Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction; Love stories
"You threaten us?" cried Lennie Bickersteth, throwing the drawing-room
door open in a way that was in itself a threat. Harry stalked through
with an eye that dared them to use their hands. He put on his hat and
overcoat, flung open the front door, picked up his portmanteau and his
hat-box, and so wheeled round on the threshold.
"I mean," he said, "to communicate with the parents of every boy who
has been under Scrafton this term. They shall question the boys
themselves."
He turned again, and went slowly down the steps; before he was at the
bottom the big door had slammed behind him for ever. And yet again did
he turn at the wooden gate between the stucco pillars. There was his
window, the end window of the top row, the window with the warm red
light behind the blind. Even as he watched, the blind was pulled back,
and a little lean figure in white stood between it and the glass.
It was a moonlight night, made lighter yet by a fall of snow that
afternoon, and Harry saw the little fellow so distinctly for the last
time! He was alternately waving a handkerchief with all his might and
digging at his eyes with it as though he meant to blacken them. It was
Harry's first sight of Woodman since the scene in the schoolroom, and
it was destined to be his last in life.
CHAPTER XXII.
MAN TO MAN.
The flat was in utter darkness when Harry arrived between nine and ten.
He was disappointed, and yet not surprised. He knew that his mother was
to have returned from the sea by this time, but that was all he did
know. He found the porter, and asked him how he was redirecting the
letters.
The man gave Mr. Walthew's address. Harry groaned.
"Mrs. Ringrose has never been back since she first went away?"
"No, sir."
"You have the key of the flat?"
"Yes, sir; my wife goes up there every day."
"Then get her to go up now and light the gas stove and lay the table.
I'll bring in the provisions if she'll do that and make my bed for me.
Tell her I know it's late, but----"
"That's all right, sir," interrupted the porter, a familiar but
obliging soul; and when Harry returned in ten minutes, with his slices
of pressed beef and his French rolls and butter, from the delightful
shop round a couple of corners, the flat was lighted like a
public-house, and you lost sight of your breath in the minute
dining-room where the asbestos was reddening in the grate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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