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

gas.
    "It's that asbestos stove again!" I exclaimed, recalling my first visit to the house.
    "Which asbestos stove?"
    "It's in the dining-room. It was leaking as far back as June."
    "Well, we'd better go in there first and open the window. Stop a bit!"
    The dining-room was just opposite the kitchen, and I was on the threshold when he pulled me back to tie my handkerchief across my nose and mouth. I did the same for Delavoye, and thus we crept into the room where I had been induced to drink with Royle on the night he went away.
    The full moon made smouldering panels of the French window leading into the garden, but little or no light filtered through the long red blind. Delavoye went round to it on tip-toe, and I still say it was a natural instinct that kept our voices down and our movements stealthy; that any other empty house, where we had no business at dead of night, would have had the same effect upon us. Delavoye speaks differently for himself; and I certainly heard him fumbling unduly for the blind-cord while I went over to the gas-stove. At least I was going when I stumbled against a basket chair, which creaked without yielding to my weight, and creaked again as though some one had stirred in it. I recoiled, panic-stricken, and so stood until the blind flew up. Then the silence was sharply broken by a voice that I can still hear but hardly recognise as my own.
    It was Abercromby Royle who was sitting in the moonlight over the escaping stove; and I shall not describe him; but a dead flower still drooped from the lapel of a flannel jacket which the dead man had horribly outgrown.
    I drove Delavoye before me through the window he had just opened; it was he who insisted on returning, ostensibly to turn off the gas, and I could not let him go alone. But neither could I face the ghastly occupant of the basket chair; and again it was Uvo Delavoye who was busy disengaging something from the frozen fingers when a loud rat-tat resounded through the house.
    It was grim to see how the corpse sat still and let us jump; but Uvo was himself before the knock was repeated.
    "You go, Gillon!" he said. "It's only somebody who's heard or seen us. Don't you think we smelt the gas through the letter-box, and wasn't it your duty - - "
    The second knock cut him short, and I answered it without more ado. The night constable on the beat, who knew me well by sight, was standing on the doorstep like a man, his right hand on his hip till he had blinded me with his lantern. A grunt of relief assured me of his recognition, while his timely arrival was as promptly explained by an insensate volley in a more familiar voice.
    "Don't raise the road, Mr. Coysh!" I implored. "The man you want has been here all the time, and dead for the last five days!"
    That was a heavy night for me. If Coysh could have made it something worse, I think just at first he would; for he had been grossly deceived, and I had unwittingly promoted the deception. But his good sense and heart had brought him to reason before I accompanied the policeman to the station, leaving the other two on guard over a house as hermetically sealed as Delavoye and I had found it.
    At the police station I was stiffly examined by the superintendent; but the explanations that I now felt justified in giving, at Delavoye's instigation, were received without demur and I was permitted to depart in outward peace. Inwardly I was not so comfortable, for Delavoye had not confined his hints to an excuse for entry, made the more convincing by the evil record of the asbestos stove. We had done some more whispering while the constable was locking up, and the impulsive Coysh had lent himself to our final counsels. The upshot was that I said nothing about my own farewell to Royle, though I dwelt upon my genuine belief that he had actually gone abroad. And I did say I was convinced that the whole affair had been an accident, due to the same loose gas-stove tap which had caused an escape six weeks before.
    That was