The sea was a trembling shadow lit now and again with the white gleam of a crested wave. On the horizon there still lingered the last pale rose of the setting sun and across the sky trembling bars of faint gold were swiftly vanishing before the oncoming stars. Morelli talked delightfully. He had been everywhere, it appeared, and spoke intimately of little obscure places in Germany and Italy that Tony had discovered in earlier years. Maradick was silent; they seemed to have forgotten him. They entered the town and passed through the market-place. Maradick looked for a moment at the old tower, standing out black and desolate and very lonely. In the hotel the dusk would be creeping into the little room of the minstrels. There would be no lights there, only the dust and the old chairs and the green table; from the open window you would see the last light of the setting sun, and there would be a scent of flowers, roses and pinks, from the garden below. They had stopped outside the old dark house with the curious carving. Morelli felt for the key. “I don’t know what my daughter will have prepared,” he said apologetically, “I gave her no warning.” CHAPTER VI SUPPER WITH JANET MORELLI The little hall was lit by a single lamp that glimmered redly in the background. Small though the hall was, its darkness gave it space and depth. It appeared to be hung with many strange and curious objects—weapons of various kinds, stuffed heads of wild animals, coloured silks and cloths of foreign countries and peoples. The walls themselves were of oak, and from this dark background these things gleamed and shone and twisted under the red light of the lamp in an alarming manner. An old grandfather clock tick-tocked solemnly in the darkness. Morelli led them up the stairs, with a pause every now and again to point out things of interest. “The house is, you know,” he said almost apologetically, “something of a museum. I have collected a good deal one way and another. Everything has its story.” Maradick thought, as his host said this, that he must know a great many stories, some of them perhaps scarcely creditable ones. The things that he saw had in his eyes a sinister effect. There could be nothing very pleasant about those leering animals and rustling, whispering skins; it gave the house, too, a stuffy, choked-up air, something a little too full, and full, too, of not quite the pleasantest things.