The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred BurtonOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Detective and mystery stories
"I'm all for building," Mrs. Burton declared. "I don't care for mouldy
old ruins, with ivy and damp places upon the walls. I like something
fine and spick and span and handsome, with a tower to it, and a long
straight drive that you can see down to the road; plenty of stone work
about the windows, and good square rooms. As for the garden, well, let
that come. We can plant a lot of small trees about, and lay down a
lawn. I don't care about other folks' leavings in houses, and a lot of
trees around a place always did put me off. Have you told him where to
go to?"
Burton shook his head.
"I just told him to drive about thirty or forty miles into the
country," he said. "It doesn't matter in what direction, does it? We
may see something that will suit us."
The car, with its splendid easy motion, sped noiselessly through the
suburbs and out into the country. It seemed to Mr. Burton that he must
have dozed. He had been up late the night before, and for several
nights before that. He was a little puffy about the cheeks and his eyes
were not so bright as they had been. He had developed a habit of dozing
off in odd places. When he awoke, he sat up with a start. He had been
dreaming. Surely this was a part of the dream! The car was going very
slowly indeed. On one side of him was a common, with bushes of flaming
gorse and clumps of heather, and little ragged plantations of pine
trees; and on his right, a low, old-fashioned house, a lawn of velvet,
and a great cedar tree; a walled garden with straight, box-bordered
paths, a garden full of old-fashioned flowers whose perfume seemed
suddenly to be tearing at some newly-awakened part of the man. He sat
up. He stared at the little seat among the rose bushes. Surely he was
back again, back again in that strange world, where the flavor of
existence was a different thing, where his head had touched the clouds,
where all the gross cares and pleasures of his everyday life had fallen
away! Was it the perfume of the roses, of the stocks, which had
suddenly appealed to some dormant sense of beauty? Or had he indeed
passed back for a moment into that world concerning which he had
sometimes strange, half doubtful thoughts? He leaned forward, and his
eyes wandered feverishly among the hidden places of the garden. The
seat was empty. Propped up against the hedge was a notice board: "This
House to Let."
"What on earth are you staring at?" Mrs. Burton demanded, with some
acerbity. "A silly little place like that would be no use to us. I
don't know what the people who've been living there could have been
thinking about, to let the garden get into such a state. Fancy a nasty
dark tree like that, too, keeping all the sun away from the house! I'd
have it cut down if it were mine. What on earth are you looking at,
Alfred Burton?"
He turned towards her, heavy-eyed.
"Somewhere under that cedar tree," he said, "a man's soul was buried. I
was wondering if its ghost ever walked!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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