Affinities, and Other StoriesRinehart, Mary Roberts
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Affinities, and Other Stories
Rinehart, Mary Roberts
Fiction; Short stories
So I picked up a candle and trembled through the darkness toward where
the breakfast-room ought to be. I went through a square garden-hall
which shook when I did, and the motor coat around my shoulders made the
shadow of a pirate on the wall.
I found the breakfast-room and the mantel cupboard at last, and, putting
the candle on a chair, stood for a moment listening, my hands clapped
over my heart. I thought I heard some one walking over bare boards near
by, but the sounds, whatever they were, ceased.
The mantel cupboard was locked. I pulled and twisted at the knob to no
purpose. Finally, I dug at the lock with a hairpin, and something gave;
the door swung open with a squeak, and a moment later I had a flannel
case in my hands and was taking out some silver forks. At that moment a
plate in the cupboard fell forward with a slam, and something leaped on
to the forks, which I dropped with a crash. The candle went out
immediately and, gasping for breath, I backed against the cupboard and
stood staring into the blackness of the room.
The door by which I had entered was a faint, yellowish rectangle from
the distant hall lamp. That is, it had been a rectangle. It was partly
obscured now. And gradually the opacity took on the height and breadth
and general outline of a man. He was pointing a revolver at me!
III
I think it occurred to him then that I might be pointing something at
him--not knowing that my deadliest weapon was a silver fork. For he slid
inside the room with his back against the wall. And there we stood,
backed against opposite corners, staring into the darkness, and I, for
one, totally unable to speak. Finally, he said: "I think it will end
right here."
"I--I don't know what you mean," I quavered, for I was plainly expected
to say something. There was another total silence, which I learned
afterward was inability on _his_ part to speak. Then----
"By Jove!" he exclaimed; and then again, under his breath: "By Jove!"
(That assured me somewhat. "By Jove" is so largely a gentleman's
exclamation. If he had said "Blow me," which is English lower class, or
"Shiver my timbers," I know I should have shivered mine. But "By Jove"
gave me courage.)
He fumbled for and lighted a match then, and took a step forward. We had
a ghastly glimpse of each other before the match went out, and I saw he
was _in tweeds and knickers_, and had one of Daphne's sandwiches in his
left hand. He saw the candle then and, stepping forward, he lighted it
where it stood on the chair. And when he had lighted it and put it on
the table he actually smiled across it.
"I am not sure yet that I am awake," he said easily. "Please don't
disappear. The sandwich seems real enough, but that's the way in dreams.
You find something delectable and wake up before you taste it. You see,
the sandwich is gone already."
"You dropped it," I said as calmly as I could.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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