The Lighted WayOppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
General
The Lighted Way
Oppenheim, E. Phillips (Edward Phillips)
Detective and mystery stories
"I don't know that I can tell you exactly what the questions were,"
Arnold continued, "because they concerned some matters in which Mrs.
Weatherley and her brother were chiefly concerned. To tell you the
truth, ever since that night when I went to Hampstead to dine, the
oddest things seem to have happened to me. I have to pinch myself
sometimes to realize that this is London and that I am a clerk in
the office of a wholesale provision merchant. When I let myself go,
I seem to have been living in an unreal world, full of strange
excitements--a veritable Arabian Nights."
"There was that terrible murder," she murmured. "You saw that,
didn't you?"
He nodded.
"Not only saw it," he agreed, "but I seem, somehow, to have been
mixed up with people who know a great deal about it. However, I have
been told to mind my own business and I am going to. I have plenty
to occupy my thoughts in Tooley Street. I am going to close in my
little world and live there. The rest I am going to forget."
"You are coming back!" she whispered, with a joy in her tone which
amazed him.
"I suppose I am," he admitted. "I like and admire Mrs. Weatherley's
brother, Count Sabatini, and I have a genuine affection for Mrs.
Weatherley, but I don't understand them. I don't understand these
mysterious matters in which they seem mixed up."
"I do not believe," she declared, "that Count Sabatini would be
mixed up in anything dishonorable. Women so seldom make a mistake,
you know," she continued, "and I never met any one in my life who
seemed so kind and gentle."
Arnold sighed.
"I wish I could tell you everything," he said, "then I think you
would really be as bewildered as I am. Mr. Weatherley's
disappearance coming on the top of it all simply makes my brain
reel. I can't do anything to help straighten things out. Therefore,
I am going to do what I am told--I am going to mind my own
business."
"To think only of Tooley Street," she murmured.
"I shall find it quite enough," he answered. "I want to understand
all the details of the business, and it isn't easy at first. Mr.
Jarvis is very sound and good, but he's a very small man moving in a
very small way. Even Mr. Weatherley used to laugh at his methods."
She was silent for several moments. He studied her expression
curiously.
"You don't believe that I shall be able to immerse myself in
business?" he asked.
"It isn't exactly that," she replied. "I believe that you mean to
try, and I believe that to some extent you will succeed, but I
think, Arnold, that before very long you will hear the voices
calling again from the world where these strange things happened.
You are not made of the clay, dear, which resists for ever."
He moved uneasily in his seat. Her words sounded ominous. He was
suddenly conscious that his present state of determination was the
result of a battle, and that the war was not yet ended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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