There was another question, too, which she had debated that night. Why
did his reference to the American detective, Beale, so greatly embarrass
her?
She had reached the point where even such tremendous subjects of debate
had become less interesting than the answer to that question which was
furnished, when a knock came to her door and a gruff voice said:
"Breakfast!"
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. The man called Gregory was
standing on the landing. He jerked his thumb to the room opposite.
"You can use both these rooms," he said, "but you can't come downstairs.
I have put your breakfast in there."
She followed the thumb across the landing and found herself in a plainly
furnished sitting-room. The table had been laid with a respectable
breakfast, and until she had appeased her healthy young appetite she
took very little stock of her surroundings.
The man came up in half an hour to clear away the table.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me where I am?" asked Oliva.
"I am not going to tell you anything," said Gregory.
"I suppose you know that by detaining me here you are committing a very
serious crime?"
"Tell it to the doctor," said the man, with a queer little smile.
She followed him out to the landing. She wanted to see what sort of
guard was kept and what possibilities there were of escape. Somehow it
seemed easier to make a reconnaissance now under his very eyes than it
had been in the night, when in every shadow had lurked a menace.
She did not follow him far, however. He put down the tray at the head of
the stairs and reaching out both his hands drew two sliding doors from
the wall and snapped them in her face. She heard the click of a door and
knew that any chance of escape from this direction was hopeless. The
doors had slid noiselessly on their oiled runners and had formed for her
a little lobby of the landing. She guessed that the sliding doors had
been closed after van Heerden's departure. She had exhausted all the
possibilities of her bedroom and now began an inspection of the other.
Like its fellow, the windows were barred. There was a bookshelf, crowded
with old volumes, mostly on matters ecclesiastical or theological. She
looked at it thoughtfully.
"Now, if I were clever like Mr. Beale," she said aloud, "I could deduce
quite a lot from this room."
A distant church bell began to clang and she realized with a start that
the day was Sunday. She looked at her watch and was amazed to see it was
nearly eleven. She must have slept longer than she had thought.
This window afforded her no better view than did that of the bedroom,
except that she could see the gate more plainly and what looked to be
the end of a low-roofed brick building which had been erected against
the wall. She craned her neck, looking left and right, but the bushes
had been carefully planted to give the previous occupants of these two
rooms greater privacy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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