Detective and mystery stories; Thrillers (Fiction); Vigilantes -- Fiction
They were just turning the corner of the factory when the doctor stopped
and looked up at the high wall, which was protected by a _cheval de
frise_ of broken glass. All except in one spot, about two feet wide,
where not only the glass but the mortar which held it in place had been
chipped off. There were fragments of the glass, and, on the inside of
the wall, marks of some implement on the hard surface of the mortar.
“So!” said the doctor.
He was examining the scratches on the wall.
“Wait,” he ordered, and hurried back into the factory, to return,
carrying in each hand two large rusty contraptions which he put on the
ground.
One by one he forced open the jagged rusty teeth until they were wide
apart and held by a spring catch. She had seen things like that in a
museum. They were man-traps—relics of the barbarous days when trespass
was not only a sin but a crime.
He fixed the second of the traps on the path between the factory and the
wall.
“Now we shall see,” he said. “Forward!”
Monty was waiting for her impatiently. The Rolls had been turned out in
her honour, and the sulky-looking driver was already in his place at the
wheel.
“What is the matter with that chauffeur?” she asked, as they bumped up
the lane towards easier going. “He looks so happy that I shouldn’t be
surprised to hear that his mother was hanged this morning.”
“He’s sore with the old man,” explained Monty. “Oberzohn has two
drivers. They do a little looking round in the morning. The other fellow
was supposed to come back to take over duty at three o’clock, and he
hasn’t turned up. He was the better driver of the two.”
The chauffeur was apparently seeking every pothole in the ground, and in
the next five minutes she was alternately clutching the support of the
arm-strap and Monty. They were relieved when at last the car found a
metal road and began its noiseless way towards The Lights. And then her
hand sought his, and for the moment this beautiful flower which had
grown in such foul soil, bloomed in the radiance of a love common to
every woman, high and low, good and bad.
_Chapter XXVIII_ _At Frater’s_
MANFRED suggested an early dinner at the Lasky, where the soup was to
his fastidious taste. Leon, who had eaten many crumpets for tea—he had
a weakness for this indigestible article of diet—was prepared to
dispense with the dinner, and Poiccart had views, being a man of steady
habits. They dined at the Lasky, and Leon ordered a baked onion, and
expatiated upon the two wasted years of Poiccart’s life, employing a
wealth of imagery and a beauty of diction worthy of a better subject.
Manfred looked at his watch.
“Where are they dining?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” said Leon. “Our friend will be here in a few
minutes; when we go out he will tell us. You don’t want to see her?”
Manfred shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“I’m going to be bored,” complained Poiccart.
“Then you should have let me bring Alma,” said Leon promptly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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