United States or Israel ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"She returns the compliment you have paid her, and thinks you not to be trusted," I suggested. "If I have to climb on the roof and pull off the tiles, I'll see what is in that room before I go to bed tonight!" Julia declared. Then Mrs Ragg came back for the tablecloth. "I slept very badly last night, Mrs Ragg," said Julia. Mrs Ragg sucked in her cheeks, sighed heavily, made no answer.
He stopped for a moment, looked at the caretaker, looked back to us with a smile. "The mystery is solved. Your Mrs Ragg and mine are not the same person," he said. Julia, who had been round to the back of the house to make inspection, came running to me with the news that the blind was up in the caretaker's bedroom, and the window open. "There is a ladder against the outhouse," she said.
And we have had perhaps more than enough of the pseudo Mrs Ragg. Julia and I decided we had had enough also of Sea-Strand Cottage. We took up our abode temporarily at the Royal George. Our new-made friend for after this adventure we could but look on him as a friend had lived there for a month and could recommend it.
Mrs Ragg had been so much occupied all the morning that she had forgotten to put the chicken in the oven until she saw us at the gate, she told us. "Of course we can't put up with this. We will leave to-morrow," Julia declared. But I, who had paid the caretaker a week's salary in advance, was of opinion we should have a little more for our money.
"She has got those men locked up there," Julia continued, with her air of assurance. "Nonsense! What for?" "Murder," said Julia, laconically; and energetically crumbled bread for the sauce. "What were two men doing here this morning?" I asked, with assumed carelessness, of Mrs Ragg when next we encountered. She mumbled the words "two men?" and stared at me by way of answer.
Running upstairs I brought the two light cases down myself. "There is room for them in the kitchen," Mrs Ragg said. But, carrying one myself, I told her to bring the other across to the empty shed. Arrived there, however, we found the door of the shed locked. "Fetch the key," I ordered. She stood and looked at me, but did not move. "Tell me where the key is, and let me fetch it."
"We have hired the cottage; I presume we have the right to look even into your room, if we deem it advisable," Julia said, with her haughtiest air. "So, you always keep your room locked, Mrs Ragg?" "When strangers are about I do," Mrs Ragg replied; and although she was apparently afraid of us she gazed upon us with no goodwill.
Julia, her hands in her coat-pockets, bent her supple body forward across the table, bringing her eager face nearer to the stranger's. "Did you see her? Mrs Ragg?" she asked. He had seen her. "Well?" "She seemed all right," he said; and Julia lay back, disappointed, in her chair again. "To me she seems all wrong," she said.
When she had finished her breakfast, and had withdrawn her thoughts from the engrossing subject of her dream sufficiently to grumble about the aching void where the chops should have been, she sprang up from the table and loudly tinkled the little bell. "For Mrs Ragg to clear away," she explained to me.
"Put the chicken back in the oven, and I will see to the cooking of it," Julia said, when we had sufficiently contemplated the more than half-raw carcase of the fowl. "My sister is an invalid," she continued; "I am anxious that she should not be quite starved. I will cook the chicken therefore, and you will be responsible, perhaps, for the bread-sauce, Mrs Ragg."
Word Of The Day