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Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits, impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken part in them fell to robbing on their private account.
Brayne has left the house." "Left!" cried Valentin, and rose for the first time to his feet. "Gone. Scooted. Evaporated," replied Ivan in humorous French. "His hat and coat are gone, too, and I'll tell you something to cap it all. I ran outside the house to find any traces of him, and I found one, and a big trace, too." "What do you mean?" asked Valentin.
In the centre of this morbid silence an innocent voice said: "Was it a very long cigar?" The change of thought was so sharp that they had to look round to see who had spoken. "I mean," said little Father Brown, from the corner of the room, "I mean that cigar Mr. Brayne is finishing. It seems nearly as long as a walking-stick."
Despite the irrelevance there was assent as well as irritation in Valentin's face as he lifted his head. "Quite right," he remarked sharply. "Ivan, go and see about Mr. Brayne again, and bring him here at once." The instant the factotum had closed the door, Valentin addressed the girl with an entirely new earnestness.
I don't doubt that Brayne did it; his flight, I fancy, proves that. But as to how he did it. First difficulty: Why should a man kill another man with a great hulking sabre, when he can almost kill him with a pocket knife and put it back in his pocket? Second difficulty: Why was there no noise or outcry? Does a man commonly see another come up waving a scimitar and offer no remarks?
"Great Heaven!" cried O'Brien. "Is Brayne a monomaniac?" "There are American vendettas," said the priest impassively. Then he added: "They want you to come to the library and see it." Commandant O'Brien followed the others towards the inquest, feeling decidedly sick. As a soldier, he loathed all this secretive carnage; where were these extravagant amputations going to stop?
I had better tell you that that letter of Monsieur Ferrand's to mother was impudent. Of course you did n't know what was in it; but when Professor Brayne was asking you about him at breakfast, I felt that you believed that he was right and we were wrong, and I can't understand it. And then in the afternoon, when that woman hurt her horse, it was all as if you were on her side.
He was stung every sixty seconds with the thought that the scamp O'Brien might be signalling to Margaret somehow; he did not attempt to imagine how. He was left over the coffee with Brayne, the hoary Yankee who believed in all religions, and Valentin, the grizzled Frenchman who believed in none. They could argue with each other, but neither could appeal to him.
Towse replyed that he should be very unwilling to goe to ye Duke of Buckingham upon such an errand, whereby he should gaine nothing but reproach and contempt, and to be esteemed a Madman, and therefore desired to be exscused from ye employment, but ye Apparition pressd him wth. much earnestness to undertake it, telling him that ye Circumstances and secret Discoveries which he should be able to make to ye Duke of such passages in ye course of his life which were known to none but himselfe, would make it appeare that ye message was not ye fancy of a Distempered Brayne, but a reality, and so ye Apparition tooke his leave of him for that night and telling him that he would give him leave to consider till the next night, and then he would come to receave his answer wheather he would undertake to deliver his message or no.
Scrivener, and I stood in the cabin doorway half afraid to venture in and meet the eyes of all the strangers present. I felt the colour mounting warmly in my cheek, and my feet were very fain to run away, when Captain Henry Brayne, the brave and cheery commander of the frigate, caught sight of me, and, rising hastily, led me to a seat at his own right hand.
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