Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was wearing no collar, so he must have been going to bed when the knock came. Thalassa's eyes dwelt on the exposed flesh with a steady yet wondering contemplation. The lamp in his hand wavered slightly. Dr. Ravenshaw rose to his feet, oblivious of the man who was staring at his neck from behind. His downward glance rested on Sisily's face, and his eyes were grave.
Pendleton knocked, and an answer came quickly. The door was partly opened, and Thalassa's voice from within parleyed: "Who's there?" "Mrs. Pendleton your master's sister," was the reply. "Let us in, Thalassa." The door was at once opened wide, and Thalassa stood back for them to enter. By the light of the lamp he carried they saw that he was dressed and coated for a journey, with his hat on.
That theory not only presupposed strong devotion on Thalassa's part for a girl he had known from childhood, which was a theory reasonable of belief, but it also suggested that he bore a deep grudge against his master on his own account, sufficient to cause him to refrain from doing anything to prevent the accomplishment of the murder, and to risk his own skin afterwards to shield the girl from the consequences.
"And it frightened the dog, too, started it barking." "Is that the dog I heard whining downstairs?" "Maybe it is. I've got it shut up in the cellar." "Whose dog is it?" "His." Thalassa's eyes travelled towards Robert Turold's bedroom. "Is it howling through grief?" "More like from fright. Dogs are like people, frightened of their own shadows, sometimes.
After what I suffered alone on that island through you and Turold? You'd hardly have known me if you'd met me six months afterwards instead of thirty years. Robert Turold didn't know me. Nobody knew me." Thalassa's eyes still dwelt upon him with the unwilling look of a man compelled to gaze upon an evocation of the dead. "Where did you get to that night?" he quavered.
"Do you mean to tell me that you did not see your master's daughter, or let her into the house?" "I did not." "Could anybody have got into the house without your knowledge?" "Maybe." "Did you hear anybody?" "How could I hear anybody when I was down in the coal cellar?" The open sneer on Thalassa's face suggested that he was not to be caught by verbal traps.
A piece of coal jumped from the fire with a hissing noise, and fell at Mrs. Thalassa's feet. She got up to replace it, and observed that she was alone. She thought she heard her husband's footsteps in the passage, and opened the door. But there was nobody there. The lower part of the house was gloomy and dark, but she could see the lamp glimmering on the hall stand.
I'm keeping my eye open for 'un walked the coast for miles, I have, looking for him. He won't take me unawares, same as Turold." His eyes searched the cliffs behind them. "You may not recognize him if you meet him. It is thirty years since you saw him. A man changes a lot in thirty years." "That's true, 'tis a thought which never crossed my mind." Thalassa's look was troubled.
It was Barrant's lot to listen to many strange stories which were always true, according to the narrators, but generally they caused him to feel ashamed of the poverty of human invention. He was not immediately concerned to discover whether Thalassa's story was true or false, or whether it had been concocted between him and Charles with the object of deceiving the authorities.
Thalassa's story, as it stood, proved that Sisily must have left the house long before then. But Charles's story threw suspicion back on to Sisily by suggesting that the police had been misled about the time of the murder, which must have been committed at least half an hour earlier than they assumed. Charles did not attempt to point out this supposed flaw in the detective's reasoning.
Word Of The Day