Witching Hill by E. W. Hornung Read Free Book Online Page A

hand," said Delavoye when he had tried the latch.
    "You're not going over?"
    "That I am, and it'll be your duty to follow. Or I could let you through. Well - if you won't!"
    And in the angle between party-fence and gate he was struggling manfully when I went to his aid as a lesser evil; in a few seconds we were both in the back garden of the empty house, with the gate still bolted behind us.
    "Now, if it were ours," resumed Delavoye when he had taken breath, "I should say the lavatory window was the vulnerable point. Lavatory window, please!"
    "But, Delavoye, look here!"
    "I'm looking," said he, and we faced each other in the broad moonlight that flooded the already ragged lawn.
    "If you think I'm going to let you break into this house, you're very much mistaken."
    I had my back to the windows I meant to hold inviolate. No doubt the moon revealed some resolution in my face and bearing, for I meant what I said until Delavoye spoke again.
    "Oh, very well! If it's coming to brute force I have no more to say. The police will have to do it, that's all. It's their job, when you come to think of it; but it'll be jolly difficult to get them to take it on, whereas you and I - - "
    And he turned away with a shrug to point his admirable aposiopesis.
    "Man Uvo," I said, catching him by the arm, "what's this job you're jawing about?"
    "You know well enough. You're in the whole mystery of these people far deeper than I am. I only want to find the solution."
    "And you think you'll find it in their house?"
    "I know I should," said Uvo with quiet confidence. "But I don't say it'll be a pleasant find. I shouldn't ask you to come in with me, but merely to accept some responsibility afterwards - to-night, if we're spotted. It will probably involve more kudos in the end. But I don't want to let you in for more than you can stand meanwhile, Gillon."
    That was enough for me. I myself led the way back to the windows, angrily enough until he took my arm, and then suddenly more at one with him than I had ever been before. I had seen his set lips in the moonlight, and felt the uncontrollable tremor of the hand upon my sleeve.
    It so happened that it was not necessary to break in after all. I had generally some keys about me and the variety of locks on our back doors was not inexhaustible. It was the scullery door in this case that a happy chance thus enabled me to open. But I was now more determined than Delavoye himself, and would have stuck at no burglarious excess to test his prescience, to say nothing of a secret foreboding which had been forming in my own mind.
    To one who went from house to house on the Estate as I did, and knew by heart the five or six plans on which builder and architect had rung the changes, darkness should have been no hindrance to the unwarrantable exploration I was about to conduct. I knew the way through these kitchens, and found it here without a false or noisy step. But in the hall I had to contend with the furniture which makes one interior as different from another as the houses themselves may be alike. The Abercromby Royles had as much furniture as the Delavoyes, only of a different type. It was not massive and unsuitable, but only too dainty and multifarious, no doubt in accordance with the poor wife's taste. I retained an impression of artful simplicity - an enamelled drain-pipe for the umbrellas - painted tambourines and counterfeit milk-stools - which rather charmed me in those days. But I had certainly forgotten a tall flower-stand outside the kitchen door, and over it went crashing as I set foot in the tessellated hall. I doubt if either of us drew breath for some seconds after the last bit of broken plant-pot lay still upon the tiles. Then I rubbed a match on my trousers, but it did not strike. Uvo had me by the hand before I could do it again.
    "Do you want to blow up the house?" he croaked. "Can't you smell it for yourself?"
    Then I realised that the breath which I had just drawn was acrid with escaped