and don’t, I beg of you, be alarmed.”

“Monsieur,” said the newcomer easily, “be assured that I am not alarmed. In this world nothing has ever alarmed me except my own distressing poverty and the prospect of dying poor.”

The veiled figure said nothing for a while.

It was a bad night in London, not wild or turbulent, but swathed to the eyes like an Eastern woman in a soft grey garment of fog.

It engulfed the walled canyons of the city, through which the traffic had roared all day, plugged up the maze of dark side-streets, and blotted out the open squares.

He is a genius.” She shut her lorgnette with a snap. “It delights me to talk with him.

He smiles and murmurs gay witticisms and quotes Talleyrand and Lucullus, and all the while, in the back of his head, quite out of reach, his real opinions of you are being tabulated and ranged neatly in a row like bottles on a shelf.

”

“I don’t like him very much, but uncle says that is my prejudice. He is one of those quiet, sure men who say very little and make one feel rather foolish. Don’t you know that feeling?

It is as though one were dancing the tango in front of the Sphinx.

”

T. B. looked past him.

“If a man cut his own head off before jumping into the river, it was suicide,” he said carefully, “for the body is headless. As for myself, I have never witnessed such a phenomenon, and I am sceptical.”

A train drew into the arrival platform at Waterloo and a tall man alighted. Nearer at hand he did not appear to be so young as the first impression suggested.

They waited until he had disappeared round the corner of the house, and then crossed the remaining space of lawn. T. B. had been carrying a little canvas bag, and now he put his hand inside and withdrew by the ears a struggling rabbit.

“Little friend,” he whispered, “you must be sacrificed in the cause of scientific criminal investigation.”

He mounted the steps which led to the entrance hall. The steel-beaded curtain still hung before the door almost brushing the mat as he had seen it.

She finished her hurried breakfast and rose.

“You have never approved of anything, Jerry,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder as she passed.

She looked through the window; the victoria she had ordered was waiting at the door, with the imperturbable Brown sitting on the box.

But the search was fruitless; Lady Constance Dex had disappeared as though the earth had opened and swallowed her up. There was no sign of a trap in the whole of the little building, and T. B. was baffled.

“It is a scientific axiom,” he said, addressing Ela with a thoughtful glint in his eye, “that matter must occupy space, therefore Lady Constance Dex must be in existence, she cannot have evaporated into thin air, and I am not going to leave this place until I find her.”

Ela was thinking deeply, and frowning at the untidiness of the table.

The lawyer looked at him steadily.

“His Majesty’s prisons are filled with men who specialize in that kind of cleverness,” he said, drily, and left Poltavo without another word.

“You may be assured, excellent signor,” said the man with a little grin, “that I shall not send you telegrams, for I cannot write.”

“A splendid deficiency,” said Poltavo.

He took up a letter from the table.