The Root of All EvilFletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith)
General
The Root of All Evil
Fletcher, J. S. (Joseph Smith)
Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction
Farnish obeyed; he was still as clay in his elder daughter's hands. And
an hour later, still obedient though wondering, he followed her out of
the cottage, and up the empty street of Savilestowe, past what had once
been Grice's, past what had once been the Golden Teapot, past the last
house, past the last tree. At the top of the hill, and as the morning
broke, he turned and looked back, having some strange intuition that he
was being taken away from a place which he had known long and would
never see again. He stood looking for some minutes; when he turned,
Jeckie, who had never once looked back, was marching stolidly ahead.
CHAPTER XIII
_The Lustre Jug_
Some eight or nine years after the morning on which Jeckie Farnish and
her father had walked out of their native village for the last time,
never to be heard of again in those parts, a man, who had just arrived
by train at Scarhaven, the time being seven o'clock of a bitterly cold
November evening, turned away from the railway station and betook
himself, shivering in the north-east wind that swept inland from the
sea, towards a part of the town wherein cheap lodgings were to be found.
In the light of the street lamps he showed himself to any who chanced to
look at him as a not over-well clad, somewhat shabby man, elderly,
greyish of hair and beard, who carried an old umbrella in one hand and a
much worn hand-bag in the other. Not the sort of man, this, anyone would
have said, who had much money to spend--nevertheless, when, after some
ten minutes of hard walking, he came to the end of a badly lighted
street in a dismal quarter, he turned into the bar-parlour of a corner
tavern and ordered hot whisky and a cheap cigar. In the light of the
place his shabbiness was more apparent, yet it was shabbiness of the
genteel sort. His overcoat was threadbare, but well brushed; his boots,
patched in more than one place, were sound of sole and firm of heel and
had been well cleaned and polished; his linen was clean and he wore
gloves. A keen observer of men and things would have said, after
inspecting him, that here was a man who had known better days.
Under the cheering influence of his whisky and his cigar, this man shook
off the chill of the streets and the sea wind and began to feel more
comfortable in flesh and bone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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