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He jumped up with an alacrity remarkable in so solid and well-furnished a person, and had thrown open the nail-studded front-door before Lucia had traversed the path of broken paving-stones, for she had lingered for a sad moment at Perdita's empty border. "Lucia mia!" he exclaimed. "Ben arrivata! So you walked from the station?" "Si, Peppino, mio caro," she said. "Sta bene?"
Two torches flared in iron holders in the masonry, and by the light of them they saw a strange and fearful sight. At the end of the open place a heavy, nail-studded door stood wide, revealing a cell, or rather a little cave beyond those who are curious can see it to this day.
He opened the door and stood there listening. The insolent crunch, crunch, crunch of heavy nail-studded service boots came nearer, and a khaki column appeared on the winding road. The housewife, whose aching eyes had searched the road for Boudru all day, saw them too. "Look," she cried, "look! The English soldiers are coming. Do you see?" They were coming!
It seemed to her too like her recent experience of the secret passage, and then she exclaimed in a voice of frank awe and admiration, when he opened the nail-studded, iron-bound door at the end: "Oh! how divine!" And it was indeed. A gem of the finest period of early Gothic architecture, adorned with all trophies which love, fear and contrition could compel from the art of the ages.
With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots. They had also their long staves in hand.
Madame de Montespan lived in great magnificence after the triumph of her rival, and spent freely the vast sums which the king's generosity had furnished her with. Eventually, having exhausted all that this world could offer, she took to hair-shirts and nail-studded girdles, in the hope of securing a good position in the next. Her horror of death was excessive.
The weird minor notes floating out on the night seemed a wailing echo of the agonised disappointment in Paul's heart more than once a mad impulse to go back convulsed his being before he reached the yacht but it was not till afterwards that he remembered as a strange circumstance the fact that with Dmitry's first words at the nail-studded door Vasili had vanished into darkness.
At the edge of the central stain were smears and, among them, half the impress of a big, nail-studded boot. "Have the workmen been in here this morning?" asked Brendon, and Inspector Halfyard answered that they had not. "Two constables were here last night after one o'clock the men I sent from Princetown when Mrs. Pendean gave the alarm," he said.
The door, of oak, nail-studded, gives entrance to a noble hall, at the end of which is another door, opening upon another portico which leads to the garden. This hall is marvellously well preserved. The panelled wainscot, about three feet high, is of chestnut. A magnificent Spanish leather with figures in relief, the gilding now peeled off or reddened, covers the walls.
Sleuth must have been stooping down, for his tall, lank form had been quite concealed till he stepped forward from behind the low wall on to the flagged path leading to the front door. The lodger was carrying a brown paper parcel, and, as he walked along, the new boots he was wearing creaked, and the tap-tap of hard nail-studded heels rang out on the flat-stones of the narrow path.
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